Curricular Standards and Challenges
The standards and curriculum of Kansas Public Schools are set by the Kansas State Board of Education. Locally elected school boards then work to assess and apply best practices in order to ensure the children in their school districts can and do meet those standards.
Movements to restrict curriculum from including known facts or other critical skills cannot be allowed to infiltrate leadership. Teachers are specially trained to understand and implement these standards, using the best knowledge from the best experts, and they should be allowed to do this work unfettered by the back-and-forth of media fighting. There are already measures in place for parents to exercise control over controversial material specific to their children’s learning.
Arts and Learning
It is a little known fact that the presence of a school librarian in a school is a singular predictive factor in increasing the achievement of the students in the school. This is true among all demographics and subjects, and among urban and rural populations. School librarians teach their own media literacy subjects and support the classrooms of their many colleagues in a school by making sure that the resources they and the students need are present and available in the school.
There are enough students in the district to warrant the presence of full-time school librarians at all the elementary schools and one at each secondary school.
Similarly, arts & music education is its own reward, but the arts also increases children’s ability to make gains in other academic areas. The arts, especially visual and performing arts teachers, should be fully supported if we want Hays students to graduate with creative thinking and problem solving skills that they will need in the world we live in.
Early Childhood Education
As a single mother of a 4-year-old, I was eternally grateful for the public preschool that my son was able to attend. The education and socialization provided to him was invaluable, and the quality of it would never have been available to me in the private sector, certainly not at a price that I could have afforded. Our kids deserve to enter kindergarten ready-to-read, and preschool is one of the tools we can use to get there.
If citizens of Hays want Hays to grow and compete as a city in Kansas for industry and commerce, our community must come together to help provide care and education for the littlest among us.
Transparency in Government
The work of living in a democracy requires input by the people, and in order for that input to function, the governing bodies must remain transparent and communicative about their work. Elected officials must listen and communicate with their constituents and balance the overall security of the community with the best available information available at any given time.
I am seeking office in order to serve this community, and therefore, I will remain accountable to the community to keep the children in this district as safe as I have the power to keep them.
Meagan Zampieri-Lillpopp Campaign for USD 489 BOE 