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a. Ensure kids are equipped with the educational basics to be successful in their life pursuits, be it college, trades, or some other avenue. All of these require proficiency in math, English language arts and science.
b. Protect children from age-inappropriate materials, be they books, magazines or other written or visual materials. Materials do not have to be deemed pornographic to be age-inappropriate.

a. They do not protect kids from age-inappropriate materials. To address this issue, I will need to get parents involved. I would propose hosting several townhall meetings where we would have the books of concern available for parents to review, express my concerns, understand other parents’ perspectives and then discuss possible courses of action.
b. Although our school district has some of the better scholastic scores on state proficiency tests, we still have from 25 – 33% of kids in 3rd thru 8th grades who are not proficient in math and English language arts. To address this issue, I need to collect further details that the school district has regarding specific schools or classes that may have underlying issues. I also need to further understand current mitigation approaches that are being taken. Again, parental involvement is key to success.

Yes, I support school choice, for several reasons:
a. Firstly, the academic quality of the available public-school option may not be satisfactory. Brown vs Board of Education may have been a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court, but that doesn’t mean all public schools are now equal.
b. Secondly, there may be social issues that affect some kids more than others; bullying or emotional trauma. Allowing them to move to a different environment may allow them to overcome those issues.
c. Thirdly, for any bureaucracy to function, they must simplify structure and process. This logically means that students are treated fairly uniformly, even if they don’t necessarily fit within the norm.

Parents must be the ultimate authority in not only a child’s education but in all other areas of their life as well.
Any responsibility that a school district has regarding children is derived from their parents.

No. That is a nonsense statement that is meant to cause division and tension. America was founded as a place for people who were seeking freedom. The freedoms espoused in the First Amendment were included first because they are primary to what our founding fathers saw as how they wanted to country to be; freedoms concerning religion, expression, assembly, and the right to petition.
We need to understand colonial times to understand the role of slavery in that time. As hard as it may be for us to understand today, in the 18th century, slavery was accepted as a way of life and it was not unique to America. Fortunately, times changed, and by the 19th century, ideals had shifted and there was a concerted effort to eliminate slavery. England, as the most powerful country in the world, took it upon itself to outlaw slavery throughout the United Kingdom. Following that, the United States fought a civil war to settle the issue. To the best of my knowledge, no other country in history has fought a civil war to restore human rights to all citizens.
When our founding principles include the truth that “all men are created equal”, it clearly articulates the exact opposite idea. Regardless of race, color or creed, in the United States, all are equal.

None of those subjects should be included in our public education system. These subjects are the responsibility of parents to teach. Again, the education of children is primarily the responsibility of the parents. Whatever public schools would teach would be some compromise on the moral standards of many of the parents. Unless the schools would be willing to teach objective, absolute moral truth, they need to stay out of these areas.

If we stop allocating resources to subjects that should not be taught in school (reference question above), we should have sufficient resources to dedicate to the primary reason for children to be in public school in the first place; to develop them into productive members of society, capable of reading, writing, mathematics, logic, critical thinking, and appreciation of the arts.

Safety is a major issue for both girls and boys. Drugs, violence and sexual assaults should not be issues in schools, either public or private. School Resource Officers (SROs) are understood to be a necessary reality.
The first level of concern should be for girls’ personal safety. Restricting boys from girls’ bathrooms should be a given, as should restricting boys from participating in girls’ sports. With reported instances of boys playing girls’ sports and inflicting serious harm to girls, there is sufficient evidence that this kind of behavior needs to stop.

As long as biological males can participate in biological female sports, Title IX is in jeopardy.

Kimberley Thatcher