| 1. Describe your view about school board oversight of charter schools. What changes do you believe are needed to improve performance?
| The board needs to be proactive in providing resources and support to all of our schools. If we do more before a school is struggling, we can prevent them from getting to the point of no return. |
| 2. What is your vision and three top priorities for NOLA-PS for the next five years? What obstacles do you foresee and what steps will you implement to overcome them?
| I envision a system where our students and teachers enter a safe environment conducive to learning each and every day. In order for this to become a reality we need to prioritize high quality schools, teacher retention, and equitable allocation of funds. All three of these work hand and hand. If we provide our charters with the additional support they need to success they'll produce better school performance scores. If we make our school sites a more welcoming environment and increase their pay, more teachers would want to come to our parish. If we increase oversight of our funds, the first two priorities will be easier to reach. |
| 3. In the Accountability Framework, there is no indication of any input from faculty members. What are your thoughts about giving teachers more input to decide how their performance is judged?
| Input from our teachers should have always been a top priority. The fact that it hasn't been is one of the reasons why I'm running. The thoughts and experience of our teachers need to be incorporated into the framework for it to be successful. Their input needs to be valued because they are the ones face to face with out students every day. |
| 4. What approaches will you implement to ensure that the needs of special education students are fully met?
| A more holistic evaluation of the student needs to be held to address all of their needs. To ensure students with exceptionalities are being properly taken care of, schools need to document truthfully, what services are being provided and when. It needs to be signed off by more than one faculty member to provide accountability and classroom observations need to be conducted more frequently. |
| 5. Last year some students were unable to graduate because of improper management of graduation requirements by school administrators. Do you think these issues could happen again and, if so, what steps would you like to see implemented to prevent this?
| I believe in hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. Though I do not expect anything like this to happen again, taking the steps to make sure it doesn't is our best option. Each parent and student should be presented with a graduation requirements checklist at the beginning of their 9th grade year. School counselors should also keep track of these requirements to alert a family if their student if off track early enough to fix the issue. There should be a system put in place that calls for the counselors' reports to be sent to the district as a third party reviewer. As far as the changing of grades, we need more ethics trainings for our teachers. |
