Great Schools Need Great People 

Every program, curriculum, intervention, and goal a School Board approves ultimately depends on people to make it work. Great schools need great teachers, but they also need great paraeducators, counselors, psychologists, office staff, custodians, nutrition services employees, maintenance staff, administrators, and everyone else whose work supports students.

I look at this issue from more than one perspective. I serve as a trustee, but I have also spent my career working in public schools. I know what it means to look at a salary schedule, think about retirement, consider opportunities for growth, and decide whether a district is somewhere you can build a career.

I want Oakley to be that kind of district: a place that attracts excellent employees, develops the people we already have, compensates them competitively and responsibly, and gives great employees reasons to stay.

A Career, Not Just a Job 

I want Oakley to be one of the most competitive elementary school districts in our area when it comes to compensation. That's a goal our Board has discussed, and one I continue to support. Competitive pay helps us attract strong employees, but just as importantly, it gives great employees a reason to build their careers here.

A career should also have somewhere to go. Employees who dedicate decades to Oakley should continue to see opportunities for professional and financial growth. I support regularly comparing our salary schedules with comparable districts and looking for responsible opportunities to strengthen compensation. 

I believe our salary schedules should reward both professional growth and longevity. When employees reach the top of a salary schedule but still have many years left in their careers, I am open to additional steps, longevity compensation, and other options that recognize people who make Oakley their career. The specifics belong at the bargaining table, but I support exploring those options when they are financially sustainable. 

My support for competitive compensation has a limit: I will not support an ongoing commitment that I don't believe the district can sustain. I want employees to receive as much of our available ongoing funding as we can responsibly provide, but not at the cost of creating structural deficits that could ultimately lead to layoffs, reductions in services, or instability for employees and students. 

And when I talk about building a career in Oakley, I don't mean only teachers. Paraeducators, office staff, custodians, nutrition services staff, maintenance staff, and the many other people who keep our schools running should also have opportunities to grow professionally and build a career here. Not everyone wants to become a teacher or an administrator—and they shouldn't have to in order to feel valued, grow in their profession, and build a future working in our schools. 

I want people to choose Oakley—and once they're here, I want Oakley to give great employees reasons to stay. 

Investing in People Responsibly 

I want our employees to be compensated as well as we can responsibly afford. But supporting employees also means making sure the compensation we commit to today is sustainable tomorrow.

School funding can change significantly from year to year, and not every dollar a district receives is ongoing. When the state provides one-time funding, I support using those dollars in ways that benefit employees and students—including one-time compensation when appropriate. But an ongoing salary increase creates an ongoing obligation. Before making that commitment, I want to know that we can sustain it in future years.

That's not about being reluctant to invest in employees. It's about protecting those investments. I don't want us increasing ongoing expenses based on temporary revenue and then facing a future budget in which positions, programs, or services have to be eliminated to make the numbers work.

Responsible budgeting means paying people competitively while making sure the promises we make to employees are promises the district can keep.

Financial Stability Protects Students 

When a district has to make significant staffing reductions, the impact doesn't stop with the employees whose positions are affected. Students feel it too. They may lose access to programs, supports, services, or trusted adults who have become part of their school experience.

That's one reason I take long-term financial planning seriously. I want us making compensation and staffing decisions with an understanding of what they will mean several years from now—not simply what we can afford in a single budget year.

There will always be economic cycles and years when school funding is tighter than others. My goal is for Oakley to be positioned to weather those years without unnecessarily disrupting classrooms, eliminating valuable programs, or losing great employees.

Fiscal responsibility isn't separate from supporting staff and students. It's what allows us to support them for the long term.

Grow Here

Recruiting great employees matters. Developing the people who have already chosen Oakley matters just as much.

I am proud of the educator pathways our district has built, including opportunities that help people move into teaching and continue developing throughout their careers. I want that same culture of growth to extend throughout our workforce. Professional development shouldn't only be something we think about when someone is pursuing a credential or preparing for the next position.

