Teachers set the most important building blocks in a person's development, and their pay should reflect that. As a School Board member, I will be an advocate for pay increases for our teachers and staff.

I would support holding a yearly truth-in-taxation hearing, like many other school districts in Utah do, to ensure that our budget is secure year over year.

I will support a program to get money into the hands of teachers, so they don't have to spend their own money on their classroom materials.

On YOUR ballot be sure to vote NO on amendment A and YES on amendment B to keep your income tax dollars in education and to increase the annual distributions from the State School fund from 4% to 5%. If amendment A fails and amendment B passes it will protect the progress in school funding that has been achieved and will further increase the amount of money going directly into schools each year.

I believe that no family should have to own a car to be able to send their children to school. As a School Board member, I will prioritize student pedestrians in decision making about school upgrades, and be an advocate for all Midvale pedestrians in conversations about Midvale's future.

I will support moving the Safe Walking Routes away from busy arterial roads and onto sleepy neighborhood streets with lower speed limits.

I support creating additional bus routes to ensure that all students who would choose to take the bus are covered.

I support a program that would allow all Canyons students who would like to take public transit (UTA) to school, to do so for free.

I also would hope to create a partnership between UDOT, the county government, and the school district for expanded pedestrian programs such as UDOT's proposed bike freeway. I will also advocate for enhanced intra-neighborhood pedestrian connections especially to help in connection to school areas.

As a high school student at Hillcrest High School, I often times struggled with going to school every day, I have lived the life of these students who are facing chronic absenteeism, and I know how to begin to fix it.

• Later school start times.

  • The biggest change I made, that really worked for me, was I got an excused period first thing in the morning. Being able to get the sleep that a growing and developing teenager needs is crucial in order for that student to show up to school ready to learn.

• More applied classes, especially in the later years of High School

  • I know it, you know it, we all know it: "senioritis". It seems to come earlier and earlier in each generation. What I propose:

    • As a student nears graduation, say starting in Sophomore year, more and more classes that stray from "General" education are offered to provide a more diverse learning environment.

    • As well as offering more concurrent enrollment classes so that our students can get a head start in college

    • Offering more hands-on, applied classes as opposed to lecture based classes is something I believe that would help students be more motivated to attend school daily.

• Making each day more unique

  • Schools are a place that we all spend the bulk of our childhoods at, and where we send our kids to grow and develop into well rounded adults.

  • Each school day should be unique, whether it be events at lunch, assemblies, after school events, or many other exciting possibilities, a student should not dread a new week starting that feels exactly the same as the one before, and the one before that.

Every student deserves to have access to information and stories that reflect their lived realities. I, as a student and a young person, benefitted greatly from the selection of age appropriate and diverse set of stories I was able to access in my schools growing up, and as a School Board Member I will fight to ensure students today have the same access to that vital information. I would not have developed into the person I am today without the access to critical knowledge that some controversial books brought me, books like Night by Elie Wiesel or Heartstopper by Alice Oseman taught me the value in anti-authoritarianism and the value of loving myself and my queerness.

Canyons has a history of removing books, in 2021 the titles The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, and Out of Darkness by Ashley Hope Pérez as well as others were removed from school libraries by the district due to "parental concern" these books were ultimately returned to shelves due to backlash and an ACLU investigation.

A note that parents can request that their own student not be allowed to check out a book.

In 2022 the State Legislature passed H.B 374, which changed the way books were evaluated and allowed greater agency in the way books were evaluated and removed by districts, with the hope to have "pornographic content" removed from classrooms. The State Legislature then passed a bill in 2024, H.B. 29, that grants School Districts the right to ban books not only in their own district, but if three districts, or two districts and 5 charter schools' band together can have a book removed from shelves in the entire state, pending State Board of Education override. These bills were written by "Christian Nationalist" and co-author of Project 2025 Representative Ken Ivory (R-West Jordan) and was supported by alt-right anti-education advocate Natalie Cline and was signed into law by Spencer Cox. Books that have been removed by districts and statewide are predominantly stories about or by LGBTQ+ folks or People of Color.

As a board member I promise to use my voice, platform and position to advocate and secure greater access to literacy programs and resources, and for access to appropriate and diverse stories. I agree that pornography should not be in our schools, however the vast majority of books that are being targeted are doing so with no nuance or understanding of the themes of the book at all. A book that was removed by the board in 2021, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, was removed and is continued to be removed by boards for "sexual content", when in fact it depicts sexual abuse in a way that is meant to be relatable to many young readers who have suffered in a similar way. A book I was assigned to read freshman year was Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, this book is about a high school aged girl who is sexually abused, the story follows her as she struggles to get through school as a result of her trauma and social pressures, and eventually is able to begin to express herself and begins to heal through her art. Stories like these, that are more mature and thematically intense, are incredibly valuable for students who suffer in similar ways to the story and can ultimately help them begin the process of healing.

Books should be evaluated based on the SLAP method as librarians often did before 2022, to have a book on the shelf with "inappropriate themes" might be of value to students if it can provide a "serious, literary, artistic, political, or scientific merit". The law established by the legislature breaks these federal standards and requires that ALL "sexual or inappropriate" themes be removed from libraries.

I support creating a universal school breakfast and lunch program. According to Feeding America, the nations leading organization in the fight against hunger, estimates suggest that 1 in 6 American children were at risk for hunger, that is over 12 million children. I believe that the goal of the School Board is to help each student achieve success, and this program would ensure that the investments we make are actually able to work, because no student will ever sit down and learn when they're hungry. It should be normal for students to show up to school in the morning, sit down with their friends, and eat a hot, nutritious breakfast for a couple of minutes before class. Then when it's time for lunch all students should be able to go to the cafeteria and get a nutritious, delicious meal.

How will we pay for it?

This is a great question that deserves an answer. Currently the state financial source for school lunches is from state-controlled alcohol sales, and shockingly the legislature has only appropriated 10% of that revenue to the Uniform School Fund for school meals, while nearly 85% goes directly into the state's general fund, with only god knowing what the legislature will spend that money on. I say, send A LOT of it back to the districts and let us feed our students.

Throughout this campaign even I have had difficulty navigating the Canyons School District website. From virus popups to information being hard to access or straight up not available, the website needs a major overhaul.

I am Gen Z, I went to school with a phone in my pocket and so did every one of my friends. I know the distraction that phones can cause in a classroom, even now as a college student I sometimes feel it would be best to not have my phone with me in the classroom.

However, I am not sure I can support the moves made by some schools and school districts to mandate that all students lock their phones in a magnetically locked bag until the end of the day.

I have concerns about that policy for the following reason:

As a student who feared gun violence, I felt a shred of comfort knowing that in the worst-case scenario I could tell my mom's I love them. I could not in good conscience take that comfort from students and parents who have those same fears.

I also oppose any effort by the Utah State Legislature to create rules regarding phone use in schools, as those rules should be set by School Districts, schools, and teachers.