Our public schools should reflect the values of our city: equity, excellence, and accountability.
Seattle is the most educated city in the country — it has one of the highest rate of residents with college degrees but the lowest rate of enrollment in public schools. That has to change. We can grow trust, enrollment, and student success in Seattle Public Schools.
Together, let’s grow Seattle Public Schools to meet our full potential.
1. Equity Through Excellence
Having spent years working with marginalized communities — including immigrant families, communities of color, and students with disabilities — I know firsthand the challenges many of our families face in accessing quality education. While we have seen recovery from pandemic learning loss, the gaps persist. This cannot be our new normal.
Seattle Public Schools can and must do better. The talents and commitment of our teachers and staff are there. We must focus on:
Inclusive special education that provides the support all students need.
Advanced learning programs that offer opportunities for all students, no matter their background.
Curriculum that is both challenging and engaging, reflecting the diverse experiences and interests of our students.
Wraparound services that help students thrive academically and socially.
2. Stable, Fully Funded Schools
Seattle Public Schools cannot cut its way to excellence. With a $100 million budget deficit, the decisions we make now will determine the future of our children’s education. As someone who has served on the school board and has professional financial expertise, I understand that balancing the budget is not just about making cuts — it’s about making smart, strategic investments that will benefit our students for years to come. During my tenure on the board, I built a reputation for asking tough, but necessary, questions about how public dollars are spent.
When we face a budget shortfall, we need leaders who will focus on solutions that don’t sacrifice our students’ education. The previous board’s plan to close schools in response to the deficit was deeply misguided. Closing schools would have pushed even more families out of the district, deepened the budget hole, and ultimately harmed student outcomes. There’s a fatal flaw in this logic: you can’t solve a revenue problem by shrinking your way through it.
Instead, we need a proactive, long-term financial strategy that focuses on growth, not contraction. I will:
Develop a sustainable financial plan that ensures every dollar spent is invested in student success.
Rebuild the district’s reserves so that we can weather future challenges without resorting to drastic measures that hurt families.
Advocate for increased state funding, ensuring that the state fulfills its constitutional, paramount duty to fully fund public education.
Students, families, and staff deserve stability and predictability. We must give our schools the resources they need to thrive, not just survive. With the right leadership, we can create a funding system that is equitable and focused on long-term success for every student.
3. A Diverse Portfolio of Schools for a Diverse Community
Seattle Public Schools’ core mission is to educate the children in Seattle. Yet recent policies have strayed from that mission. We’ve seen families leave the district because of the threat of school closures, the dismantling of highly capable programs, and restrictions on students’ ability to attend schools of their choice. This has only deepened divides and created barriers for the very students who need our support the most.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can—and must—build a system of schools that reflects the diverse needs of our community and provides meaningful opportunities for all students, no matter their background or needs.
I will work directly with families, educators, and community members to design a system that serves every type of learner, including:
Special Education: Expanding resources and inclusive practices so that students with disabilities can learn and thrive in supportive, accessible environments.
Advanced Learning: Ensuring that advanced learners have the challenges they need to grow while maintaining a focus on equity to ensure no student is left behind.
Ethnic Studies and Language Immersion: Creating engaging culturally relevant curricula that reflect our community’s diversity
Career and Technical Education (CTE): Offering pathways for students to gain practical, real-world skills that open doors to high-paying jobs and apprenticeships.
The future of our schools lies in diversity—and not just in terms of who our students are, but in the variety of programs and educational models that meet their needs. A diverse community demands a diverse portfolio of schools, and I am committed to ensuring that every family can find a school that meets their child’s unique needs.
Smart financial management isn’t about balancing the budget at all costs—it’s about seeing the bigger picture. Investing in a diverse portfolio of schools is a smart investment in our future. By restoring trust, strengthening programs, and engaging with the community, we will demonstrate why public schools are the best choice for Seattle families. Seattle Public Schools can be a model of inclusivity, innovation, and success for every student.
4. Prioritizing Student Safety and Well-Being
Students can’t learn if they don’t feel safe, supported, and connected. I will work to protect student safety and well-being amid attacks from Trump, rising gun violence, and mental health challenges.
