SERVING EVERY STUDENT: As a school board member, I will work to ensure that the policies set by the school board are student focused, and truly help each child succeed. Any district as large as ours is necessarily a bureaucracy, and bureaucracies struggle with exceptions, yet each child is unique and an exception in some way. We need to meet the needs of all students, including students with special needs, gifted students, English language learners, low-income students, and students experiencing combinations of these situations. Our challenge is to create enough flexibility in our policies and enough diversity in our program offerings to meet the needs of every student.
WORLD CLASS CURRICULUM: Bellevue has won accolades for the excellence of its high schools. I will work to ensure the academic curriculum in our schools continues to be world class. We need to prepare our students to be successful in the global economy, allow them to discover their talents, and nurture them to develop into critical thinkers and knowledgeable citizens.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT: Community engagement is an important part of this work. The school board represents democracy at its most basic level, yet there are still parent and student voices that are not being heard. I will go out into the community and listen, and use what I hear as guidance in evaluation the effectiveness of board policies and their unintended consequences.
TEACHER SUPPORT: Underlying all of this is the teacher. The most important element in education is the relationship between the student and the teacher. Children need to feel cared about and inspired in order to learn. A teacher who feels supported and empowered by the district is able to open new horizons in the life of a child. Our policies and budgets need to provide teachers with the resources they need to be effective.
SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL HEALTH: This generation of students is under unique societal pressures. Globalization has brought more competition, there is anxiety in our high schools about high stakes testing, workloads, and college and career entrance requirements. In light of these pressures, we need to ensure the social and emotional health of our students, which includes emotional counseling and curriculum, and supportive relationships between students and staff.
Paid for by CarolynWatson4BellevueSchools 15127 NE 24th Street, PMB 101 Redmond, WA 98052 [email protected]