I am running for school board to make sure that the freedom to learn stays protected in Rochester Public Schools from anything that would try to narrow it: censorship, AI usage that decreases kids' ability to think for themselves, and any policy or budget decision that would reduce students' odds of thriving in an increasingly complex world.
I've lived in Rochester for 20 years. I worked in our schools as an Education Support Professional for 9 of those years. Now, I work in public service at the Rochester Public Library.
This fall my daughter starts kindergarten in Rochester Public Schools, which means this election is extremely personal to me. The world shaped by decisions we make now will be the one that she and your children and your neighbors' children grow up in.
What's clear to me is that her future is brightest when all of our kids' futures are brightest. After all, we all do better when we all do better.
I'm running for school board so that we can better prepare our students for a fast-changing world by keeping purpose, dignity, and belonging at the heart of their education.
Every student should carry the equipment that makes them hard to harm and unwilling to harm: self-respect, healthy boundaries, and real conflict skills. This can be taught deliberately, the same way we teach reading.
Not every threat a child faces is in a hallway. Some students carry violence to school from home; some carry abuse no adult has caught yet. A district serious about violence prevention has to see the whole child and be the place where trained, trusted adults notice what's wrong and know exactly what to do next.
The long game is bigger still: every adult in Rochester's future is in someone's classroom right now. Teach this generation respect, boundaries, and what healthy relationships look like, and we are literally raising the neighbors, partners, and parents this city will live with. Prevention curriculum is one of the best investments we can make.
This is squarely the board's job. Minnesota law puts violence prevention curriculum under local board authority. Rochester decides how Rochester teaches this, and I want us to decide it out loud, with thorough evidence on the table.
The cheapest time to stop violence is before it happens. The second cheapest is the moment a trained adult first notices. We will not be a district that misses either one.
The media center is the one room in school where a kid meets minds no adult in their life chose for them. Nobody knows in advance which book a particular student needs. The librarian's job is to have it there when they reach. The district's job is to keep that shelf governed by process and not by any one person's preferences.
Every parent has the fundamental right to guide their own child's reading. No parent, no administrator, no board member (including me) has the right to decide for every family in the district. That's what the review process is for: educators, librarians, and community members, weighing challenges in the open.
I've spent my career in libraries. I've watched the right book find the right kid. The shelf belongs to everyone.
Schools sit downstream of the city. Every subsidy, every housing project, every development deal shapes who can afford to move here, whether their kids fill our classrooms, and how the tax burden lands on the families who stay. Those decisions are made years before they show up in enrollment, usually by people who never once say the word "school."
13.4% of school-age kids living inside RPS boundaries don't attend RPS. The statewide figure is 10.5%. That gap is families voting with their feet which compounds because every student who leaves takes their funding along.
State law already gives the school board a formal voice: when the city proposes tax-increment financing, the district has a statutory right to review and comment before a dollar moves.
RPS deserves a chair and voice of advocacy at this table, and I'll be the member who makes sure it's filled and heard.
We teach kids to drive before handing them the keys. AI should be no different. The question is whether RPS students will graduate as drivers or passengers of AI.
The real danger is work that looks like learning. Grades that look like progress. Meanwhile the struggle that was the education is getting quietly outsourced. Guardrails exist to protect the difficulty, because the difficulty is the curriculum.
Powerful tools deserve driver's ed. Our kids should graduate holding the wheel.
Have questions or suggestions? I would love to hear from you!
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