PRIORITIES

Top Teacher Pay

Accepting year after year that our teachers shall be underpaid is a board and foundation blind spot. Our teachers should be the best paid, and we can start doing this right now using the resources we already have.

If you elect me to this office, you are sending a clear signal to the board, the administration, and the foundation that our community embraces paying the highest teaching wage in North Texas to our teachers.

We should identify existing spending that limits this, and we must work hand-in-hand with Highland Park Education Foundation to fund the required salary increases. We are sitting on an existing endowment of $50 - 60 million, plus or minus (with a significant amount unrestricted). If we utilize $4 million of that next year to give 400 teachers a $10,000 per year raise, we would bypass all districts in offering the best pay. And when our donor base sees we are serious about addressing teacher pay, we will open the private-fundraising floodgates like we never have seen before. Our endowment will accelerate and not diminish.

Fewer Instructional Screens in School

I am not suggesting we return to an era with no technology in the classroom, but I do think we should have an open and honest discussion about the prevalence of district-issued screens used in our kids’ instruction. After all, what we really care about is our kids becoming better readers, excellent writers, and able to think critically for themselves. Let’s always be interrogating the styles we are implementing and questioning their effectiveness.

Better Budget Transparency

I approach the concept of budget transparency from a positive place. I feel the audited financial reports provided to the public could be enhanced by a series of thoughtfully-prepared analyses; this would allow interested readers to better understand the choices we are making between various line items. 

Also, the district offered an outstanding seminar in January to explain Texas public school finance. It should do a comparable seminar explaining the HPISD budget. People want to understand how a nine-figure sum gets spent. Let’s show them and make them more informed.

Improved College Admissions to Elite State and National Universities

By all accounts, the state of Texas is on fire - a cultural and economic juggernaut. This success is resulting in massive increases in applications to our elite state schools. UT had 90,000 applications this year. SMU’s applications were up 100% last year and 60% this year. The same is true for all of our prominent colleges and universities in Texas. Admissions to choice schools - state or national - will become even more challenging, and we must prepare our students and their parents accordingly. Our college admissions counseling team must continue to improve. Parents should be coached that the math classes their child is taking in 5th - 8th grade will influence their preparation level for the college boards taken in the junior year.

Broader Board Perspectives

Our school board is most effective when we have a wide range of viewpoints on the board. One area where we presently are “out of balance” in this regard relates to having the viewpoints of those who moved here from elsewhere. There are very positive attributes to being from here and also from being from elsewhere, and the two joining together are what makes this school district so successful. My wife and I moved here, and I will be offering a perspective this board tends to miss but which is often shared within the broader community. 

MENTAL HEALTH

Let’s address mental health multiple ways. Continue talking and teaching about it more to our kids and their parents.  Improve our counseling services. 

And by all means, let’s look for even more ways to create community for our kids, particularly the older ones. Might we consider forming more “no cut” activities?  Would it be good or bad to have a JV drill team, for instance?  Should we think more programmatically about cell phone and social media use by our children?  

These are the types of things an effective trustee helps a community explore with the assistance of mental health professionals. I’ll do that. No more status quo.