Employees should have opportunities to become better at the jobs they already love. A paraeducator may want to become a teacher—but another may want to become an exceptional, highly trained paraeducator and make that their career. The same is true for our office staff, custodians, nutrition services employees, maintenance staff, teachers, specialists, and administrators.

Growth doesn't always mean moving into a different job. Sometimes it means becoming even better at the work you've chosen to do.

Classified Staff Matter 

Some of the people who make the biggest difference in a student's day aren't certificated employees. I learned that firsthand as a special education teacher. A strong paraeducator could change the entire functioning of my classroom—not because they were simply another adult in the room, but because they knew the students, understood their needs, built relationships, and became an important part of the team.

The same is true throughout a school system. Our office staff are often the first people families encounter. Custodians and maintenance staff keep our campuses safe and functioning. Nutrition services staff make sure students are fed. Paraeducators and other support staff work directly alongside students every day. Their work is different, but each contributes to whether our schools work well for children.

I want our classified employees to have meaningful opportunities for training and professional growth, whether their goal is to move into another position someday or become even stronger in the role they're already in.

Supporting the people who support our students is an investment in student success.

Stay Connected to the Classroom 

Education doesn't stand still. Students change. Research changes. Technology changes. Curriculum and instructional practices change. Even California periodically updates the standards for what effective teaching should look like. In 2024, the state revised its Standards for the Teaching Profession for the first time since 2009, incorporating current research and a continuous-growth model for educators. 

I see the same principle in my school psychology training. Even the assessment tools we use are updated over time as research advances and the students we serve change. If we expect our standards, our tools, and our practices to evolve, we have to be willing to evolve with them. 

Thirty years of experience is incredibly valuable, but year thirty shouldn't look exactly like year one. The same applies when educators move into leadership. Our past classroom experience gives us perspective, but it can't replace understanding what classrooms are like today. 

That's something I bring to my work on the Board and will continue to keep at the forefront. The Board's role isn't to run classrooms or supervise instruction. We set direction, establish priorities, allocate resources, evaluate the Superintendent, and monitor results. To make those decisions well, I believe we need current evidence and a connection to what is actually happening in our schools. 

That means asking questions. Listening to teachers and staff. Visiting our schools. Seeing programs and classrooms firsthand. And continuing to ask ourselves: When was the last time we actually saw this in practice? 

Things change. We need to keep learning and changing too. Good governance means making decisions based on the schools we have today—not simply the schools we remember.

Listening to the People Doing the Work

Staying connected also means listening to the people doing the work every day. Teachers and staff see how programs, materials, policies, and district decisions actually work once they reach a school or classroom. That perspective should be part of the information the Board considers.

Listening doesn't mean automatically agreeing. It means taking that expertise seriously and being willing to ask more questions. I have pulled items from the consent agenda after hearing staff concerns because I wanted to better understand what we were being asked to approve. In one instance, teacher feedback made me question whether an additional academic program was necessary when other resources were already available. We slowed down, asked questions, and ultimately did not spend the money.

That's how I believe a Board should work: listen, ask questions, examine the evidence, and then make the decision that best serves the district as a whole.  

Why Oakley?

Oakley is more than the district where I serve on the Board. It's where my daughters go to school, where my family is raising our children, and a community whose schools I have watched grow and change during my time as a trustee.

I want our schools to be places where students are challenged academically, have opportunities beyond reading and math, and leave eighth grade prepared for what comes next. I want employees to be able to build careers here, families to feel connected to their schools, and our community to be proud of every school in our district.

We've started work that I want to see through, and there are areas where I believe we still need to improve. I will continue bringing the same questions to the Board: What does the evidence tell us? Are our decisions making a difference for students? Are we using our resources responsibly? And what do we need to do differently when the answer isn't good enough?

Oakley has changed during my time on the Board, and it will continue to change. My commitment is to keep learning, keep asking questions, and keep our students at the center of the decisions we make