What do School Board Members Do?   Board members serve as trustees of the obligation to graduate children to excellence.  We meet this responsibility with persistence, hard work, transparency, accountability, diligent scrutiny of public funds, and an undying commitment to excellence. A key role of the Board is to recruit an outstanding Superintendent and to provide the Superintendent with quality governance support.  We serve as a community voice–a reality check for our educational leaders to let them know what the community is thinking. 

Our school district governs under the National School Board’s “Key Work” of school boards framework, based on the Baldridge excellence model.  The core component of that model require us to set Standards of Accountability, by which we measure the District’s performance.  They require us to develop an accountability system that measure educational outcomes against those stated standards. They require us to provide regular opportunities to the community to receive accountability information and to provide opportunities for the community to be involved in key strategic decisions. 

I support:
★ Sustainable transparent budgeting that preserves class size
★ Meaningful information for parents on student progress; support for parents who want to help their students' at home; welcoming environment for parent involvement in their childrens' schools
★ High Expectations for all students...Accountability based on high standards and regular reporting of school and district results
★ Governance and leadership that we can be proud of
★ Early identification and intevention for students who face special learning obstacles
★ Full state and federal funding for costly mandated programs

Property Taxes:  District 742 has the lowest locally imposed school property tax rate of the big-four central Minnesota Districts--Sartell, Sauk Rapids, Rocori, and St. Cloud.   Property taxes are a terrible way of funding public education.   (For more:  Click Here).

Parent Involvement:  Parents should be involved in every aspect of public education.   They should be deeply involved in understanding what is expected of their children at home and at school.  (For More:  Click Here).

Educational Accountability:  The primary mission of public schools is to provide opportunities for children to realize their full educational potential. We measure our success by tracking whether student performance grows from year to year,   and by measuring student proficiency.  In our school district, students come to us with a wide range of preparation and ability.   We must challenge all of these students.  We must strive to challenge students who come to us far behind to advance more than a year's worth of progress each year, so that they can catch up.   We must strive to challenge students who come to us ahead--or with exceptional talents--also to progress and to realize their full potential.  (For More:  Click Here)


  • Parent Involvement:  Parents should be involved in every aspect of public education.   They should be deeply involved in understanding what is expected of their children at home and at school.   They should be encouraged to be involved in their local school in a meaningful way, and should be consulted about important decisions affecting their school.   Learning should be involved as an active and continuing collaboration among student, teacher, and parent.  Our District needs a radical transformation in the way that it engages parents at every level.  Great school districts have great parental involvement and parental support.  
What have we done?  In 2005, incoming Superintendent Watkins radically transformed the way that our school district communicates and listens, by implementing a number of transparency and community engagement strategies.  I am proud to have supported those changes, which significantly improved the standing of the school district in this community.   More recently, the District has implemented Skyward, an online communication system that provides parents access to assignments, grades and class calender information.  In future years, we must make much better use of Skyward, and assure that parents and teachers make the best possible use of this great system.  

In 2008, the Board of Education passed an Excellence resolution committing to improve teacher-parent communication in every aspect of our district. Two Board committees are working with the District's leadership to monitor that committment.   As a Board member I have repeatedly urged the District to do more in the area of parental involvement, because I believe that parental involvement is the key to individual student success and to continuous progress in educational improvement.  

What must we do?   For parents who are actively involved in their children's education now, we must support their involvement by by providing the information that they need to remain an active part in their children's education, and we must do a better job of listening to parent concerns. Educational activist parents--parents who care enough to want to engage us in constructive dialog--are critical to our success. We must rebuild our infrastructure of parent involvement, so that these parents feel that they are a genuine part of our district. We must follow through with our commitment to engage community members in a constructive dialog on needed reforms.  

  • Property Taxes:  District 742 has the lowest locally imposed school property tax rate of the big-four central Minnesota Districts--Sartell, Sauk Rapids, Rocori, and St. Cloud.   Property taxes are a terrible way of funding public education.   The solution to this problem is for the State of Minnesota to take courageous action in restructuring the way that school districts are funded, and to stop imposing unfunded mandates that force local school districts to spend what they do not have.  
What have we done?    The Board of Education has worked very hard to keep locally imposed school property taxes as low as possible.   I am proud of my role in saving hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, by devising a strategy to bring down our bonding costs, so that property taxes go to education, rather than interest rates.  Our school district has one of the lowest bonding levies for building in the State of Minnesota.  Our operating referendum levy is well below the State average.  We have carefully sold off unneeded buildings, often garnering a premium price for those buildings. Whereas many school districts have sold off their buildings for next to nothing, we have garned premium prices--at times above appraised value--for buildings such as the old District Administration Building (now developed as District Square) and old Jefferson Elementary (now St. Cloud Christian School).   Over the last years, the Board of Education has advocated to our legislators and to the Governor, that the State must give us the tools to reform school finance to put us on a sustainable track.  

St. Cloud Schools
Comparisons for School taxes paid 
Pay Pay
2010 2009
$150,000 House Value Taxes Taxes
St. Cloud 359.47 361.26
Sartell-St. Stephen 645.96 636.33
Sauk Rapids-Rice 602.98 605.92
Rocori 569.01 468.25
Pay Pay
2010 2009
$200,000 House Value Taxes Taxes
St. Cloud 479.30 481.67
Sartell-St. Stephen 861.28 848.45
Sauk Rapids-Rice 803.97 807.89
Rocori 758.68 624.34

What must we do?  We must work together as a community to assure that every last dollar that we receive as a district is properly spent.  We must constantly recognize that many of our residents have limited incomes and that property taxation should therefore be a last resort.  The people of Central Minnesota value education.  They have been generous with their support for public education, but they have a right to expect that the Board of Education is constantly scrutinizing our budget  to make sure that we are managing public money as trustees.  We must redouble our efforts at the legislature to convince the State of Minnesota to put public education on a sustainable footing.  


Educational Accountability:  The primary mission of public schools is to provide opportunities for children to realize their full educational potential. We measure our success by tracking whether student performance grows from year to year,   and by measuring student proficiency.

        What  Have We Done:   The District has implemented the best accountability system available in the United States, based on the nationally normed, nationally recognized Northwest Educational Assessment system.   You can read more about the NWEA accountability system in my blog post by clicking here.  The NWEA accountability system helps district leadership track progress in schools.  (To read about how that accountability system works, click here.)  The NWEA system helps teachers track the success of their classroom.   It provides parents with hard data about where their children are performing in comparison with national norms, and tells them whether their children are making progess throughout the year.  Instead of telling parents "your child is doing fine," the NWEA results provide straightforward meaningful information so that parents really know whether their children are making sufficient progress.