My Vision for D65

Restoring Accountability and Oversight

  • Our recent D65 School Boards have strayed from their core responsibility of providing effective oversight of the Superintendent. By offering “performance-based” contracts without clear performance goals or measurable metrics, they’ve created a subjective framework for evaluating success—one that fails to meet Illinois School Code requirements. This must be addressed. Ahead of the next school year, we need to overhaul these goals. Defined success for our Superintendent must be based on going beyond the status quo and directly tied to measurable outcomes across improvements in overall student performance, expected growth, and reducing achievement gaps.

  • The Board should adopt an annual self-assessment process facilitated by the Illinois Association of School Boards (IASB). This critical step will help the board remain accountable for its obligation to uphold the IASB’s six core principles of a school board for effective governance and maintaining the trust of our community.

  • Our Board needs to work closely with our Superintendent and Chief Financial Officer to minimize surprises through meticulous forecasting of annual budgets and regular, timely reporting on where we’re tracking during the year. This enables the Board to make fiscally responsible decisions that balance budget realities with district priorities, and we should make this information easily accessible and understandable to the public.

  • We need to get stronger at collecting feedback via exit interviews with outbound staff and students/families to identify areas to improve retention. Our teachers’ working conditions are our students’ learning conditions, and we shouldn’t shy away from valuable critique.

Addressing Student Achievement, Equity, and Digital Wellness

  • District 65’s overall achievement has lagged, particularly when considering its high funding per pupil. Our commitment to providing a quality education for all students should be reflected in measurable growth and performance outcomes. We must empower our educators, utilizing their feedback on the most effective measures of improvement and achievement, as well as the best methods and curriculum to drive these outcomes. Their expertise is essential in shaping the path forward.

  • One critical area we must address is the long-standing opportunity gap that exists before children enter kindergarten. Expanding early childhood and pre-K programs is vital to reducing disparities across K-8. These programs allow us to provide earlier academic, social, and emotional interventions, reducing the need for Individualized Education Services later and better-preparing students for long-term success. An elevated focus on earlier interventions should carry over into K-2, particularly in literacy, as that is the key to unlocking broader learning through eighth grade and beyond. 

  • Another pressing concern in our community is digital wellness and the role of district-issued technology devices in and out of the classroom. To address this, we need a comprehensive audit, informed by input from educators, students, and families, to assess how these devices are being used. From there, we must establish evidence-based policies that align with our core educational goals. These policies should prioritize opportunities for creativity, collaboration, and social development over excessive screen time, ensuring that technology supports—not detracts from—students’ learning experiences.

Delivering a Comprehensive Strategic Plan Shaped with the Community

  • There has been much confusion in the community around the broader strategic plan for the District vs. short-term decisions that often seem to be made in siloes. For instance, the “Phase II” SDRP reductions the Board recently approved specifically address a short-term, immediate need to cut the deficit for FY26 (next school year).

  • We must take further action to address deficits, but I think our approach must be asset-minded rather than deficit-minded, and we have an urgent need to establish a comprehensive strategic plan in which to ground our decisions. We are long overdue to deliver a clear plan to the community around where our buildings will be, what programs will be in them, and how/when they will be maintained and modernized. SAP III and SDRP Phase III should be intertwined, with data, criteria, and decisions made open and public.

  • This plan must account for district priorities around equity, specialized and magnet programs, better servicing our special education population, walkability, and more — and it must all be rooted in financial sustainability so we avoid falling into the short-term decisions we’ve recently faced.

  • This cannot be done without giving the community — students, parents, caregivers, staff members, and residents — a voice. We will need to aggressively collect, aggregate, and share input. It needs to be done in a way that brings everyone along, with thorough, clear communication from our district leadership. In the event we ask for public support through a referendum, we need to have the trust and support of a community that understands the vision they are being asked to help deliver.