Pillars of Commitment
Academic Excellence
The Shawnee Mission School District set a national standard in its commitment to strong schools and the Johnson County community has been the beneficiary of this commitment for decades. This is true because school leaders and educators in the classroom have always pushed beyond the status quo to prepare our children for a promising future. Our graduates should excel not only because they have learned something, but because they know how to learn something. We want their diploma to be a ticket for job readiness, as well as create an opportunity for those who are college bound. Our graduates must be taught the skills to navigate the community, negotiate the world, and continue learning throughout their lives.
Transparency
When I was a student in Shawnee Mission, the entire budget barely pushed $20 million. Today’s budget exceeds $500 million. Your Shawnee Mission is a neighborhood school, but it’s also a big business. As with any successful business, a sophisticated and easy to understand financial infrastructure must be in place to ensure your tax dollars are used in a prudent, effective, and efficient manner. Transparency builds both trust and confidence from taxpayers and a closer partnership between educators and families.
Respect
Shawnee Mission is a good school system, too, because it does not shy away from community partnership. As we see our educators working hard to earn community respect, I will as a school board member ask our community and our partners to start conversations with an equal devotion of respect for teachers and administrators.
Continuous Improvement
Today, children carry a cell phone that packs more computing power than the technology taken on the Apollo 11 mission to land a man on the moon. As we continue teaching our children the basics in language, math, and the sciences, we must anticipate and make improvements to create an opportunity for our children to prosper as adults in a rapidly changing future. We may discover, from time to time, certain changes made have not led to improvement. When that happens, we must identify what went wrong so we can make it right. Our dedication to continuous improvement will help us with course corrections thoughtful enough to resist impulse and timely enough to make things truly better.