Katie Hockert

I am again seeking your endorsement because I value and respect the voice of collective bargaining groups. I was a member of a teacher’s union from 2005-2012 in Madison, Wisconsin. Although I admit I didn’t fully appreciate my own union membership until later in my career, as a board member I have a new understanding of the importance of having worker voices as part of decision making, not just during contracts. I have been impressed with the evolution of our unions’ involvement throughout my first term and look forward to working with our union leadership again in my next term. I value starting that relationship as I did four years ago, by sharing my philosophy and decision making process while seeking your endorsement for a second time. Thank you for taking time in your busy schedules to create this opportunity. Your voice in the community is valued and respected.

2. Why are you running for the school board? In your opinion, what is the most important role of a board member?

I am seeking reelection to continue the work started in my first term. It has been a huge privilege to serve for four years and I’m so proud of all we have accomplished in that time. Unfortunately I have also seen the cost of instability in leadership from both the board and administrative side. Our students need and deserve stability in order for us to collectively address their increasingly complex needs. While some months on the board have been really hard, over all I genuinely enjoy the work and am personally invested in seeing things through. I believe our staff and students need us to stay the course to allow our current new priorities the chance to be implemented, tested, and adapted until they are as successful as we can make them. And if things don’t go as anticipated, I want to be part of reworking that solution. It’s not fair or frankly efficient for new directors to try to pivot on previous priorities when those involved are no longer around. I am committed to this work as long as our community chooses me to do it.

The most important role of a board member is to listen at a personal level but integrate information at a systems level when making decisions. In order to do that, we need to stay connected to the community and seek opportunities to hear from voices outside our closest social circles. That variety of personal experience, especially if it directly contradicts our own, is a critical part in formulating probing questions that ensure new initiatives are properly vetted before approval. Of course, we will never perfectly anticipate all challenges, but that’s where personal humility and flexibility to change course become important as well.

As a white woman, I know my identity affords me more implicit privileges than I can identify. I grew up in Milwaukee in the 1980s and 90s when my city had the unflattering identity of being one of the most racially segregated cities in America. Everyone in my family sent their kids to private Catholic schools. My formative years were quite sheltered making me racially and culturally naive.

At UW-Madison, I made my first Protestant friends and soon realized how culturally isolated I had been. After 12 years of Catholic education, I was fascinated by other worldviews. Initially, history classes in high school had been my window to the world. Broad Field Secondary Education was a natural match for a career. My skills were immediately challenged when I began teaching at the very diverse East High School in Madison. There I made many insensitive mistakes around race and sexuality and religion, but tried to learn and grow. The next year, I took a job at LaFollette High School, which was less racially diverse but lower in socio-economic status. There I continued to make mistakes and learn and evolve over six more years. All the while, I would use my lessons to expand the narrative of history to tell the stories of past people to whom my students could relate. Again I wanted to use history as a window to the world so they could better understand life outside their own. Fast forward to 2020 and the racial awakening after George Floyd’s murder. At this point I made a more active effort to examine my own privilege and unconscious bias while using the same formula: build knowledge, practice skills. I started with books by Ibram X Kendi and Resmaa Menakem. Then I helped organize Woodbury’s first racial protest march in June 2020. Shortly after, I became a founding member of Woodbury for Justice and Equality where over the past four years, we’ve worked to identify and address racial issues in our community. I continue that work today.

To me, governance means fewer and shorter meetings that focus on monitoring data, exploring system level changes, seeking widespread input from all those invested in decisions, and making decisions for the good of the whole. Board members’ role is to ask high level questions to ensure accountability and alignment with strategic goals. Governance means stabilizing the board and trusting staff to manage the daily challenges competently. It’s a holistic approach where the board collaborates with administration, staff, families, and community members to better align the educational goals for our students with our collective values.

The Board of Education’s only employee is a licensed superintendent to whom we delegate authority to manage the school district. This is spelled out in statute. Our role is to oversee and govern, not directly manage the daily activities of the district. The relationship between the board and superintendent is a partnership and critical to the stability of the district as well as the district’s credibility in the community.

The board has an annual review process driven by pre identified goals for each year. Throughout the year, board members ask questions to ensure the district’s strategic goals are being addressed and the values of stakeholders from multiple perspectives are being considered. Every three years, the board must evaluate how well the work and strategic goals have aligned before deciding to renew the superintendent’s contract and continue the partnership.

It is important for individual board members to understand the superintendent gets direction from the board as a whole, not individual directors. Individuals, like myself, respectfully voice concerns or ask for clarification if they are not in support of a certain initiative or direction. Ultimately my goal is to work through any hesitations I may have with the superintendent while also being honest and direct regarding areas that may need additional attention. I want to continue this work so that there is a continuity in leadership as we implement new initiatives and navigate the inevitable bumps along the way. I am committed to stability and look forward to watching our improved systems in action.

In my first term, we settled three contract cycles. I also was a board representative in two of the teacher contract cycles. Although we have changed the collective bargaining procedure to no longer involve direct board oversight, I did learn from my observation of the process. I saw the long hours of discussion and the respectful, though at times difficult, back and forth with proposals. I have a sincere respect for all those who share their time in leadership roles and work for the good of the membership while recognizing the needs of the larger system.

Throughout my first term, I maintained a respectful relationship with SCEA leadership and appreciated their honest communications with the board especially on pressing issues for the district. I value their input as a collective representation of membership while also balancing other stakeholder priorities and the financial health of the district in decision making. I hope to continue that respectful and open communication in a second term.

The most intractable evidence of systemic racism in our education system is our achievement gap between our more affluent white students and nearly everyone else-dual language learners, black and brown students, lower income, indigenous students. I recognize that there are factors beyond our system that helped create and maintain this gap but we need a systemic framework to identify and break down structural barriers within our system in order to make progress in closing the achievement gap.

