Katie Howard

The most important role of the Board of Education is to improve student outcomes.

Yes, I am currently the Board of Education District 1 representative and have served for almost two years. I'm excited about serving another term since I now have more experience in the role and have been doing a lot of work to develop as a Board member, including how to better understand the needs of our students and the district.

No

I have a deep connection to APS as a proud graduate of the system and as an APS parent who has been involved and invested since the moment my kids stepped into Pre-K. I've served as a PTA president, GO Team member, and an advocate for all our students, schools, and communities, for the past decade. I also have the benefit of serving the city of Atlanta through my career as a council aide for now, four city councilmembers over a and have worked at multiple levels of city and county government. This experience has definitely helped me hit the ground running as a BOE member and allowed me to better understand the landscape for students and families across the city.

My roots in Atlanta and being raised by APS in the 1980's and 1990's, and now as an APS parent and community member, has definitely made want to do the work to improve outcomes for APS students today. I also want to ensure the district is going in the right direction for students in the future and grows as a district. I've seen APS go through multiple transitions and have been a part of them, from changes in the schools I attended, to those that impacted my kids' schools and the community. I've walked the walk of being invested and committed when there's change and challenges and know the importance firsthand of being focused on students and not the noise, otherwise, students- especially the most vulnerable-get left behind.

Particularly with the 50th anniversary of Hip-Hop- my favorite music genre, I've been taking myself back to all my old-school favorites- OutKast, Tribe, Erykah Badu, Tupac, I can go on... They all take me back to a pivotal time in life-high school- and the mix of experience I had, which music was a huge part of. And I just love the beats and have deep appreciation for the lyrics and stories, that, in the case of OutKast, tell the story of the Atlanta I grew-up in and love.

I'm a huge proponent of our student outcomes focused governance model and am really looking forward to taking our work to the next level, which requires narrowing our Goals with the community's input. I think we need to start with narrowing Goal 1- Literacy- to focus it on our students struggling the most. Grades 3-8 is too broad and doesn't enable us to really focus in on how we best support the students struggling the most, and the strategies and intentionality we could put there would also benefit all students. We now have over a year of data from our monitoring of Goal 1, which helps us identify our specific needs particularly by subgroup. Based on this, I think we need to narrow Goal 1 to every black male being able to read on grade level by Third Grade, or a variation with this focus.

· Experience with a system similar to APS'

· Proven track record of focusing on students and based on their realities, making well-informed, transformative decisions

· Is a strong leader who is able to clearly communicate and engage with stakeholders and sets a tone within the district focused on students and supporting educators and staff in the work to improve student outcomes.

Fully implementing our Student Outcomes Focused Governance framework will not only provide more robust monitoring of our Goals and Guardrails (and by narrowing our Goals, we'll have more targeted interim goals with tighter measures), we can also put in place regular check-ins with the Superintendent on strategies and approaches, helping us better know real-time what's working and what is not, and how we support as BOE. Additionally, we can fully wrap the Superintendent's evaluation with progress towards the Goals and honoring the Guardrails. Accountability for the Board to do this work is key, which means the Board as a unit must go out into the community and share updates on the Goals and this full implementation, and receive feedback, which is one of the main ways the community holds us accountable for the work to improve student outcomes.

Going back to the Goals, by narrowing them to our priority needs in Literacy, Numeracy, College and Career Preparedness and Post-Graduation Readiness, we can pivot to spend money on strategies and approaches that are working and get rid of those that are not, which would free up funds. It's not as simple are just cutting off one thing, or increasing another. We need to be looking at data from the monitoring of our Goals and a true needs assessment to really focus in on what needs more support and how, and then adjust the budget to align with those priorities. For example, we have got to cut in areas and probably spend more in others to make sure all kids are reading on Grade level by Third Grade or are prepared with life-skills no matter what path they're on, when they graduate.

First and foremost, I'm going to consider what is best for students and is going to increase their outcomes. That is the job of the school board and what I was elected to do. If we focus on the needs of our students in an intentional way, we can stop duplicative and ineffective, broad stroke decisions that don't move us forward enough.

I think we need a policy diet so that we can really boil down what we really need and is leading to improvements in student outcomes and what is potentially creating extra work for the district and not helping students, or just words on paper but not leading to actions that improve student outcomes.

Adopting a student outcomes focused governance framework and the Goals and the Guardrails, which are a form of policy and should be reflected, or encapsulated, in our Governance Manual.

Trust with the entire community, which is all our stakeholders. We have not gone out as a Board/unit to check in with the community about the progress towards our Goals and our Guardrails. We have got to do this engagement to directly share with people what we're doing and why and hear their feedback and input. This will help us adjust what we're doing to better serve students and build much needed trust with the community.

I've actually been developing a Community Engagement Plan through my Student Outcomes Focused Governance Implementation cohort which proposes going out into the community as a unit 4 times a year, by quadrant, at a location and in a way that helps us meet the community where they are. Additionally, I think it would be great if we as a Board could present to educators and district staff an update on our Goals and Guardrails during an already scheduled professional development day or other convenient time. We have to have their input and buy-in to this work that we set as for the district and the Superintendent creates a strategy for and implements.

I'll go back to the Community Engagement piece- we must as a Board go out into the community and be transparent about the work we're doing around our Goals and Guardrails and then listen to them. In addition to that, the progress monitoring sessions are another great way to hear and see what the Board is doing (or not) to ensure there is growth and holding the Superintendent accountable- with support- which is the Board's responsibility. The public needs to have current information on the progress towards our Goals that is easy to understand and hear it directly from us as a Board.

Equity is making sure one has what they need to thrive and reach their full potential.

Again, going back to our students' needs and realities. The point of doing the progress monitoring is to understand the realities for our students which is shown by looking at how they're doing on the things we want them to know and be able to do. If we see the realities for our students- like a certain group isn't reading on Grade level at a very low rate, over and over again- how are we as a Board ensuring that the district is putting in place what those students need to be able to improve? This is the lens I use to look at all our progress monitoring reports and is one I'm definitely going to be pushing even more when it comes to narrowing our Goals and during the budget process.