MY VISION | Harden for PUSD

My Vision

I believe in a brighter educational future where every student feels that they truly belong.

My vision includes:

Priority One:

Every student should be celebrated for who they are, their unique cultures, identities, and abilities so that they have the right support they need to succeed.

The Challenge

Our current Board of Education struggles to align on the right priorities to achieve necessary outcomes for our students. Part of the reason for this is that personal divisions are getting in the way of building bridges to achieve more productive governance.

And it shows. We have some significant educational challenges to solve and we're not moving fast enough to solve them:

Persistent learning loss, exacerbated by the COVID era, continues to deeply affect our most vulnerable students.
Declining student mental health and lack of staff training to address it.
Underdeveloped support services for students furthest from opportunity

Our Opportunities

Our School Board should be focused on targeted student outcomes that directly benefit those students furthest from opportunities. Those are students in our Special Education, Foster Youth, English Learner, Black and LGBTQ+ communities.

We should ensure that all student cultural and personal identities are embraced, and their privacy is assured when it ensures their safety and security.

What I Will Do

I will leverage my professional skills as a strategic planner, active listener, and facilitator to help build bridges within the Board to reach faster consensus on the issues we face.
I’ll stand up for a more effective governance processes that develop clear and measurable student outcomes and associated success targets as the basis of prioritization and decision-making.

priority 1

Priority Two:

Every family should feel properly engaged so that they can support their students in whatever pathway or program they choose.

The Challenges

We don't always engage families in the ways that best serve students in their chosen programs and courses of study. This can have the effect of centralizing voice among families who have the privilege of staying engaged in their student's learning and diminish the power of those who struggle.

The data shows that an engaged family yields stronger social-emotional development, higher school attendance, and better academic outcomes for students of all ages.

Our Opportunities

Let's strive to rethink how the District communicates and realize that "one size fits all" communication models don't always successfully reach all of our unique families.

Let's leverage our community partners to ensure that the burden of outreach is lessened by networking communication to ensure shared supports.

What I Will Do

As a PTA leader, I've learned a thing or two about equitable family engagement and how to reach our families across programs, school sites and beyond. As a strategic planner, communication is a core requirement of the job I do, and with my skills in communication, I can inspire strategies that are inclusive, impactful and sustainable.

Priority 2

Priority Three:

All PUSD teachers and staff should feel valued and supported so that students experience a positive learning environment.

The Challenges

One of the common sentiments I hear when talking with teachers and staff is that they don't always feel valued for the hard work they put in to create great learning environment for our kids. That is to say, they don't feel the District goes out of its way to create sufficient pathways for them to grow professionally within PUSD. It goes without saying (though I will) that they feel PUSD compensation is low, especially when compared to surrounding districts. And they know that living close to the schools in which they work is a pipe dream, due to the soaring cost of living in Pasadena and neighboring communities.

Our Opportunities

Let's show value for our teachers and staff in several key ways:

Fair financial compensation
Effective training and role support
Pursue all avenues of affordable housing solutions to help ensure those that make education in Pasadena their profession can live as close to the schools and communities they support.

What I Will Do

I will always support and advocate for fair employment contracts for our teachers and staff.
I will leverage my relationships with our city leaders, I will advocate for and cultivate relationships to create more affordable housing opportunities for our hard-working District employees.

Priority 3

Priority Four:

Our diverse community should come together to design a greater educational future that works for every student.

The Challenges

We live in a diverse community... but we don't live in an integrated one. We live in a resource-rich community... but it doesn't always benefit everyone. For too long, PUSD has suffered due to a lack of honest support from the broader community, especially our civic government. That results in a "go it alone" District mentality when trying to solve big problems, even ones the District didn't have a hand in creating.

We know that many PUSD families struggle to live affordably in our community, seeking to relocate out of our District to other regions or states. We know that fewer kids are being born today. Recent assessments show that our current District population of 14,000 students will drop to less than 10,000 by 2030. Over 52% of students living in the District residence area attend private or charter schools. No other community in America has to share its total student population with so many special education interests.

Our current Board lacks a longer-term vision to ensure that we are working in service of the right outcomes to ensure District sustainability and success. We have no assured plan in place to assure the public that we will be the best stewards of their money when we campaign for it.

Our Opportunities

Let's envision a greater educational future that works for all of us. PUSD should be a place where the richness of Pasadena, with all its vast resources and opportunity come together in support of our public schools.

PUSD is a programmatically-innovative District, with dual-language, STEM/STEAM, arts magnets, and early college programs. We need to be focused on ensuring that the programs we have, and the programs we want to have are proven to show that they "move the needle" in terms of student achievement, especially for our students furthest from opportunity.

We need to look beyond the five-year strategic plan to co-design hand in glove with the community a "north star" vision of this district for the next generation, one that is sustainable against declining enrollment and bust-boom cycles of funding, to ensure that our district is efficiently run and that money we received is used to efficiently deliver for the desired outcomes we seek for our students.

What I Will Do

As a strategic thinker, problem-solver and visionary, I’ll leverage my years of productive relationships with elected officials across the city and the region, parent advocacy groups, labor partners, teachers, staff, students, community partners and fellow board members to advocate for a clear, tangible, long-term community-led vision for this District. A vision that continues to innovate programmatically but also provides valuable community services closest to the students that can benefit from them.
I will work with the PUSD community to envision bold, creative, sustainable solutions to address long-lasting problems instead of “band-aids” that offer quick fixes.
I’ll leverage my communication skills to help ensure that the community understands our Board vision, not just in words, but in pictures, demonstrations, proofs of concept or prototypes, all so that the public will be able to understand the future and weigh in on it.
I will advocate for accessibility to all of our educational pathways, from reforming transportation networks for all students so that distance from program is never a barrier. I will advocate for the expansion of our developing Community Schools framework so that educational partners throughout our community can set up shop in our schools and bring the best of what they have to offer our students closer to them and their families. And I'll leverage my years of PTA leadership to cultivate more community partnerships with our District.

Priority 4