Q&A: Get to know the candidates running for Klein ISD Position 7

If elected, what will be your top priorities?

My top three priorities are (1) supporting our teachers; (2) improving upon our strong tradition of academic achievement; and (3) ensuring the safety of our Klein family.

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing Klein ISD?

Moving forward from the pandemic, our biggest challenge is to help each student to achieve their full potential. We have seen a lot of success this last year, but we still have a long way to go. When we partner together as teachers, parents, and members of the community, there is no limit what we can achieve.

If elected, how will you address student learning loss due to the COVID-19 pandemic?

We need to support and enable our teachers to do their very best work for every student every day. Because of our incredible teachers and committed students, Klein ISD is a positive outlier as we saw gains in academic achievement across the district despite the pandemic and saw a 67% increase in schools earning A ratings compared to before the pandemic. We need to keep building on this momentum.

If elected, how will you ensure Klein ISD is not negatively affected by widespread teacher shortages?

Thankfully, Klein ISD has made a lot of progress over the last three years in becoming more competitive in the way we compensate and otherwise support our teachers. As a result, we had over 99% of teaching positions filled at the beginning of this school year. But we are not done yet and need to continue aligning our priorities to attract and retain the best talent to teach our children.

If elected, how will you work to ensure campus safety throughout Klein ISD?

Safety must always be a top priority. Nothing is more important than making sure all of our Klein family gets home safely each night. As a board, we need to make sure that funds are available for needed structural improvements to our schools, as well as training and support for our Klein ISD police department.

If elected, what will be your top priorities?

The most important priority is security for our children and teachers. I would like an independent party/company to come in and asses our strengths and weaknesses as soon as possible, like as in yesterday. We could then drive action from those assessments to strengthen our facilities with both infrastructure and personnel. We already have approved bonds that passed under Proposition A and Proposition B that we could use to address the most critical security needs. We need local police departments to work in cohesion with the Klein Police Department, so that they can respond as one team. Every second counts if, God forbid, we were to have an incident. I am old boy scout so “Be Prepared." One of my other priorities is that our teachers feel that they have the board and administration standing behind them. It’s not just the safety of the kids but the safety of our teachers who have chosen a career of giving back to the community’s future. Another priority I [would] have, if elected, is return to A-rated schools from a B and we [would] do to that by strengthening our core principles: reading, writing, math, and science, and ensure Critical Race Theory in any form or implied bias is kept out of our kids’ curriculum.

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing Klein ISD?

I think every board faces the challenges of balancing the budget to benefit our children’s education, teachers’ pay, and extracurricular activities. We must remember that we are stewards of our neighbor’s money, which is paid to better that communities’ future leaders. The challenge is how do we accomplish all of it—security, education, and taking care of our teachers? Our children's and the teachers' security must be No. 1, followed by insuring they are getting the best education to prepare our children for life. Our job as parents is to prepare our children for life on their own, and our schools and teachers are part of that preparation. As far as how do we maximize the budget, I think it’s really looking at said budget and making hard decisions of what we can live [with] and what we cannot live without, as all families are having to do right now during this unprecedented inflation. The answer to our problems cannot always be more taxes collected, and more bonds.