Where we are. ISD 194 has added about 800 students in five years and expects roughly 500 more. About 9,000 residential units have been approved across our service area. Meanwhile individual elementary buildings run anywhere from 59% to 106% of capacity, and this district has redrawn attendance boundaries twice since 2024. Roughly 605 elementary students and 223 middle schoolers change buildings this fall — and about 228 of those elementary kids are moving for the second time in three years.

What I'd do.

• Publish a five-year enrollment and capacity forecast every year, in plain language, on a public page — before boundary decisions, not after.

• Make "no student moves twice" a stated planning goal, and require the district to show its work when it can't be met.

• Get the district in front of Lakeville, Elko New Market, and Credit River development approvals earlier, so we're forecasting from housing permits instead of reacting to them.

• Hold the board accountable for delivering the Growing Together middle school projects on time and on budget — construction starts spring 2027, and this board seat covers the whole build.

Where we are. The 2024 teacher contract negotiations went to the edge of a strike. The 2025-26 round went to mediation before settling in February. Along the way a fifth-year teacher with a master's degree told the board she can't afford a one-bedroom apartment in Lakeville and could earn about $10,000 more in a neighboring district. Salaries and benefits are roughly 90% of the district's budget — which means people are the budget, and turnover is one of the most expensive things we do to ourselves.

What I'd do.

• Report turnover like it matters: annual public numbers on retention by building and by role, plus exit interview themes. You can't fix what you don't measure — this is literally my day job.

• Bargain earlier and more honestly. Repeatedly landing in mediation is a process failure, and it costs trust long after the contract is signed.

• Treat the first three years as the make-or-break window and invest in mentorship there, where turnover is highest and cheapest to prevent.

• Look hard at the non-salary reasons people leave — class size, planning time, rotating between buildings, feeling unheard — because some of them cost very little to fix.

Where we are. Lakeville voters are not anti-school; they're discerning. We renewed the technology levy with 71% approval in 2025 and passed a $139.6 million bond in May 2026. The community rejected the new operating levy in 2024. That's our community saying show us the plan first.

What I'd do.

• Publish a one-page annual budget summary any person can read in five minutes — where the money comes from, where it goes, what changed.

• Insist that any future ask comes with a specific, measurable promise attached and a public report on whether we kept it.

• Protect the classroom first when reductions are on the table, and say out loud what's being cut instead of burying it in a line item.

• Keep earning the financial reporting recognition the district has held for a decade — clean books are the price of asking for anything.

Where we are. Families want to know their kid can read, do the math, and walk into a building where somebody knows their name.

What I'd do.

• Ask for student outcome data at every regular meeting, publicly, with the same rigor we apply to buildings and budgets — reading and math by grade, by school, over time.

• Judge programs on whether they work, not on who proposed them.

• Hold a simple standard for our schools: every student is known, safe, and expected to do hard things. Kids can't learn from adults they don't trust, and they don't trust adults who don't expect anything of them.