Application for School Board
Dear Conroe ISD Board of Trustees,
With Trustee Nelson’s departure, a seat on the CISD board is now vacant, and I imagine you are interested in filling the seat to continue the important work of the school board.
With this, I want you to know that I am available to serve as a volunteer board trustee for Conroe ISD.
Although this may seem like an odd request coming from me to this board, I believe that we would be aligned on many priorities and initiatives. Namely, the continued improvement of student outcomes as priority number one, but also to provide a secure and welcome environment for students and their families, to improve district staff’s work environment and support through proper discipline initiatives, driving a focus on teacher wellness to improve retention and talent acquisition, to advance our district’s proper use of technology through policy and cybersecurity improvements, and many other areas that I believe you would be open to supporting.
If this has piqued your interest even a little, I have provided my background and experience below. You are welcome to reach out to me at any time if you have questions or comments. Thank you for your time and consideration, and I thank you for your continued volunteering and support of our public school district and its students.
My Community History
Our family has lived in MOCO for 20 years. We have three young kids in Conroe ISD, and the most beautiful person in my world, Denise, was a teacher in the district for 12 years before she left for her mental health. Don’t worry, she is doing very well.
I have been involved with boards for over 10 years. I have been on our Municipal Utility District (MUD) board for eight years, and I am currently President of the board. I have also been on two different HOA boards over the last 10 years, currently (also) President of our HOA. Yes, I am President of two boards at the moment.
With this experience, I understand how to run meetings, how Roberts Rules work, am already certified in Texas open meetings, and I know how public finance works (I even broke down how public-school finance works after we got the deep dive from Karen Garza). I also understand what it is to develop and implement policy, to collaborate with the board and its stakeholders, and how to communicate changes to the public.
Currently, I am in my second year with the Student Health Advisory Council (SHAC), my first year serving as Secretary and this year serving as one of two parent co-chairs. We are overseeing the largest SHAC membership in the district’s history at 70 members at the start of September. We have been helping organize and manage eight separate subcommittees that are working on board recommendations in areas such as mental health, suicide prevention, teacher wellness, and more. We are also working on a request from Trustee Dawson regarding screen time in schools.
I attended the 2024 Conroe ISD Community Collaborative, which was a district organized “behind the curtain” look within our schools. This included five meetings across the district, each meeting teaching us how things worked at different locations. The program was the first (and hopefully not last) of its kind to help bring the community together and give an insider’s view and deep dives on topics within the district. Current board trustees Melissa Semmler, Marianne Horton, Lindsay Dawson, and Nicole May were also in the 2024 Collab Cohort. I wrote about the experiences here:
Meeting 1: Intro to Conroe ISD, Finance, Procurement
Meeting 2: Growth & Transportation
Meeting 3: Staff Development, Recruitment, Retention
Meeting 4: CTE, SPED, Extracurriculars, Zoning
Meeting 5: Planning & Construction, School Safety, Summer School
My interests in the school district have also included understanding teacher morale, the book challenge process, and plenty more you can find within my blog’s archives. All of these topics required deep-diving how our school district works, how school board policies are applied, and understanding the various roles of district staff across admin and schools:
I was part of the 2023 Conroe ISD Cell Phone Committee, where we as a community learned and debated about the school policies related to use of cell phones in schools. This was before the Texas state legislature banned them completely. I wrote about both these things here:
Cell Phone Committee Meeting 1 - Introduction
Meeting 2 - Survey Results, Roundtables, and more
Meeting 3 - K-6 Recommendation, 7-8/9-12 Review
Meeting 4 - Campus Visits, Teacher Panel, Closing
Cell Phone Collected Research - Reference
I have been a Watch DOGS member at our kid’s schools for several years now. I wrote about my first experience here:
Outside of the school district, Denise and I occasionally volunteer at the Education for Tomorrow Alliance (EfTA). We will likely get more involved with these types of organizations as our kids get older and time frees up (does that ever happen?).
We built an app, the Teacher Classroom Registry, which is a simple list for parents or community members to find their teacher’s wish lists. We hold multiple giveaways throughout the school year to randomly pick a wish list and buy things for them. We enjoy donating time and money to help our teachers and schools.
