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Empowering Education for a Brighter Future
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About Justin For 622
My Platform
- Accountability: To fix a lot of the problems that we are facing as a district, we need to go back to some of the old school ways of doing things. Their very common-sense things, like holding students accountable for their behavior, they're disciplines, they're assignments, they're attendance, they're grades and they're testing. Work with the school administrations to offer healthy ways to impose consequences again, because right now we are failing our students by eliminating most consequences for bad behavior and bad academic achievement. I believe we need to bring back some old ways of doing things, such as, bringing back after school detention, Study hall, taking away extra activities until grades get up, missing events, and last resort, suspensions (for violent or very disruptive behavior) We also need to implement some new ways, like mental health counseling, mentorship, student mentorship programs extended to troubled youth, team work and behavioral assignments in EBD class to help them become better peers and to help them excel academically. We also need a proactive approach by engaging the troubled student's parents more. We will need to have high encouragement to get some neglectful parents to respond. We need to wake the parents up as well. Like a wakeup call, by implementing more meetings, more pressure to teach better behavior, morals and ethics at home.
- Mental Health: Unfortunately, this is a huge issue with our young generation and this is the biggest concern with Principles across our state. Talking with teachers, it's also the major issue in their classes. This is a major societal issue, and although the school district cannot fix all of society, all of society’s ills show up at the school’s door steps daily. We have children dealing with addiction issues, abuse issues, neglect issues, poverty, absent parents and more. For some of these students, the schools are the only way for them to have support, care and structure. We have to put Mental resources into this generation in a big way right now. I would like to implement an Emotional Behavior disorder (EBD) Class in all middle schools and high schools. We need to identify the troubled students in our classes that are creating a toxic environment for the teachers as well as the rest of the students. Most of the time these children just need a little extra one-on-one help. We need to get them that help by setting up an emotional behavior disorder class, where there's a well skilled mental health social worker that can also be a teacher. This mental health teacher would be able to identify children that might need extra help and be able to recommend them to outside resources for help. Most of the Students will just need to have some behavior modifications and behavior assignments with the goal of rejoining their peers and classes. We also need to make sure we have adequate mental health resources for our teachers and staff in their benefits packages.
- Teacher Support: The biggest thing we really have to do is be there for our teachers. How are we going to recruit great outstanding teachers in 622 when we don't have their backs. When I have a teacher telling me that, she is doing 90% control of class and 10% actual teaching the class, we have a big problem. We need to have our teachers backs. They need to know, they have the administration's support in keeping their classrooms positive, fun, loving and the students excited to learn. A big problem now, is that a teacher removing a troubled student from class and sending them to the office will put the teacher in question and become a he said, she said scenario. that puts the teachers in a position to handle everything in class. As one 622 teacher said to me "it's just not worth it to send them to the office anymore" The Administration should support the removal of a student that is causing a hostile learning environment and get them the help they need with an EBD class set up. We need to let our wonderful teachers teach and it’s only fair to the rest of the student's that want to excel and learn to remove these students causing a toxic environment. This will bring up teacher moral, happy classrooms, productive teaching, better grades and focus, and better proficiency testing.
- Cell Phones/Offline socializing: It is more important than ever, to get our students more OFFLINE social experiences. We need our children to play together again, interact face to face, learn conflict resolution, team work, friendship, loyalty and all the things we need as humans. So, I would like to see all cell phones put away for the duration of the school day. They could be checked into the home room teacher (Elementary and middle school) and released at the end of the day. High School would have a more personal responsibility training by keeping their phones in their locker for the duration of the day. checking them when absolutely needed. That would not only keep focus on school academics, but also build strong offline social skills.
- Measurement of success: There have been many changes in the last 12 years in our education system. Many new curriculums added, many DEI initiatives added, Achievement Gap initiatives, Suspension Gap initiatives, modifying the ways we handle bad behavior, changes in the way Parents are engaging, attendance changes, enrollment issues with parents taking their children out of public schools and many more changes have happened since 2012. Since grades have been on a straight decline in 622 in the last 10 years, I want to dig into all of these initiatives and programs and look at the measurement tools that we are using. Add new measurements tools if needed. I'm a problem solver that's one of my biggest attributes that I can bring to the board. What I want to do is really dig into the current programs policies and procedures and see what is working, what might not be working, and if we can't fix those, then we can eliminate it and replace it with something that will work.
The Faces of VOTE Justin For 622: A Photo Story
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