Issue Position: Education

Issue Position

From 2015-2019, I served on the U-46 School Board -- the second largest school district in Illinois. During my time there, I came to recognize with increasing clarity the unique K-12 education challenges facing Illinois schools and the difficult decisions that parents make about how best to educate their pupils. There are a number of important principles regarding education that I believe will be necessary to ensure that our schools deliver the highest level of instruction and that families have the freedom to make the choices they deem best for them in every corner of the state.

A few of my priorities are the following:

Passing legislation that requires at least 60% of every state-supplied education dollar go directly to teachers, classroom supplies, books and technology and not to administrators
Providing opportunity scholarships to underprivileged students that they can take to any school, public or private, and ensuring that parents have the right to take their tax dollars and use it to send their children to a school of their choice, fostering competition and incentivizing our schools to be the best that they can be
Addressing the fundamental unfairness of the recent school-funding reform package that prioritized a Chicago bailout over eliminating inequity in the school funding mechanism
Studying and producing recommendations regarding the feasibility statewide school consolidation
Opposing activist legislation that seeks to bring politics into the classroom by imposing controversial content mandates on our school curriculum
Improving access to and incentivizing trade schools and skilled apprenticeships as an alternative to traditional higher education
Give Illinois students priority access to our colleges and universities and give them every reason to live and learn in Illinois
School funding and education reform are vastly complex issues and require a concerted, scientific approach to be effectively addressed. As your senator I will be the first to volunteer to work hand-in-hand with teachers, administrators, and parents to initiate reforms that can improve our education system and will use my experience on the school board to inform my decisions. We must always remember that the schools are there foremost for the children that they serve

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