Kelly’s Priorities

Supporting Kids, Empowering Teachers

Kelly stays knowledgeable about the district, current projects and initiatives, as well as current issues in education. Kelly is a veteran to school policy, budgets, or operations.

Understanding what makes Forest Hills Public Schools great and where there is room for improvement is key to being able to benefit our students and community being on the Board of Education.

Below you will find my priorities as a board member to this district.

Get Involved

District Business

In order to make sure our students are getting their best opportunities for individualized success, we must commit to building a solid foundation.

Strategic Plan

Supporting Superintendent Kirby through a process of determining our next strategic plan for the district.
Articulating how we will measure meeting those objectives of the strategic plan.
Making sure we have long-term and short-term goals for both student achievement and business health.

Getting Input

For a strategic plan to go well we need to be listening to all levels of community. Teachers to adminstration to kids and to parents.
Everyone offers up different tidbits of freedom, and we need to continue our efforts to give everyone a voice.

Understanding the Board Role

I am committed to attend the school board trainings put forth by the MASSB. I understand that school board members have a specific role to the entire picture. I am dedicated in bringing my experiences to this role.

Communication

There is a saying in business that “one can never communicate too much.”
However, I also am a firm believer in listening. Even to listen where there’s silence.

Transparency with Budgets and Spending

To increase community trust and enthusiasm, we need to broadly share our wins when it comes to thoughtful spending.
Budgets are tight – and will grow even tighter in next few years. We need to make sure our community understands the work FHPS is doing to ensure the long-term success of the district.

Openness around Decision Making

Willingness to Listen to concerns

As board members, we are servants to our district and the roles we are given as board members. To that end, we need to make sure we are keeping open dialogues around topics and spending.

Budget

In every business, there is a bottom line. Our approach to keeping a healthy budget needs to proactive.

Strategic Risk and Initiative

Making sure we are not just playing it safe, but being more forward thinking.

Generate Revenue

Instead of just cutting our losses with annual state and federal monies each year, we need to look at other ways to generate revenue.
Rethink funding sources.

Listen and Prioritize

By engaging stakeholders in budget discussions, we can gather data and prioritize those things that matter most to our kids and parents.

Education

Our district continues to excel in performance on standardized tests.
Where can we make some improvement?

Curriculum

Teachers work hard to meet expectations, but its difficult when expectations aren’t clear.
I’d support a better communication between instructional leaders and classroom teachers.

Student Needs

Making sure students have necessary resources, access to highly trained educators, and proper learning environments to be successful is paramount to the work we do. Making sure we have short term and long term planning in place to keep these intact is essential for student success.

Grit and Resiliency

I want to foster our culture of trust so teachers can appropriately challenge our students to grow their grit and resiliency with problem solving. As a business owner, I believe we have a duty to make sure our graduates are hirable candidates with good work ethics.

Safety

Every employee and student has the right to feel safe.

Physical Safety

I am committed to the physical safety of our staff and students.

Psychological Safety

We need to make certain that as an educational organization, we provide a psychological safety for our staff and students.