Students first. Results matter. Good governance asks what comes next.

Build from what Centennial already has

Centennial has dedicated employees, strong programs, capable administrators, a strategic plan, public performance measures, CTE programs, CAL access, student supports, and an active long-range facilities process. I do not believe the district needs someone to walk in and declare that everything being done today is wrong.

I do believe the Board should make more consistent use of those tools. Completing an activity or receiving a presentation is not the same thing as knowing whether the intended student outcome changed.

Retention → re-engagement → attraction

Enrollment is a good example of why careful interpretation matters. Changes in the number of children entering school, housing development, migration, and family enrollment choices can have different effects. Centennial has published enrollment forecasts through 2034–35, but projections are not actual student counts, and housing growth alone does not establish how many students will enroll.

Comparisons of district enrollment with Census estimates of school-age residents can provide context, but they are not an exact measure of the share of resident children attending Centennial. Enrollment may include students from outside district boundaries, and population estimates carry uncertainty. Any claim about changes in Centennial’s resident-student enrollment share needs a consistent definition and verified, comparable figures.

My approach starts with retention. Understand when students leave, why they leave, and where the biggest transition points are. Then focus on re-engagement—students who are becoming disconnected through attendance, course failure, alternative placement, or other signs before they disappear from the system. Attraction comes after that: build a school experience and program mix people genuinely value, then communicate it well.

Student connection is bigger than attendance

Attendance, belonging, the transition into high school, credit accumulation, activities, alternative education, graduation, and re-engagement are different views of the same question: is a student connected to school and able to see a reason to keep going?

I want the Board to see those indicators early enough to be useful. If we fund an intervention intended to improve attendance or ninth-grade success, we should know how many students it reached, what it cost, what outcome it was intended to change, what happened, and what administration recommends doing next.

Complete pathways beyond graduation

Centennial already has Career and Technical Education programs, career exploration, CAL opportunities, dual-credit options, and investments intended to prepare students for life after graduation. I do not believe we should pretend that work does not exist. I believe we should connect and deepen it.

I want Centennial to think in terms of complete pathways: middle-school exploration, a clear high-school entry point, advanced coursework, college credit or an industry credential, work-based learning, and an identifiable next step into an apprenticeship, college, training, skilled trade, or career.

That should include partnerships with community colleges, employers, apprenticeship programs, trade unions, and other organizations that connect classroom learning to real-world opportunity. Partners might provide mentors, facilities access, equipment, or work-based experiences. These contributions must supplement qualified educators, respect labor agreements, and be evaluated for access, student safety, ongoing costs, and educational value. The trades should be treated as a first-choice opportunity, not a fallback.

Success after Centennial, not only test scores

Reading, writing, mathematics, and academic growth remain essential. But students also need to leave Centennial able to pursue further education, apprenticeships, training, employment, and independent adulthood. Graduation and state assessment results are important indicators, not the complete definition of a successful education.

I want to examine credit accumulation, attendance and belonging, access to rigorous and applied learning, dual credit, industry credentials, work-based experiences, and postsecondary transitions where reliable information is available. We should report what we know, recognize what cannot be measured reliably, and not attribute every outcome to a single program.

Academic foundations and student services: what the public record shows

Centennial’s published Roadmap ’27 includes a strong pre-K–3 foundation, student wellbeing and inclusion, student voice, equitable access to academics, and preparation for the future. Its 2025–27 integrated plan lists early literacy support, kindergarten educational assistants, English Language Development supports, mental and behavioral health supports, college-level opportunities, CTE, and changes to special education placement practices. These are documented investments, not proof on their own that every intended student outcome has been achieved.

Reading and mathematics outcomes, services for students with disabilities, multilingual learner progress, school climate and safety, and family access to information all belong in a complete review of student experience. The next factual questions are what current measures show, which student populations they cover, what has changed over time, and which results are not yet available.

Source: Roadmap ’27 and Centennial Integrated Guidance. Program descriptions reflect published plans, not an independent program evaluation.

Protect the people who make school work

Putting students first does not mean treating employees as secondary. Teachers and classified employees are not abstract budget lines. Educators, educational assistants, custodians, bus drivers, nutrition workers, office staff, specialists, and other employees are the people students experience every day.