Every school must have permanent, equitable funding for counselors, nurses, social workers, and mental health professionals — not just grant-funded pilots or PTA-driven extras. I have and will continue to advocate to our city, county, state, and federal leaders for funding and ensure that those dollars translate into meaningful, consistent support for students in every building by expanding access to school-based therapy, mindfulness programs, and peer counseling. Mental health support should be a cornerstone of our educational environment, not an afterthought.
5. Accountable, Transparent, and Inclusive Leadership
Seattle families, educators, and students are eager to engage — but right now, it feels nearly impossible. Previous school board leadership dismantled key structures for public input, such as standing committees on the budget, curriculum, and policy. As a result, major decisions have too often been made behind closed doors, with minimal transparency or community voice. This must change. Top-down governance has no place in a public school system rooted in democratic values.
As a board director, I will work to rebuild public trust by championing genuine, two-way community engagement — not just listening sessions, but shared decision-making. I’ll come prepared: studying complex issues, analyzing our capital and operating budgets, and ensuring every dollar supports academic excellence and student wellbeing. I’ll hold myself and the district accountable by insisting on clear, accessible communication: regular public updates, multilingual outreach, and easy-to-navigate platforms.
I’m committed to overseeing and supporting a new superintendent with a collaborative spirit. That means building bridges — across communities, across government levels, and across differences — to tackle the challenges our students face together.
Online Candidate Forum, Wednesday, October 22
My sincerest apologies for missing this forum. I am on the board of an immigrant and refugee resettlement agency, the main provider of services to undocumented youth in Washington state. We are having a meeting to make contingency plans while the federal government shutdown continues. Because the organizers have provided the topics in advance, I have provided my answers to the questions below in this video. It will hopefully give a sense of where I stand on these issues.
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The state superintendent has set the goal that all students in Washington state have access to multi-language education by 2040. This goal is not only an investment in the future but also an equity matter. Dual language education can prevent and close opportunity gaps for multilingual/English learners and other historically underserved student groups. How do you propose that Seattle Public Schools build upon the existing 5 Dual Language Immersion (DLI) elementary schools and further the vision of the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI)? And/or, increase the representation of native and cultural heritage students in DLI programs, including allowing multi-language learners, native or cultural heritage families to transfer into DLI option schools to fill spots in intermediate grades at any point during the school year?
I started school as an English-as-a-Second-Language student, and today I’m the parent of students in dual-language immersion programs — so I know firsthand how transformative bilingual education can be for all learners.
Seattle currently has just five dual-language immersion elementary schools. Meanwhile, Portland Public Schools offers programs in five languages across more than a dozen sites, Highline has made bilingual education a districtwide priority, and Bellevue has made it an explicit part of their academic strategy. Seattle should be leading in this work — not catching up.
To get there, we need to strengthen the preschool-to-high school pathway. I’ve been advocating in the early learning space to ensure language immersion opportunities start in preschool and continue seamlessly through high school, so families see it as a true continuum.
We should update student assignment policies so multilingual learners and heritage-language families can transfer into DLI programs mid-year or in upper grades when space allows.
We must also support our teachers with curriculum resources, professional development, and clear pathways to recruit and retain bilingual educators.
And we should expand language offerings to reflect our city’s diversity — adding programs in languages like Vietnamese, Somali, and American Sign Language at TOPS K-8, where community demand is strong and ensuring geographic access so families in every part of the city have options close to home.
Language immersion builds stronger readers, deeper thinkers, and more connected communities. Seattle’s students deserve to graduate bilingual, biliterate, and proud of who they are — and it’s time for us to make that a districtwide priority.
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Seattle Public Schools is facing a significant budget gap. What are your solutions for closing this gap? How do you intend to collaborate with Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) and legislators to address the funding gaps at both the district and state levels? Please share your strategies for ensuring the financial stability of our school district.
My first priority is to bring clarity and honesty to our budget. Families, educators, and principals deserve to know where the money is actually going. This past year, the district insisted it needed to close 21 elementary schools to balance the budget — yet just months later, it passed a balanced budget without closing any. That’s not just confusing; it damages public trust. We owe our community transparency, consistent communication, and decisions grounded in facts, not fear.
