1. List who has been compensated to provide services to your campaign. List your campaign managers. Note current cash on hand in your campaign account, and your donations received and spent. You only need to note figures that are not included yet on campaign finance filings.
I do not have paid campaign staff. I do use the services of professionals for: website design/maintenance, graphics, and campaign materials.
Campaign Manager: Christopher Oxenham
Current cash on hand: $20,843.51
Donations received (not yet included on campaign finance filings): $1,520.00
Campaign funds spent (not yet included on campaign finance filings): $7,320.51
2. List organizations/groups/committees (both education-related and not) of which you are an official member.
Special Education Citizens Advisory Committee (SECAC) (member)
Board of Education Audit Committee (Chair/member)
County Executive’s Spending Affordability Advisory Committee (Non-voting member)
Local PTAs (member)
3. In what areas of public education do you refuse to compromise, due to strong beliefs? How would you make changes in these areas? Give examples of how you collaborated and compromised with colleagues who disagreed with you.
We shouldn’t compromise when it comes to the BOE’s fiduciary responsibility to provide a public education, to support and sustain a school system to meet the needs of a variety of learners, and be fiscally responsible. This requires the BOE to have oversight over HCPSS, ensuring that the HCPSS is accountable and transparent, and that the BOE is accountable and transparent as well.
Being a BOE member is all about collaboration – having strong beliefs can be a good thing, but it depends on how one uses them.
I wanted to create a board cluster representative for non-public schools where HCPSS places students so parents would have a direct BOE contact. We compromised by establishing a Board Liaison, and I currently hold this position. I continue to work with my colleagues, the superintendent and staff to change the budget process to one that will enable us to realistically allocate scarce resources.
When we establish/review policies, I listen to the concerns of my colleagues and the community and provide input to improve policies – it’s the best example of how the BOE can work together and incorporate different points of view to develop a policy that will best guide HCPSS.
4. Give examples, in your personal or professional life, that demonstrate your willingness to hold people accountable and include transparency for the community.
My analysis/questioning of Bids & Contracts has changed how we review/track/approve the spending of millions of taxpayer dollars. I discovered there was no process to evaluate companies providing products/services and we’d use companies again without knowing if they did a good job. Performance is now tracked and the data is used when considering to use these companies again.
I discovered agreements with outside entities were coming to the BOE for approval without first being reviewed by the general counsel. Now, the general counsel reviews agreements before presentation to the BOE.
I advocated for HCPSS putting MPIA responses online so the community has access to the information.
I’ve been at the forefront of advocating for protecting student privacy and data. It’s important parents know how we protect student information and have the option to keep their student’s data private. We now have a strong Student Data Governance and Privacy policy that requires data privacy protections for all contracts/grants/agreements. I’ll continue to advocate that we have a responsibility to establish policies protecting student privacy and data that are more stringent than state/federal laws.
5. For incumbents, what do you feel is your legacy you have left so far on the HCPSS? For other candidates, what would you want your legacy to be and why are you the best choice to create it?
That I can be counted on to ask the hard questions and use the answers to guide the HCPSS to be better, to tell it like it is and not just tell the community the answer they want to hear – no matter how unpopular the truth may be, and to govern using a common sense approach that enables the BOE/HCPSS to incorporate community input into decisions that are best for all our students and the school system.
Identifying and changing/establishing procedures to increase accountability as provided in the examples in questions 1 & 2.