Student-focused budgeting should ask what staffing changes mean for classroom relationships, student supports, safety, transportation, nutrition, and school operations. I support listening to staff perspectives before major decisions and treating reductions in student-facing capacity as serious choices, not automatic balancing tools.

Educators are essential to student success

Teachers and the professionals who support them are among Centennial’s most important resources. When educators have reasonable workloads, appropriate class sizes and caseloads, planning time, professional support, and a voice in instructional decisions, they are better positioned to teach effectively and build lasting relationships with students. Employee satisfaction alone does not guarantee outcomes, but working conditions cannot be separated from educational quality.

I want proposed staffing and program changes to be evaluated for their actual educational and workforce effects—not just the dollars saved on paper. Meaningful engagement with teachers, specialists, educational assistants, and other classified employees should begin before major changes are finalized. Collective bargaining agreements and employee representation must be respected.

New instructional technology should have clear learning objectives, adequate training, room for professional judgment, and an honest evaluation of results. Outside experts and industry partners should enrich, not replace, the work of professional educators. Financial planning should account for retention, vacancies, workload, negotiated compensation and benefits, and the costs of implementing changes.

Connect student engagement, stable staffing, and financial health

Protecting teachers and classified employees requires more than avoiding short-term cuts. It requires a district that can sustain staffing and educational services through recurring revenue, responsible budgeting, and strong educational opportunities. Enrollment stability matters because Oregon's State School Fund relies largely on weighted membership, not on paying districts a fixed amount for each day a student attends. Retaining students and earning families' confidence may strengthen the revenue outlook, but additional students also bring costs. Any enrollment recovery scenario should identify the net financial effect rather than assume enrollment growth will erase the operating gap.

Regular-attendance rates are important indicators of students' connection to school, but they do not represent the percentage of school days attended and do not translate directly into an equal percentage of lost state funding. Improving attendance means understanding barriers such as transportation, health, belonging, student supports, and whether coursework feels relevant. Stronger academic foundations, meaningful pathways, effective partnerships, and flexible approaches consistent with Oregon standards may help students engage and persist; their results must be evaluated, not assumed.

I want the Board to consider these relationships together: student engagement and opportunity, enrollment and retention, sustainable revenue, employee working conditions, and long-term staffing levels. The purpose is to improve student outcomes while making the finances and services needed to support educators more durable.

Responsible finances require a longer view

I recognize the difficult financial choices facing Centennial. Whether past financial decisions have been effective should be assessed against adopted budgets, audited results, reserve trends, and multiyear forecasts. Reserves can be used strategically to soften short-term pressure and prevent abrupt reductions. But reserves are finite, and a recurring gap between ongoing revenue and ongoing cost cannot be solved permanently with one-time money.

The Board should maintain a clear multiyear view: recurring revenue, current-service cost, reserve trajectory, enrollment assumptions, grant expirations, compensation and benefit pressures, and the long-term effect of new commitments. A new recurring obligation should identify either a credible ongoing funding source or the tradeoff it creates—and the student impact of that tradeoff should be clear.

The district’s May 2026 Budget Committee correspondence projected a $16.3 million ending General Fund balance for 2026–27, a decline of approximately $5 million over two years. In that correspondence, the business office indicated that continued reliance on reserves was not sustainable and that additional revenue or targeted reductions could be needed as soon as 2027–28. These were budget projections, not audited year-end results.

A responsible reserve spend-down can protect students and staff from abrupt cuts while a district adjusts. It is not a requirement to exhaust savings. I want a publicly understandable five-year forecast, a clear operating-reserve target, an estimate of the recurring structural gap, and decision points that identify when action is required. The goal is to make planned, evidence-based adjustments before emergency choices become unavoidable—not to promise that every current service can remain unchanged regardless of resources.

Facilities should support the educational future—and equity

My service on the Facilities Advisory Committee has reinforced that long-range capital planning is not only a maintenance exercise. The long-range planning process examines facility condition, capacity, utilization, and educational suitability. Roofs, HVAC, life-safety systems, windows, and flooring are examples of systems that may require assessment or renewal; specific campus deficiencies and their costs should be established through the district’s assessments before being described as confirmed needs.