My Professional Experience
You can find my professional profile on LinkedIn. Here is the summary:
I graduated Texas A&M in 2006 with a degree in Biology. I was planning to go into Optometry but that plan quickly faded after I began shadowing doctors. I ended up falling into an IT Project Manager role quickly after graduation and I am so thankful I did.
I have been working in Information Technology professionally for 18 years, with roles across the spectrum beginning in healthcare IT with project management, implementation, sales engineering, systems management, and - over the last 12 years - working in oil & gas as an IT Analyst, Solutions Architect, Cloud Security Architect, and now I focus in Data Security (i.e., cybersecurity). My work has included a great deal of travel over the years, giving me an appreciation for both working abroad and the importance of being at home.
In 2021, I graduated with a Master of Engineering degree from Texas A&M via their METM program.
My key strengths are my ability to drive many initiatives at once, to consume and develop an understanding of very technical topics, to drive the implementation of large-scale, multi-million-dollar projects, and finally to knowledge share these initiatives so that others can understand and support them.
Where I see the need
Being raised on a ranch in East Texas, my core beliefs revolve around hard work, personal responsibility, and perseverance. With my education, I developed an understanding on the importance of diversity of thought, emotional intelligence, and the significance of a quality education for all. The opportunities opened by public education are vast, and I believe every student deserves a chance at the American Dream, which a quality education can enable.
Similarly with personal responsibility, I believe the district must improve its policies regarding student discipline. There are other school districts that have implemented much more detailed policies regarding discipline, such as Katy ISD, and these could be a good framework for CISD to follow. Proper discipline is also vital for teacher wellness and retention, as we all well know. We can no longer allow teachers to take the immense burden or abuse related to undisciplined students, and these responsibilities must begin to be shared with more resources and more importantly, parents.
I believe communication is vital. In my life I have always found an interest in trying to understand how things work. This has given me insight into building and implementing well-researched solutions, and it serves me well in my professional roles. Similarly, understanding how things work gives you an ability to communicate topics broadly and effectively, which I believe the district has an opportunity to improve for parents and students. This includes promoting discussions on mental health, proper use of technology and apps like social media, and having difficult discussions by talking straight to the community on topics like suicide prevention.
For the CISD school board, I see an opportunity to add a diversity of opinion and experience with this vacancy. In my time on boards, I have found that having people next to me that have different perspectives (and sometimes disagreeing opinions) is vital to proper policy debate. The current board has largely been 7-0 in almost every decision, and it is not often that policy changes are debated in a meaningful way. These debates are a necessity for success, and decisions should be communicated effectively to the community as a whole.
I would be happy to review and discuss all policy changes with each board member in a constructive way. Out of the nearly 30 board policy changes over the last six months, very few were openly debated, and almost none of these changes were communicated by the district to parents. I believe we can do better with informing the community and gaining their support for continued improvements, and I would be happy to help drive these types of changes.
Lastly, my professional experience could bring vast progress towards adopting better policies regarding the district’s use of technology. This could include an initiative to secure our student’s personal data from third-party apps, block access to harmful websites that make their way into our online catalogues, streamline library materials approval processes, prevent students from bypassing security controls on school Chromebooks or iPads, and properly disciplining those that do by removing their access to technology they abuse.
The topics of AI/LLMs are also in dire need of dissection, as CISD still lacks a proper policy governing the use of AI for students or staff. There could also be an opportunity to build AI concepts into a CTE class or other programs. This is a topic I know well as a key stakeholder in deploying AI capabilities to tens of thousands of users.
We should also begin the serious discussion of Texas’s new testing laws and how this will impact our need to supply enough devices for both classrooms and testing. Conversely, we need to have discussions on which schoolwork should not be done through devices, moving certain tasks back to pen and paper.
Having a technology expert on the board could help improve all of these areas for the school district.
Closing
There are many topics not covered here, including my thoughts on school security, student outcomes reporting, or even board representation. My hope is that our community can openly have these serious discussions in the future.
As parents, many of us understand we have a small window of time to grow responsible, well-rounded human beings that are able to make good decisions for themselves. Public schools play an important role in our kid’s growth into adulthood, and I believe the school board has an immense impact on developing students into superstars.
I appreciate any consideration you have regarding the appointment of this vacancy on the board, and feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments.
Thank you for reading.