2021_YSNElectionGuide

6 H H H 2 021 VOT E R’ S GU I DE H H H Y E L L OW S P R I NG S N EWS enrollment. The district leadership should keep abreast of policy changes in Colum- bus to ensure that rural schools continue to benefit from the program on the whole. Over the long haul, a disciplined phased improvement plan will protect the revenue that Yellow Springs Schools generate from open enrollment. We need to improve our facility maintenance; we must also maintain our commitment to high quality education, an inclusive culture, team sports and the arts. Given its draw in open enrollment, we’d be wise to preser ve Mills Lawn Schools. Villagers and visitors alike hold it dear 2. I’m a student of cooperative education and learned the positive impact of work experience on learning firsthand. Early work experiences shape our identity and give us critical tools for self advocacy. As a board member, I will connect students with cooperative education opportunities through partnerships with local employ- ers, Greene County Career Center and new high school internships of fered by the Strategic Ohio Council for Higher Education, or SOCHE. I’m par ticularly excited about opportunities in broadcast- ing. We have chal lenges ahead as our schools address the learning gap: inter- ruptions in group instruction and play brought on by the pandemic. Unad- dressed, these gaps will impact gradu- ation rates and student readiness. Our faculty know how students thrive, but complications from the pandemic will still reveal themselves. My experience assessing group instruction for its impact on readiness will help the schools identify emergent issues. At September’s school board meeting, Principal Jack Hater t said the path to closing the learning gap is through qual- ity teaching. Exactly! Early science out of Harvard suggests the key to instructional recovery is providing students with age- appropriate group instruction. Students thrive when challenged at their present developmental stage. They challenge each other creatively on many levels, and the schools’ dedication to Social-Emotional Learning shines here. Our art programs contribute profoundly as students practice individual agency through music, multi- media, creative writing and theater. Play is also critical to recovery. Our students have missed opportunities to play together, and play is the work of childhood. We facilitate childhood development through its impro- visational and nurturing accommodations. Here, I will bring my work with Learn to Earn Dayton for Play On Purpose, a program promoting childhood develop- ment through interactive, purpose-driven and wonder-filled activities on regional playgrounds. 3. I entered the race for school board so voters had the opportunity to make a well- informed, meaningful choice. In 2018, when voters rejected a 4.7-mill property levy and 0.25% income tax increase for $18.5 million of facility improvements, a question hung in the air. Did the issue fail because its facility plan was too costly or too small? District leadership believes the 2018 plan was too small. Under the district’s proposed plan, existing school buildings would be replaced with a K–12 facility where the high/middle school are cur- rently located, and the nearly 9-acre Mills Lawn property repurposed. I would not make this bet. It’s costly. It’s risky. It maxes out school credit. It scraps the district’s most valuable asset: Mills Lawn School. The bet I’ve made is on Mills Lawn. I respect villagers’ choice of investment. I will seek policy preserv- ing Mills Lawn as a greenspace regardless of the outcome of the levy. If the levy fails, I will propose a facilities plan of phased improvements. In 2019, the schools facili- ties task force recommended a permanent improvement, or PI, levy to finance phased improvements. However, the district only considered bond issues. A bond levy must pay back principal borrowed plus interest. A PI fund saves capital. Financing with a PI levy compares favorably to a bond levy as saving capital takes less revenue than paying down debt. Take heart, Yellow Springs. I of fer an af fordable alternative to the costly disrup- tive plan on the ballot. This alternative will finance phased improvements over time and upgrade infrastructure regularly, reversing the district’s policy of deferring maintenance. PAM NICODEMUS Living in Yel low Springs has been such a gift to me. I’ve always been a super involved and political person and never felt that side of me was embraced until I joined the community. From Chamber of Commerce committees to Cub Scouts to the new dog park, you can always find me in some group or another. Although I have lived in several places around the U.S. I was born and raised in Southwest Ohio and attended Ohio public schools pre-K through graduate school. After work- ing in veterinar y medicine for several years, I made the shift to career tech educa- tion (similar to Greene County Career Center), and I absolutely love teaching. Yellow Springs has been my home since 2007, and like many parents, I juggle the responsibilities of being a single parent, a homeowner and an involved community member. 1. I work at a school that just imple- mented open enrollment this year, so I have seen the benefits of open enrollment firsthand. In Yellow Springs, we have more students enrolling in our schools than choosing to enroll outside the district, which brings money in for our schools and ultimately benefits the students. I hope that continued open enrollment will allow us to increase electives, such as foreign language, and extracurricular activities. 