Campos says ‘learning loss’ during COVID must be addressed
Metro Wire Staff
The Stevens Point Area Public Board of Education has nine candidates on the Feb. 15 primary.
Nine candidates will compete for four open seats on the board. Incumbents Jeff Ebel, Barb Portzen, and Rob Manzke, are being challenged by newcomers Jennifer Bushman, Miguel Campos, Alex Sommers, Kari Prokop, Dennis Raabe, and Lisa Rychter. The top eight vote-earners will move on to the April ballot.
Questions by the Stevens Point Area League of Women Voters. Candidates Jeff Ebel and Kari Prokop did not submit responses.
Miguel Campos’ answers follow:
Why did you decide to run at this time for the position of Stevens Point Area School Board member?
If ever there could be a silver lining to a pandemic I would say for me it was the extra time I was able to spend with my children. In so doing it gave me a larger appreciation for the time they spend at school with their teachers, and the importance of and influence over my children that education has. On average a student will spend between 14,000-18,000 hours in school between kindergarten and 12th grade or almost 1.5-2 years of their life in the care of educators. This is a large undertaking of our education system and this reality highlights how important it is to ensure that those who watch over this system are representative of all walks of life. It is in this vein that I am running for School Board. So that I might share my experiences, my passions, my wisdom, my patience, and my love of education so when decisions are made that affect our children long after their graduation we can look back and say we made balanced decisions with everyone’s needs in mind.
What is your relevant background and experience to be an effective School Board member?
I thought a lot about this question and what its answer truly represents to its readers. Is the love of my children and their future relevant experience to make me an effective board member? Is the ability to lead kids on a chaotic soccer field relevant to the decisions a board makes for its student body? Is it the ability to read and understand a balance sheet for my business-relevant experience? Is the ability to prioritize the complexities of managing both a career and a personal business relevant to the decisions a board makes? Is the leadership of a group of Insurance professionals, a group of volunteers, a group of young professionals, or a group of college students relevant to the leadership needed on a board? I imagine the answers to all these questions are yes. These are my realities, and these are the values, experiences, and knowledge I will bring to the board to focus on a path of leadership, transparency, tolerance, and academic excellence.
What do you see as the top three issues currently facing our Stevens Point Area schools and how would you address them?
First, teacher attraction and retention. We need to create a more inviting and tolerant environment for teachers to express their concerns and frustrations as well as their compliments on how the district is run. This acceptance and tolerance will foster more trust among board members and teachers. In turn, this will encourage more open dialogue in which real-world solutions can be sought to help retain our best talent and seek new talent.
Second, we need to address the learning loss of both pre- and post-Covid. We need to define what is meant by learning loss through the gathering of data and recognition of key insights which help us understand what areas have been most impacted both before and during COVID-19. In turn, we can look at creative budgetary movements to address the financial needs to address the learning loss and ensure this becomes the new standard, not the exception.
Lastly, we need to review the district’s budgets, its assets and liabilities, its enrollment numbers, its competition, and its community assets and look to the future of education to determine the financial and social needs of the district today and what those needs will be 20 years from now. Education is constantly evolving as are its students and stakeholders and this has a profound impact on future socio-financial needs.
What is the School Board’s role in ensuring that students from all races, classes, creeds, and gender are given opportunities for a high-quality education within a safe and respectful setting?
The school board has an absolute duty to ensure all students are offered and have access to the best opportunities in securing their ideal path to a successful and productive future. This is best achieved when those who make decisions are actively seeking input from all those who are underrepresented. This does not mean that policy is made on “behalf of them” but rather with the “help of them.” We cannot assume, even as an elected board of decision-makers, that we know what is best for any group. Those realities are only ever known after having spoken with those affected.
Schools are being asked to handle the increasing mental health concerns of students. Would you support increased funding and policy changes in addressing these needs?
With mental health issues on the rise, we cannot begin to expect that academic achievement will not suffer. It is imperative that we seek to understand the sources of mental health issues ranging from COVID-related isolation, to how we define and recognize bullying and the role that social media is playing on the social psychology of young minds. Upon identifying those variables that are affecting students’ mental health we will be best equipped to make the most advantageous financial investments in their future well-being. This will require the cooperation of both the Board, the school faculty and Administration, and parental involvement. I have no doubt that via the cooperation of the district at large and through the careful and creative examination of the budget we will determine a win-win-win solution to continue the necessary investments in our children’s well-being.
Do you agree with the actions of the School Board aimed at keeping students, staff, and teachers safe during the Covid pandemic? If not, what would you do differently going forward?
The decisions made by the school board and the school’s superintendent were no doubt made with the best intentions in mind. It is hard to fully understand the pressure that they were under when their COVID-related decisions were made. I cannot disagree with their initial reactions given the statement “better safe than sorry.”
However, I cannot dismiss the fact that there were legitimate concerns from the community over how the board, as an elected body, chosen for their ability to pool resources and collective wisdom for situations such as this, had relinquished their authority during the pandemic to the school superintendent. Moreover, after two years of lockdowns, quarantines, e-learning, endless COVID opining, and incessant amounts of political rhetoric related to covid I believe it should have been a priority of the board to get back to a state of governing normalcy as quickly as possible.
It is my opinion that the board should reinstate their elected control over all district decisions, reinstate committee meetings so that much-needed work can get done, restore as much as possible in-person board meetings, ensure public opinions are heard and considered without judgment, and formally present multiple contingency plans in the event things do not get better. The board should be preparing for a reopening to normalcy so that once it arrives everyone hits the ground educating.