​​Critical Issues Facing the Rochester School Board in 2024 and Beyond

Supporting students, families, teachers and staff.

I believe it is important to have strong and supportive leadership to continue to meet important education needs for all students.

A highlight of my current school board term was making the motion to terminate a further superintendent search and joining my colleagues in hiring Superintendent Kent Pekel. Under his strong leadership, the Strategic Plan supports student success by transforming education through a focus on deeper learning, strengthening student supports, prioritizing student belonging and community engagement, empowering staff and students, and improving the systems needed to run a large district. I took the lead to modernize our school resource officer contract, chair the Board’s Legislative Committee, and serve on the Community Budget Advisory Committee.

As I seek re-election to Seat 3, I look forward to a bright future for RPS in 2025 and beyond, rather than a big step backwards to a time before Rochester experienced significant growth and before RPS was blessed with an increasingly diverse and dynamic student population.

​Academic Performance.

I am an advocate for strong academic growth and performance for ALL students. I fully support the READ Act goals and believe academic success starts with all students reading at least at grade level. I believe all students can benefit from appropriate challenges in the academic setting. As a strong supporter of public education, I support the needs of all students, including the 17% of our student population receiving special education services. Without public education, these most vulnerable students would be left behind. I am focused on increasing our ability to meet the needs of our youngest learners in our early education programs, and helping families through expanding after school school-aged child care (SACC). I am also a champion for preparing and encouraging ALL secondary students to enroll in honors courses, advanced placement courses, post-secondary options and career-readiness programs.

I strongly believe the core purpose of the current Strategic Plan is to improve student success and academic performance. I also strongly believe Superintendent Pekel’s decision to create a Division of Research, Assessment and Evaluation to collect and monitor student and district data was a game-changer for the District, and specifically in the area of academic performance (along with student behavior). I believe collection, monitoring, and analysis of this data was the District’s first concrete step toward raising academic performance.

Post-pandemic standardized test scores are lagging nationwide, not just in RPS. Schools are also experiencing increases in absenteeism across the country. Both challenges, and others, exist here in RPS. I strongly believe RPS is moving in the right direction with the current Strategic Plan, focus on deeper learning, and the exciting improvements we are already seeing through implementation of the innovative READ Act. Likewise, I believe student safety, engagement and belonging are also critical to student success. Any claim to focus primarily on academics, without a school community supporting the whole child, ignores our youngest learners' current reality, is a step backwards and away from current education best practices and will likely fail.

Board Policies and Community Involvement 
​A Case Study:
Guidelines for supporting transgender and
​gender-expansive students.

Community involvement for all RPS business provides essential insight and context. This is one of the reasons I find our work on the Community Budget Advisory Committee so valuable.

Board members have received some criticism for recent administrative guidelines supporting transgender and gender-expansive students, but it is important to note the Board received just as much community support as it did criticism, now with a draft board procedure scheduled for Board vote on July 16. 

The Board received public comment about the guidelines and discussed the draft procedure during a public meeting and a public study session. The Board is always open to community input and has improved transparency, accessibility and information about meeting agendas, available at the Board webpage: https://www.rochesterschools.org/page/
school-board. 

​The Policy Committee relied on U.S. Department of Education (DOE) guidance and legal advice when drafting this procedure. The DOE reviewed 240,000+ public comments during recent Title IX rulemaking and followed authority from the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 decision, Bostock v. Clayton County (Justice Gorsuch). The legal advice also follows Minnesota law (Minnesota Human Rights Act and the 2020 Supreme Court case, N.H. v. Anoka-Hennepin School District No. 11). As a government-funded district, the Board must follow existing laws. This procedure expands existing protections from discrimination and harassment to LGBTQI+ students by including protections based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics. In my view, these protections, like other policies/procedures prohibiting discrimination and harassment, are critical to the safety, belonging and engagement of all RPS students. 

Finally, these administrative guidelines distributed September 8, 2023, were not “secret”. It is common and expected for a superintendent to issue guidelines addressing emerging issues. The Policy Committee was involved in the guidelines, and on September 7 the full Board was advised they were being distributed.

​Budgets, economic challenges and
​long-term financial stability.

It is critical that the Rochester School Board and District leaders maintain budget priorities. Despite sound fiscal policies, conservative budget forecasting, and exemplary independent professional audits, the District faces a $19.4 million deficit for fiscal year 2025-26 and future years because state funding has not kept up with inflation for the past 20 years.

The Rochester School Board must continue to take an active role in advocating for necessary state funding to meet ​these priorities. As the Chair of the Board's Legislative Committee, I'm committed to this work. I am also excited to serve on the Community Budget Advisory Committee, where community members come together to brainstorm creative and effective ways to best allocate funding throughout the district to meet the needs of ALL students.

Historically, in Minnesota and elsewhere, state education funding has not kept up with inflation. In 2023, the Minnesota legislature made significant investments in education for the first time in years. Those investments helped fill the gap but did not eliminate the projected budget deficits. Mayo Clinic graciously provided a much-needed donation at the end of 2023, but those one-time funds were used to fill budget gaps in the 2024-25 school year. The District will face similar budget deficits beginning in the 2025-26 school year without additional funds.

​Strong public schools build strong communities. While I recognize the financial impact of a referendum, the Rochester community and related tax-base are expected to grow. Over time, the referendum’s additional levy funding will be spread across more households and businesses, reducing the overall individual impact.

2024 Operating ​Referendum.

Strong public schools build strong communities. As a community member and taxpayer, I fully support the RPS 2024 Referendum. I have been privileged with a front-row seat to many board presentations highlighting the positive progress made by implementing the Strategic Plan. My goal is for this positive progress to continue and expand in my next term. Mayo Clinic’s recent $10 million donation was a blessing, but not a long-term solution. I look forward to further implementation of the Strategic Plan, and the next strategic plan, to further advance student learning and engagement, staff support and development, and community engagement. As a community member, I believe the 2024 Referendum is the only available mechanism to reach these goals.

Referendum funding will stabilize the District’s budget, avoid school closures, and support classroom needs/services that reach every student. Passing the referendum gives our community the opportunity to maintain teacher and staffing levels at current class sizes and continue to provide every student personalized attention, including reading and other support for struggling students. It will maintain essential services (counselors and mental health professionals) and expanded post-secondary and career readiness. Referendum funding will help RPS effectively implement the READ Act, a major state investment in literacy education designed to help all students read at grade level, and other important curriculum improvements.
 
Without these funds, the District will go over the “fiscal cliff” predicted by District budget projections. Passing the RPS referendum will prevent major cuts impacting all students, including closing multiple schools, eliminating teaching and staff positions, increasing class sizes, reducing courses and programming at all grade levels, cutting academic support and mental health services, and scaling back career and technical education.

It's worth repeating: Strong public schools build strong communities. While I recognize the financial impact of a referendum, Minnesota provides critical tax relief for those who qualify for the Property Tax Refund or the Property Tax Deferral for our senior citizens. Over time, in a growing community like Rochester, the tax-base will also grow. The referendum’s additional levy funding will be spread across more households and businesses, reducing the overall individual impact.