2. In shor t: Empower the teachers, as they are the ones “on the front lines” with the students. As a classroom teacher myself, I can attest to how challenging it is to differentiate and specialize mate- rial to the unique needs of each student. Preparing students for life after gradua- tion encompasses not only coursework but professionalism and other soft skills. Development of these soft skills comes from teacher-student relationships, and these relationships take time and invest- ment. We, as a community, need to show strong support for our teachers and give them the freedom to engage with our kids in meaningful ways. 3. I am excited to work on the school facilities, no matter the outcome of the current levy. I’ve had the good fortune working for two well-funded school dis- tricts; beautiful buildings with more than adequate equipment. I’ve witnessed firsthand how removing distractions such as temperature fluctuations and outside noise allows students to focus on learning and learn in more creative ways. I hope Yellow Springs voters make the connection between modern facilities and student suc- cess and prioritize our schools. LUISA BIERI RIOS I was bor n and raised in Yel low S p r i n g s a n d a t tended Ye l low S p r i n g s p u b l i c schools from kin- dergarten through 12th grade. To this day, I still value my lear ning exper i - ences from some of the most beloved teachers in Yellow Springs Schools, such as Lillian Slaughter, Angie Coleman, Mary McDonald and John Gudgel, among many others. I took my own child to kindergar- ten under the caring gaze of Ms. Denman in the same classroom I once used. He is the third generation in my family to attend YS public schools. He’s now a seventh- grader at McKinney Middle School, and I tell him that my class was the first to use the “shoebox” trailer, 30 years ago. When I was a student, I thrived in the many oppor- tunities for extracurricular engagement — from soccer and School Forest to theater and track. I felt a sense of pride getting on our buses to compete at other schools knowing that we were usually the most diverse team on the field, even when we were sometimes ridiculed by bigotry. Our diversity has always been our strength, despite how increasingly gentrified and transient our town has become. Yellow Springs schools are a reflection of our com- munity, including the myriad global per- spectives that root us as part of the world, not just part of Ohio. YS schools strived, as they do now, to teach us how to be inclusive of dif ference and to be our authentic selves. After graduating salutatorian of Yellow Springs High School class of 1997, I attended Smith College, earning a B.A. in theater and Latin American literature. I studied abroad for a year in Argentina, meeting my now spouse. I lived in New York City, Italy, the Netherlands and Bal- timore before returning to Yellow Springs in 201 1. At the University of Utrecht, I earned a master’s degree in comparative women’s studies. In Baltimore, I was an Open Society Institute Fellow, creat- ing a community-based arts program at Creative Alliance. Inspired by my own experiences of intercultural learning, I was assistant director at Antioch Educa- tion Abroad for five years. As a performer, playwright and artist, I have shared my work in Buenos Aires, Utrecht, Chicago, New York and many times over the years in the Foundry Theater in Yellow Springs. Now, I am associate professor of coop- erative education, Community Arts and Performance at Antioch College. I started as a faculty member in the Co-op Depart- ment in 2015. I teach courses in community engagement, performance and dialogue across differences. I am passionate about young people’s holistic growth and devel- opment, particularly to find meaningful pathways toward lives of purpose. 1. I fully support open enrollment at Yellow Springs Schools. The majority of students coming to our school system through open enrollment have some con- nection to our community — often a parent or grandparent who grew up in Yellow Springs and attended our schools but whose family can no longer afford to live here. Open enrollment has allowed some of my own young family members to attend Yellow Springs Schools. Other reasons to come to Yellow Springs Schools are for the curricular emphasis on social justice, environmental stewardship, af firmative consent, equity and inclusion, particularly of LGBTQ+ students and students of color. Although we must continue to improve an educational focus and culture in these areas, Yellow Springs Schools prioritize these ef for ts where other neighboring schools often fall short. We can provide a space for students to feel included and supported even if they happen to live one town over. An additional strength of our open enroll- ment program is that it generates revenue from other school districts to our own district. Just one compelling reason to con- tinue to improve our district — both from a curricular standpoint and its facilities — is to continue to be inviting to students from neighboring areas as well as retain our own local youth in Yellow Springs Schools. Visiting our aging buildings, the lack of ven- tilation and light, technology infrastructure, or accessible classrooms and gathering spaces, we have fallen further behind what many other districts offer. I am concerned about the number of families in Yellow Springs who choose to send their children, particularly middle and high schoolers, to other districts. 2. Over the years, I am one of many stu- dents who graduated from YSHS and went on to study at excellent colleges. I do not think that this is out of our students’ reach, nor do I think Yellow Springs Schools should strive to emulate intensive college- prep schools if it is to be at the detriment of a holistic pedagogical approach. Given our small size, I appreciate that YS schools offer subjects that allow our students to explore and expand their creative capacities, inter- cultural and interpersonal skills, such as instrumental music, foreign languages, visual and performing arts, civics and skills for life, not to mention co-curricular activi- ties. Perhaps most unique to our district is our students’ capacity to feel empowered to become change makers. I have witnessed the inspiring recent leadership of young people of Yellow Springs schools who have marched for Black Lives and to end gun violence. I am aware that we are at a critical point in improving some of our schools’ statewide assessment scoring. I would like to empha- size support for teacher development as well as student needs to be able to close the gaps in district wide achievement. I will also continue to emphasize the need for strong social-emotional learning, inter- cultural skill development, creativity, play and other areas that are not measured on state tests. I have seen many exceptional examples of project-based learning since it was embraced by the district. I value this kind of experiential learning that builds a