Issues

Public education faces complex problems, and the best solutions come from the ground up. Educators, students, and their families all have important knowledge and ideas about what works and what doesn't in our schools. 

• Listening Matters: Michelle is a professional at learning the perspectives of others. She wants your voice to be a part of her campaign and will take the time to listen and be accessible to voters during the campaign and beyond.
• Stakeholder Engagement: When people believe their elected officials are listening, political participation is more effective and rewarding. Michelle wants to show the families in District 5 that their voices matter.
• Advocating for All Students: With collapsing federal resources for public education, the BoE will have to answer tough questions about how to maintain accessibility. Parents of student with IEPs are facing difficult challenges. Michelle's experience with families and students with special needs makes her well-suited to advocate for students with all different types of abilities. 
• An Accessible Campaign: Michelle wants to engage with and learn from the voters she wants to represent. Throughout this campaign, she hopes her online presence will show her commitment to engaging voters by sharing information, resources, and stories about her experience as a first-time political candidate.

For our students to succeed, we must address the many challenges they face in and out of the classroom. The physical and mental well-being of students, teachers, families, and staff all impact how well our education system functions. Michelle has listened to the challenges of hundreds of Wichita area families and knows that effective education starts with well-supported kids. These are some of the challenges we need to address.

• Physical Activity: Michelle is passionate about making physical activity part of the school day, and about the connections between physical activity, mental health, and readiness to learn. As a recreational triathlete, Michelle has experienced the connection between activity and well-being first hand. As a BoE member, she will work to maximize the positive impact of athletics and physical activity and oppose any effort to save money by scaling back things like playgrounds and recess.
• Quality Classrooms: Students who are stressed or uncomfortable cannot effectively sit and learn. Rooms that are too cold or hot, students who are hungry, and facilities and materials that are falling apart all impact education. Michelle is committed to finding common-sense, community-informed ways to transparently fund schools. We cannot expect good results without giving our kids the basics.
• Screen Addiction: Teachers struggle to teach when students are constantly on their phones. But the problem goes beyond putting the phones down. Excessive phone use can impact the brain, affecting self-regulation, attention span, and anxiety levels. Michelle’s knowledge of psychology, neurology, and brain anatomy prepare her to create policy to address the challenge of screen addiction.
• AI: Education is changing rapidly as generative AI becomes capable of plagiarizing work and doing students’ homework for them. As AI reshapes school work, it becomes hard to stay motivated. Teachers question the value of working so hard to lesson plan. Students question the purpose of education if computers can do so much, and feel confused about what their future holds. Michelle wants to deal with AI through technical and policy solutions, but also to address the human problem of student and teacher motivation through the changes AI will bring to education. 

Research-Driven Ideas

As someone who works in behavioral sciences, Michelle is used to putting research into practice. Our kids’ education is too important for guesswork. The Board of Education should formulate policy based on concrete information and research-driven understanding of fast-changing issues. 

• Emerging Technology: Screen addiction, AI use, cyber bullying, social media, gaming, and many other technological changes to our society are impacting our education systems. A candidate familiar with the research can help us make sense of these huge changes in the world our kids are growing up in. 
• Better Mental Health Resources: While more mental health awareness is good, young people are increasingly turning to social media platforms like TikTok for information. This exposes them to lots of wrong or misleading information. Michelle would seek to create connections to get students and their families access to quality mental health resources.
• Individualized Education Programs: With cuts coming from the federal government, many families of kids with IEPs will be forced to rely on other sources for support. Michelle has practical knowledge about what solutions and changes can be made to help schools adapt. 

While Michelle is new to government, her professional background is entirely grounded in the challenges education policy makers face. She would bring new ideas driven by research and experience to the Board of Education. Because she is new to politics, Michelle has no pre-existing relationship with any special interest groups or scores to settle. Her priority is starting conversations with voters and learning their perspective on the issues.

Michelle hopes to lead by example and blaze a trail for more political novices to find their path to civic duty. While Michelle is extremely confident in her ability to win, she wants her campaign do something good for others whether she wins or loses. So, throughout the campaign, Michelle will be creating media, videos, and mini-podcasts about her experiences as a first-time political candidate in order to make her campaign a resource for other potential candidates. Because democracy needs participation, now more than ever!