Dear Friends and Neighbors,
Last night, the DC State Board of Education (SBOE) passed a resolution calling for revisions to the DC STAR Framework, a tool used by OSSE to measure school quality at all DC public and public charter schools. Before the vote, I believed that SBOE members renewed focus on advancing educational equity would result in a unanimous vote in favor of the resolution. Instead the vote came down 5-4 in favor, too close for DC families.
Ward 2 and Ward 6 SBOE Representatives Jack Jacobson and Jessica Sutter, respectively, joined Trumpist At-Large Representative Ashley MacLeay in putting politics above our kids. Reps. Jacobson, Sutter, and MacLeay joined in a vitriolic, divisive, and petty broadside against their colleagues. But what concerned me most was Reps. Jacobson's and Sutter’s outright dismissal of the voices of parents, students, and teachers – including their own colleague, Student Representative Alex O’Sullivan – who made clear how counterproductive the current STAR Framework has been in building strong schools.
Our families deserve better than a razor-thin margin in favor of anti-racist policies. My opponent has the support of Jack Jacobson and Jessica Sutter, and if he’s successful on Election Day they’ll have another vote to push their corrosive, corporate-backed agenda onto DC’s families. We cannot allow that.
I’m running to tear down the racist policies that harm our Black and Brown students, and to ensure families have a real seat at the table in deciding how our public school system
should work.
I hope you’ll join me in this fight for our students.
