MORE ELECTION NEWS
| What in your background makes you qualified for office? | |
| I have strong roots in the Jeffco school community. My family moved to Jefferson County eight years ago and lives and breathes education. My wife Laurel has been a proud and award-winning Jeffco Public Schools educator for many years. Two of my children are Jeffco graduates, and my third child is a current Jeffco student. As an educator, husband of an educator and father to 3 inquisitive kids, I have been actively involved in our schools – volunteering and leveraging my experience and expertise to support education and advocate for the academic welfare of all students. I am proud to serve as a campus president of Concorde Career College. As president, I’ve consistently achieved high job placement rates over 90% annually for the college’s healthcare program in a highly impacted community. I bring deep practical experience with demonstrated results in turning several failing institutions around. In doing so, I’ve built experienced, highly competent and collaborative teams, which are essential to foster a healthy, thriving culture. I will champion our children, families, teachers and staff. I want to give our children the hope, the skills and the confidence to achieve their dreams, and give our educators the tools they need to make those dreams reality! | |
| Regarding consolidating/closing high schools, what tenants would a proposal from Superintendent Dorland need to include to earn your vote? | |
| Superintendent Dorland has expressed publicly that there is no appetite for closing comprehensive high schools at this time in the district. No further action on Phase III of Regional Opportunities for Thriving Schools is scheduled. Each of our high schools carries traditions and memories for generations of Jeffco residents. A long overdue boundary study is in the works which, if used effectively and in combination with a modernized high school experience, can help to balance our school populations to ensure future sustainability such that children and grandchildren can attend the same secondary schools as their parents and grandparents. | |
| How do you believe the district can best utilize closed school facilities? | |
| There is no one size fits all approach to planning for future use of closed school buildings. Two critical elements must be kept in mind by decision-makers: 1) how can we continue to provide value to the community surrounding the closed facility? 2) how can this asset best be utilized to benefit the students enrolled in our schools? Our decisions should be driven by input from the affected community and what resources they may benefit from having. Demand for spots at our Warren Tech campuses have outpaced availability. Expanding popular and high impact career and technical education or sharing spaces with our pre-K or community college neighbors can be a draw for families, and a value to the community. Ultimately, we must be good neighbors and stewards of the resources taxpayers entrusted us with to educate Jeffco’s students. | |
| Do you feel that a child should be able to (confidentially) discuss topics of gender and sexuality with their teachers? Why or why not? | |
| The focus of the school day should be on cultivating the knowledge and skills in our students that they need to achieve their goals and potential. Federal and state laws, and district policy, in many cases, guide when and in what manner educators are authorized to solicit protected information from students. Typically, parental notification and the opportunity for parents to opt their minor student out of surveys or analysis that would elicit personal information is required. No limitation is placed on students requesting assistance from trained professionals. Parents and guardians have a lifetime of experience protecting their children’s private information and recommending appropriate resources to be consulted when questions arise. | |
| With more Colorado school districts — including neighboring Clear Creek — moving to four-day weeks, do you think there’s a chance Jeffco could do the same? Why or why not would you be in favor of that? | We are still seeing the negative effects of limited or no in-person learning during the pandemic, most acutely in underserved families across the nation. We witnessed how vital our public schools, and in particular, time spent in the classroom was to our students’ well-being and educational achievement. I would not support moving to a four-day week in Jeffco. |
| Assess the effectiveness of the changing start times at Jeffco schools.. | |
| The changing start times have been a good-faith effort to support the sleep health of our adolescent students, and an equitable length of day across the district. That said, the implementation has been very challenging for parents, teachers, and bus drivers across the district, particularly in our middle and high schools. Many extracurricular activities have been moved to before school, or require student early-release to accommodate, which negates some of the intended benefits for those students. Additionally, with the bus driver shortage, transportation has been more unpredictable resulting in strain for our drivers and parents alike. Furthermore, a few schools saw their schedules shift dramatically after enrollment was well underway, providing a particular challenge for many families and teachers who scrambled to accommodate the alteration. While later start times for our middle grade students and more equitable instructional time is a worthy goal, clearly some of the implementation challenges were not adequately anticipated or mitigated. | |
| In addition to closing schools to accommodate declining enrollments in Jefferson County, what other measures do you propose to improve students’ learning experiences while saving money? | |
| To be successful in improving our student’s learning experiences, we should increase classroom and administrative assistance for teachers. I’ve heard from many educators who are frustrated by the lack of support they receive for discipline and duties outside of their core instructional responsibilities. We need to actively involve families and empower them to participate in their children’s education. We should be creating consistency across curricula, instructional materials, and teacher professional development. Lastly, we need to implement intensive tutoring and other interventions for students at the first sign of struggles and provide support for mental health issues adversely affecting learning. We need to provide our students with the education and skills to achieve their own goals, and utilize funds entrusted to us by taxpayers judiciously. Our budget should be scrutinized to meet those requirements. Jeffco has a general fund budget deficit of $7.1 million in 2024, $20 million in 2025 and $38.8 million in 2026. This is unsustainable and damages public trust. We need to accelerate improvements in the district’s financial management processes and systems to make transparent linkages between activities, costs, and outcomes for our children. We must prioritize funding for efforts with the greatest impact on student outcomes and eliminate expenses where programs have demonstrated unsuccessful in improving results. | |
| Do you see any alternatives to future school consolidations? | |
| While some rightsizing was necessary to ensure quality educational experiences for the students in our schools, more could and should have been done earlier to stem the enrollment decline, or at the very least allow for more community input. I hear from affected communities that they feel closures were imposed on them, rather than in collaboration with them. The district must be proactive to prevent the necessity of future school closures by conducting regular boundary studies, and asking parents why they chose or didn’t choose their neighborhood schools. If we understand the reasons that our families choose the schools that they choose, we can offer the excellent experiences that all our families expect in their neighborhoods and attract new students. | |
| How will you handle Jeffco educators’ perceived need for higher compensation in the face of declining enrollment/revenue? | Teachers must be paid at a level that honors their role in society and facilities must be equal to operational need. Both can be accomplished without deficit spending if expenses are more thoroughly managed. Integrity and transparency in spending will shine a light on areas that require careful, sober and reasoned evaluation (and yes, hard decisions). A bankrupt district serves no students and no teachers. |