Second, we need to plan for long-term stability, not one-year fixes. That includes aligning staffing and resources with enrollment trends — but also having a plan to grow enrollment, because we cannot shrink our way to excellence. We need to attract families back with strong academic programs, language immersion, arts, and advanced learning — the kinds of offerings that make families choose Seattle Public Schools.
We must also strengthen collaboration with PTAs to advance equity. PTAs shouldn’t have to fund essential staff positions; the district must ensure every school has the baseline resources it needs.
Finally, I’ll continue working with legislators in Olympia to develop a fair and equitable funding model that meets the true needs of Washington’s students, one that is funded by progressive taxes.
Right now our budget process optimizes around getting to a balanced budget, not ensuring that we have effective allocation of resources. We must align our financial resources to our district’s goals.
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Our students have increasingly digital lives, including in their classrooms. These technologies, and particularly AI, is rapidly evolving. Great risk as well as great opportunity are associated. How are you prepared to address this challenge and how do you plan to collaborate with teachers and experts to prepare our students for the future and to protect them from the significant dangers posed.
Our students are growing up in a world where technology — and especially artificial intelligence — is shaping nearly every part of their lives, including how they learn. That brings both great opportunity and great responsibility.
I bring a background in finance and technology, having worked at Google, so I understand how rapidly these tools are evolving. As a school board member, my focus will be ensuring Seattle Public Schools approaches AI and digital learning with intentionality, transparency, and equity.
First, we must prepare students for the future workforce by integrating digital literacy, ethics, and AI education into our curriculum — not just using technology but understanding it. That means ensuring our teachers, librarians, and tech educators have the resources and training they need to help students think critically, analyze data, and use digital tools responsibly.
Second, we need strong data-privacy and safety policies to protect students from misuse — from AI-driven surveillance to algorithmic bias. I’ve consulted education researchers at the Allen Institute for AI and, as a board director for the Children’s Alliance, I’ve worked with the Attorney General’s Office to advocate for safeguards around children’s use of social media.
And finally, we must ensure equitable access. Thanks to the generosity of Seattle’s capital-levy voters, every student now has a 1:1 device, a tremendous foundation. But we must ensure those devices — and the tools on them — are used safely, ethically, and to truly enhance learning.
AI will never replace teachers — but teachers who are supported in using it thoughtfully can empower students in powerful new ways. My goal is to ensure that innovation always serves our core values: equity, safety, and student well-being.
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Before we vote for the new school board, please provide one message that you want to convey to the Seattle Public Schools community. This is your opportunity to share your vision, values, and commitment to the students and families in our district. What makes you the ideal candidate for the school board, and why should the community support your candidacy?
When I served on the school board, community members knew they could count on me to show up. I visited more than 40 of our 100 schools, visiting classrooms to see how board decisions made at the dais played out for students. And they know they can count on me to do my homework — to research, consult experts, and engage community voices before making crucial decisions. They know that even after I left the board, I continued to show up at City Hall and in Olympia to advocate for our kids and families.
My goals are to:
Bring clarity and honesty to our budget, so every dollar supports classrooms and student learning — and put the district on a path to long-term financial stability.
Build a diverse portfolio of schools and programs to meet the diverse needs of our students — advanced learning, inclusive special education, language immersion, STEM, arts, and career and technical education.
Prioritize student well-being and safety, by investing in school-based mental health supports, addressing gun violence, and creating inclusive environments for every student, especially our LGBTQ+ youth and immigrant families who are facing federal threats.
Good governance isn’t about cross-examining staff or putting the district on trial. The school board cannot blame “the district” if, as its governing body, it has not provided effective leadership through setting clear goals, and working through collaboration and not confrontation.
That collaborative, accountable approach is why many have chosen to support this campaign – elected leaders, the labor unions that represent the educators and people that work in our school buildings, King County Democrats, and parent leaders at many schools across our district who’ve seen me do the work and know I follow through.
I’d be honored to earn your support too.