Equity should remain an important part of facilities planning. Centennial has made significant investments in its schools, including new gymnasiums at several elementary campuses, and those improvements deserve recognition. As the district looks toward future capital investments, I want decisions informed by consistent assessments of building conditions, educational suitability, student needs, and long-term costs. The goal should be to ensure that every school has facilities that support high-quality education, while recognizing that different campuses may have different needs.

If housing growth changes enrollment in the southern portion of the district, it may create capacity needs; the scale and timing should be tested against documented housing activity and student enrollment forecasts. But growth should not automatically outrank existing condition, safety, access, or educational-suitability needs elsewhere. Major capital decisions should bring condition and life safety, student access and opportunity, utilization and capacity, enrollment geography, educational suitability, lifecycle cost, and program needs into the same transparent framework—and ask whether an investment narrows or widens inequity.

Equity does not mean every school receives the same dollars, and it does not mean ignoring real growth. It means the Board should be able to explain why an investment addresses the highest student need and whether students across Centennial have fair access to safe facilities and strong educational opportunity.

Connect facilities planning to a possible 2028 bond

As the district considers a potential bond in 2028, any project should be evaluated for its educational purpose, independently documented condition or capacity need, capital cost, and long-term operating implications. A bond may finance eligible capital improvements, but it cannot be treated as unrestricted funding for recurring classroom operations.

Educators and classified staff should help define how spaces actually need to function—including classroom layout, accessibility, acoustics, temperature, storage, supervision, and career-connected learning. Potential industry or labor partnerships for equipment or shared training spaces should disclose who will pay for instructors, upkeep, utilities, transportation, and replacement equipment. The 2028 timing is a planning expectation, not an approved ballot measure or project list.

Make strategy operational

Centennial already measures many important outcomes. I do not want another giant report or a parallel strategic plan. I want a small set of important measures to come back to the Board consistently enough that they affect decisions.

The goal is not more reporting. It is to make existing reporting matter more—to budgets, superintendent goals, program decisions, workforce stability, facilities priorities, and the next strategic plan. A report should return with a decision, a next step, or a clear reason that no change is needed.

The Board’s role

I am not interested in disruption for its own sake, and I do not want a School Board that micromanages principals, teachers, or administrators. The Board’s responsibility is to set direction, establish priorities, adopt policy and budgets, examine results, ask difficult questions, and evaluate the superintendent. Administration should determine how the organization carries out that direction.

That division matters. An individual Board member cannot run the district. Good ideas have to become collective Board goals, public expectations, policy, budget choices, and accountable follow-through.

I do not want strategic planning to be a box we check. I want it to be the process through which we decide what Centennial becomes next.

Primary sources and interpretation notes

The factual context on this page draws on publicly available district records. Planning projections, adopted budgets, and descriptions of funded programs answer different questions and should not be treated as equivalent to measured outcomes or audited spending.

• Long-Range Facilities Planning — process, committee documents, and enrollment forecasting analysis (2025–26 through 2034–35).
• Boundary Review — 2025 FLO Analytics enrollment and facility-utilization reassessment following the 2021–22 boundary review.
• Budget and Financial Information — 2026–27 adopted budget and prior-year budget documents; adopted appropriations are not the same as audited actual spending.
• Board Policy DBDB — Fund Balance — describes reserve purposes and financial-stability considerations; it does not establish one universal fixed-dollar minimum.
• Integrated Guidance — district investment descriptions and reported strategies, including academic foundations and student supports.
• Roadmap ’27 — the district's published strategic priorities.

The $16.3 million reserve projection and two-year $5 million decline are attributed to the business office’s May 1, 2026 written Budget Committee responses; those correspondence figures should be reconciled with subsequent adopted budgets and audited actuals. The potential 2028 bond timeline has not been independently confirmed as an adopted election date. Source review: October 17, 2026. Where a claim involves resident-student enrollment share, site-specific building condition, or future construction impacts, additional underlying records and comparable definitions are required before presenting numerical conclusions.