Our Campaign Priorities

Engaging stakeholders in their own communities: Holding meetings in neighborhood spaces allows for more accessible and equitable participation in the school board process. We must do what we can to meet our student's families where they are at.
Work to expand student committee collaboration: Students at the middle school and high school level should have the opportunity to engage with, and be allowed to participate in, the GRPS school board process. While the GRPS school board currently engages with student councils, we should work to increase engagement with students not usually involved in student leadership.

Help bridge gap between school board and our immigrant community: We must create the space, as well as invite, our immigrant families to the process for advocating for their students and their communities. This might look like having special board meetings for migrant workers or refugee families, having multiple translators, and being available to answer questions about the board process.

Advocating for a participatory budgeting process: We believe that students, families and community members should be allowed to take part in deciding how district money is spent. Our communities understand their needs better than anyone and we should give them the opportunity to be involved in the process.
Fighting to allocate more funding for mental health services: Social workers, therapists, and school counselors must be made a priority. Often, we find our schools with marginalized populations staffed with many school security officers, but not often with mental health professionals. We must start being proactive in our approaches to student behavior rather than reactionary.
Prioritizing funding for staff working directly with students: Teachers and support staff are the backbone of public education and it's time that we start treating them as such. When decisions about money are being made, we must ask ourselves, "how does this benefit students and building staff directly?"Many of our special education support staff, cafeteria, and custodial staff are paid poverty wages, so we must also make it a priority to pay our staff a living wage.

Addressing academic and disciplinary disparities in our schools: In GRPS, Black students are 3x more likely to be suspended as white students. Additionally, Black students, on average, are 2.5 grades behind white students, while Hispanic students, on average, are 2 grades behind white students. In the biggest school district in West Michigan, this should not be the case.
Promote anti-racist, culturally-sustaining curriculum: Students who feel respected and seen are students who perform at their highest potential. This means that we must take a close look at what we are teaching in our classrooms and ensure that we are being intentional about representation, as well as allowing our students and community to inform the work that we do within our school buildings.
Work to promote neighborhood schools and their programs: While theme schools may be great choices for some, not all students have the opportunity to attend these schools. We must make it a priority to showcase, and support, the work being done in neighborhood schools.