That tagline…

My campaign logo tagline is Supporting Schools, Strengthening Community.

What does that mean?

Let me start by saying I like to look at the big picture. The full picture. In social work, we focus on looking at the whole person. When working with a client, the practitioner tries to understand all the factors affecting that person: their health, where they live, others in the home, income levels, and more. 

In K-12 education, over time we have seen an increased understanding of the benefits of a more holistic focus and understanding how a multitude of factors impacts student learning: home life, access to healthy food, affirmation of their unique self, cultural relevance in curriculum, to name a few. 

When we take the concept to the community level, it's a similar type of framework. In examining how to support our community's youth, there is so much overlap and interdependence, so many different factors and needs that impact student learning and connection to school. Should we expect our schools to just "handle" this big bag of complexities by themselves? NO! We need the community: other agencies, nonprofits, business, and community members to be engaged and invested in our kids. 

I know this District has some strong relationships and cross-agency programming: let’s have more of that. Examples may include formalized connections between our local workforce and the District that can help students looking for jobs or internships, as well as increased financial (and other resources) support from local businesses. How about the City of Thousand Oaks and work opportunities/internships for students? Are there ways to strengthen the Conejo Coalition for Youth and Families (collaborative effort between CVUSD, CPRD and the City)? Do we need stronger relationships between our schools and mental health community?

The importance of collaborative relationships is clear when agencies can coalesce on common goals, rather than competing over the same resources to solve the same problems on their own. I believe one key role of a school board trustee can be exploring how relationships can be improved across agencies and the overall community - and then work to develop/strengthen those ties. When we ALL support schools - no matter if we have a student in a CVUSD school or not - we are impacting the youth of our community, and ultimately the vitality of our community as a whole.