Biographical Information

Training: Computer & Information Sciences in the State University of New York at Potsdam; Advanced Certificate in Management, Innovation, and Technology from MIT

Profession: Management Consultant, Software Developer, Data Science Professional

How long have you lived in Mendon?

Twenty-three years

Why did you decide to run for reelection?

I believe in supporting the development of our children. No one else was running for the position when I first ran in 2017, and I thought it was important to have someone do the job.

This will be my fourth term if elected — I have never been contested in election for School Committee. Personally, I am very eager to build a pipeline of residents who can dedicate time to support the schools, as we will see turnover happening over the next few years.

What values guide your public service?

I care about getting all students excellent opportunities in life. But opportunities are not usually given freely.  Our students need a combination of knowledge and internal motivation – they need to believe they are valuable in society.  Instilling self-efficacy is an extremely important value which, to me, drives how we teach, mentor, and challenge our students – and how we run a school district.

How do you make decisions when there’s no perfect option?

Imperfect options seem more prevalent to me than perfect ones. If it seems perfect, look deeper for the traps in your logic.

When faced with hard decisions you need to gather all of the relevant information, avoid falling into your own biases and instinctive traps, and listen carefully to others. The path through a difficult decision sometimes deals with changes in assumptions, correcting a sequence of actions, or changing strategy. You have to be open to ideas from others.

Having excellent people in the administrative team is essential for making good decisions in a difficult situation. Excellent people gather the relevant information, synthesize it, then force good discussion and good decisions.

What are the top three challenges facing the school district over the next five years?

Financial stability is the primary challenge. The schools are constantly battling a structural deficit as new state requirements and mandates are put in place and inflation pressures rise. Changes will be required in how schools are financed at the state level.

The middle school is a challenging situation right now for our students and educators. It is a transitional age for students trying to find out who they are and what motivates them. Society’s idea of middle school is just “grade 5-8” without full consideration of how individual students may accelerate, or move at slower speeds, through the curriculum.

Understand, we have excellent teachers in our middle school, but in the end I believe our middle school needs to be a more effective and energizing experience for our students.

What should the School Committee be doing now to help the district meet these challenges?

These challenges are difficult and need to be addressed over the long term.  The best thing the School Committee can do is keep them in mind and not lose sight of the goal.  Then make incremental improvements to get us there. To my knowledge, everyone on the School Committee understands these challenges.

For actions at the state level, I think we need a coordinated effort with other regional districts and concerned parents to petition state representatives to consider changes which will help save money and allow us to operate without the structural gap in school finance.

What district budget priorities do you anticipate in the near future?

Right now, it is about getting the local financing that is required to maintain a LEVEL SERVICES budget. It is important that we get this basis established for the next few years, or many negative outcomes will arise.

How do you balance long-term planning with immediate needs?

This is a “difficult problem!”  I refer to the answer I gave for imperfect options. 

What’s your philosophy/feeling about the role of technology in education (including but not limited to AI)?

We have all experienced many changes in technology over the last five decades. It IS important that our students understand the operation of new technologies, and the nuance present when new technologies arise. They need the knowledge to discern the difference between utilizing an amazing new tool that increases their understanding and productivity, or getting sucked into an addictive algorithm that aims to maximize viewing time for that vendor’s benefit, not the user’s. I believe that if our students don’t get guided use of the technology, they won’t be prepared for life.

AI presents a very unique problem for education. At first you think, “Wow, our students can cheat on their essays with this.” But when you really use AI as a tool, you start to realize that the challenge is not about preventing cheating (BTW, AI can tell you if the essay was written by AI). The challenge is how you partner with the tool to maximize your work product. You get more knowledge as a human, when you, the human, direct and conduct the operation of the project and review every step of making the end product. As a human, you consume new knowledge very rapidly. And AI makes a lot of invalid assumptions, mistakes, and wild hallucinations. This is why we absolutely need to teach how to use AI in our schools.

What’s your proudest accomplishment as a school committee member? (Identify & explain)

So far, I would point to the increased use of metrics and data to understand the progress of our students on a frequent, individual basis, to inform teachers, and to understand if an educational investment is producing the results we expected. Cheryl Kirkpatrick, our assistant superintendent, has done a very good job implementing and evaluating metrics data. We were lucky to have put metrics in place for our students just as the pandemic struck. With that in place we could see the effect on students, and also how our amazing educators got students to recover. Having evidence that shows you what is really happening is extremely important.

Mendon Commons sent questionnaires to each of the 13 candidates running for town office in the May 19 election. We are publishing the responses through May 18.