Shapiro for Boise Schools Trustee September 3, 2024
I believe that if people feel a greater sense of ownership in, and responsibility for, their public schools, it will help greatly to protect, strengthen, and improve public education. This would hold true from parents of students, to non-parents, to staff, and to students themselves. How to foster that sense of ownership and responsibility is the question I will always be bringing with me to the Board of Trustees.
My priorities are:
To support our students, staff, administration, and District patrons with thoughtfulness, responsiveness, wisdom, and vision.
To foster broad participation and dialogue across the District, from the school level upwards, in order to create a greater sense of ownership in, and responsibility for, our schools among the entire community.
To see our District develop a meaningful civics education experience that meets the needs of students, community, and society today.
About Me
I’ve been a Boise resident for more than three decades, and I’m the proud parent of a Boise Schools student. I have a Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from Boise State University and went “All But Dissertation” in the Doctoral program in Curriculum and Instruction at Boise State. As part of my doctoral coursework, I completed the Educational Leadership concentration as well.
Before obtaining my teaching degree, I was a special education assistant at North Junior High. After obtaining my degree, I led the design of an innovative charter school that became the first public school within the boundaries of Garden City. Before and after serving on the board of directors, I taught the middle school group (all subjects). I also substitute taught in more than 30 Boise schools at all levels K-12.
Even before working in the field of education I became keenly interested in the participatory design of education, and in helping public education become more responsive to the needs today and tomorrow, and not merely replicate what worked well yesterday. I developed processes and tools to help the general public consider what education should be, what it’s for, and what it should be designed to do.
Today, I lead a career in renewable energy development while continuing to work on projects and tools to help build our capacity for dialogue and democracy. I see public education as essential to our progressing toward that “more perfect union,” while also recognizing that it is a work-in-progress. Are you ready to help?
Why I’m Running
I can bring a unique combination of perspectives and experience to the school board that I believe is timely and essential for the challenges and opportunities we face in and around education. These perspectives come from both inside the system and from outside the system:
From the Inside: From my experience as a special education assistant and then substitute teaching in more than 30 Boise schools, at every level from K-12, I gained a firsthand appreciation of the daily life within our schools. My degree in Elementary Education from Boise State continued that close relationship with our local schools, in which I did my student-teaching. Service on the board of an area charter school governed by the same laws as any Idaho public school, I managed school board responsibilities. And my experience as a parent of a Boise schools student has kept me in touch with life in our schools today.
From the Outside: I led the design and launch of a local public charter school, one that complemented traditional District schools by demonstrating innovative approaches while serving families of all backgrounds and income levels. In my doctoral-level studies at Boise State, I focused on opportunities and barriers to systemic change. But long before I worked in area schools, I was looking at the “big questions” about what public education could and should be in order to meet the needs of our students, our community, and our times, along with what it would take to meaningfully engage our community members in answering these kinds of questions. From this “outside” perspective I bring some big ideas to the table, including the creation of School Councils—open, inclusive, constructive forums where parents, staff, students, and community members can explore issues, ideas, solutions and visions and which provide administration opportunities to bridge knowledge gaps about anything related to our schools.
Why School Councils?
The idea of school councils is a priority for me because opportunities for open dialogue are the key to healthy communities. There is no substitute for people gathering to discuss things of mutual interest, exploring concerns and ideas, and creating shared understanding and shared vision. Unfortunately, opportunities for this kind of interaction are lacking at every level in our community. Our schools—being dedicated to learning and the place where individual lives, families, community, and society at large come together— represent one of the most important opportunities for continuous, open and constructive dialogue. The approach to school councils that I’m advocating for and want to help implement would fill this need and can only enhance our schools.
How can we not have school councils?
Why A New Civics Education?
Our current approach to civics education, nationwide as well as locally, is inadequate. We teach our students about the structure of government, the Constitution, and some related history and then expect them to magically graduate as active and engaged citizens. How can they be active, engaged citizens without experience in active, engaged citizenship during their formative years? Gaining this experience would require opportunities to take responsibility, to explore issues and ideas, and to create together—which is, I suggest, the essence of a democratic society. There are opportunities for this at every age level, from kindergarten through 12th grade, from the classroom level out to the school and into the wider community.
I have proposed, and will continued to advocate for, a community-based process for designing a new civics education experience for our Boise students—one that starts with community members defining their vision for a desired “civic life” and then works inward to designing the curriculum and experiences that would help us work toward that vision. While education experts are best equipped to define opportunities and options within the schools for implementation, only the stakeholders have the right (and, I suggest, the responsibility) to create the vision around which the curriculum and instruction is based. This particularly true for civics education, and would provide an invaluable experience in participatory design that can be built upon in the future.