Our strategic plan has already identified school culture, equity and inclusion as a priority. This year the board will be receiving cultural competency training as part of our professional development in alignment with this goal. Additionally we have supported a calendar that will provide more time throughout the year for professional development within the staff.

We also need to examine policies and practices that are preventing us from hiring and retaining a diverse teaching force. The district investment in Community Engagement Specialists to support our families is a step in that direction, but we need to be intentional about building a staff within our schools that more closely reflects the students we serve.

From a more personal level, in moving my children from Brookview to the GATE program at SMS, I observed fewer black and brown students as well as low income students in our gifted program especially when compared to the district demographic percentages. Giftedness exists in all populations regardless of socioeconomic status, first language, race, or ethnicity and yet our program does not reflect that. I see an opportunity to explore other models for GT programming in an effort to make these services both more inclusive in identifying and also equally accessible to all who qualify. We are required by law to serve all of our gifted students and I believe we can do better in this area.

As mentioned earlier, I understand the importance of staying in a governance role as a board member. I have experienced the value of a collaborative process where our educational professionals have taken time to explore and vet new ideas for how to better serve our students. I particularly appreciate when challenges are discussed as we engage in decision making for the district.

As a board member, I want to ask good questions to ensure as many voices are included as possible. I also want to listen for those common values, often below the surface discussions, and support decisions that honor those values. Ultimately I want to support the final recommendation made after months (and sometimes years) of work are complete. Then I want to stay engaged through the implementation, seeking both quantitative and qualitative data to monitor, and if necessary adjust new initiatives. I will continue to stay at a governance level, leaving the daily school management and staffing to our administration.

Collaboration is the act of coming together with others to create something new. To do so, all members involved must be open to discussion and also willing to contribute. When we are committed to getting it right instead of being right, we create far superior outcomes.

Collaboration among board members looks like personal humility to me. Being one of seven with no individual power can be particularly challenging for those who believe they have all the answers. Add to that the desire to implement those answers promoted to the community while campaigning and it’s easy to have a board slip into dysfunction when even a single person does not respect collaboration.

Once elected, I realized very quickly that lots of people disagree with ideas that I thought were common sense. And sometimes emotions run hot in an attempt to bring more weight to alternative experiences. It takes a high level of emotional control to navigate tense issues in a productive way as a board member. For me, building personal relationships with other board members has gotten me through the tough days. Furthermore, those efforts helped tremendously when we as a board were unable to find a collaborative solution that all of us can unanimously support.

As elected officials, it is important that we find time to check in with each other personally and maintain a mutual respect so that openness, humility, and productive dialogue can continue to thrive in our board culture.

Rebuilding trust in the board is the key to all that we have accomplished in the past four years. Our board began by transitioning from an adversarial relationship with district administration at board meetings to one of support with accountability. This set the tone for the rest of the district as we worked to finally settle and approve contracts that were long overdue. We also completed the bus garage project amid controversy and a lawsuit so that our bus drivers had a safe and comfortable facility. We hired an experienced superintendent who has created systems to better support learning at all levels from students to staff. He has brought much needed stability and leadership. The board has been committed to maintaining that stability too through relationship building and expecting thorough, transparent, and collaborative processes before decision making.

All of these efforts to support staff and build trust within the system work to create the best educational experience for all of our students. We have more to do in building trust with our racially, culturally, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse students and families. That work continues as is a strategic priority for the district. I look forward to supporting efforts to be more inclusive, culturally responsive, and sensitive to the diverse needs of our current families. I will continue to make the effort to attend district and community events and seek to understand the experiences of families different from my own. Showing up for people goes a long way in building community trust.

Finally, the passage of our operating levy and bond, plus the election of board members committed to civility and supporting the district is a testament to our work in rebuilding trust. However, I am keenly aware of how quickly trust can erode if we don’t stay vigilant. I want to serve a second term so we have continuity in board leadership in an effort to stay the course.

Our district’s current priorities are to address student and staff mental health along with improved academic proficiency through targeted support and structural changes. The board has already approved the calendar and start time changes for next year. Discussions about the high school schedule are also in progress as well as creating a new policy around cell phone use.

Last year’s MCA scores show our district is still part of the pandemic learning loss trend. We need to look for ways to systematically address chronic absenteeism and dysregulated behaviors so that students feel safe and engaged at school.

The needs of our students continue to expand which means our teachers and staff need a supportive team behind them to address these challenges. I want to support those efforts while also balancing the long term financial stability of our district.

Funding for public education is a perpetual challenge for districts. We have some immediate economic challenges on the horizon as we look at reinvesting in state approved literacy curriculum as well as finding money for the newly mandated employment benefits in safe and sick time as well as unemployment. I do support these initiatives, however I anticipate the costs will quickly outpace the funding allocated particularly if elections change the priorities in the legislature.

Finding and maintaining sustainable funding for our district is a high priority for me. In my first term, I met with our legislators to discuss our district’s current reality. I also sent countless emails to committee chairs and the governor to share both my gratitude and concerns around funding.

As legal requirements tie up more state funding, we may need to look at going out for another local levy. We have programs in our district that are not sustainably funded in addition to rising operating costs. As we align our assets with our strategic direction, we will need to decide if we are going to ask our taxpayers to support additional funding.

The alternative to raising more funds is cutting costs. This past year, I experienced our first round of priority based budgeting realignment and the pain even minor strategic cuts can cause our families. I also know our fund balance is dangerously low at 1.1% and our bond rating is at risk. We need to prioritize the financial health of our district in the next five years. My approach is to support strategic resource balancing as we slowly rebuild our fund balance over the next couple years. I do expect tough decisions in the next five years because our current financial status must improve.