Reply to APS - Who is running for School Board?

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[quote=Anonymous]I'm Steven Krieger. I'm glad to see this discussion about the school board candidates. As someone mentioned earlier in this thread, I am running for School Board. Here's my campaign site: http://stevenforschoolboard.com/

In my experience, most people who get involved in a public service campaign have an "activist moment" -- something that impacts them personally and motivates them to try to make a difference in their community. For me, it was the APS effort to move Key that began over two years ago. My son just started 1st grade at Key and I didn't want him to have to start over at another school.

While I'm relatively new to the education arena, I have plenty of public interest experience. After college, I moved to DC to work for environmental NGOs. I went to UCLA law school because I was accepted into their public interest law and policy program. While at UCLA, I started a UCLA chapter of the CA Innocence Project. After law school, I volunteered at the Arlington Public Defender's office and after seeing how difficult it is for middle class people to find affordable legal counsel, I opened my own law firm where I could set the legal fees. Once my law firm was up and running, I started a 501(c)(3) non-profit, to match middle class people with affordable lawyers.

Plus, over the years, I've published several law review/journal articles on public interest issues (and the Georgetown Poverty Law Journal is publishing another article this spring) that you may download and read for free: https://www.stevenkriegerlaw.com/publications.html

My school board campaign is about more than just Key School. On a macro-level, when you look at the responsibilities of a School Board member, you have to divide them into two main categories:   
(1) substantive education policy (how do we best educate all of our students); and (2) How do we ensure that APS operates efficiently as an organization?

I have a business degree and my background is in running businesses. The School Board has to ensure that APS is operating efficiently and using your tax dollars effectively.

Example: Instead of canceling the summer enrichment program, APS should have simply increased fees and/or implement a sliding scale fee schedule based on family income. Canceling the program makes life difficult for the parents who were relying on the program (not to mention the parents who cannot afford market rate summer programs) and takes money away from the teachers and staff who run the summer program.

Another brief example: APS recently approved $421,000 in site studies for 14 different sites. We absolutely need to address the capacity issues, but before approving almost half a million dollars in reports, I would have preferred to see that list of 14 trimmed down significantly more. In the short-term, there's almost no chance APS renovates or remodels on 7 sites -- let alone 14. In the long-term, the site studies may be obsolete.

I read many of the concerns that people expressed about the candidates and perhaps the only consensus I saw was that there are not two perfect candidates, but many are keeping an open mind and looking to gather additional information before the vote in May, which is great.

I have the youngest children of any candidate or current member, so while I don't have the educational policy background that some other candidates have, I am absolutely invested in the long-term success of APS.

I hope you give me an opportunity to earn your vote.

Please feel free to reach out to me at steven@stevenforschoolboard.com and I'd be happy to hear from you.

Steven
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