(11/1) I want to thank the Emmitsburg News-Journal for offering candidates this platform. This has of course been a unique election cycle in an unprecedented year. I hope that you and your family are doing well and staying healthy.

I’d like to tell you a little more about my background. I have spent much of my life connecting with and advocating together with students with special needs. This advocacy is personal. My younger brother is on the autism spectrum. And this advocacy is professional. I have worked as a special education teacher and a habilitation specialist for people with developmental disabilities. These experiences have shown me the necessity of strong special education programs. On the Board, I will advocate on behalf of the families who must send their children to other counties or homeschool them due to inadequate county programs. By taking best practices from other districts, we can strengthen the programs in FCPS to meet all our children’s needs.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues, the Board has the difficult task of evaluating when and how students should return to school. It is a goal of mine to safely bring students to school in-person under the hybrid model developed by FCPS. I am disappointed that the current Board was not more proactive in exploring such plans over the summer. While FCPS produced a detailed, 200-page proposal for their hybrid learning model, I believe there are two issues that must be addressed before we can begin welcoming students back into our school buildings.

For one, not every school nursing position is currently filled. Additionally, we need a more robust plan for contact tracing when there is a COVID-19 case in a school. I believe the Board needed to work with far more urgency to ensure that the hybrid-learning plan that FCPS staff developed could be implemented. Of course, I write this in the context of COVID-19 positivity rate staying fairly consistent. Since July, our COVID-19 test positivity rate has stayed between 2-3%. Certainly the county should stay under a 5% test positivity rate in order for FCPS to proceed with the hybrid model.

A final piece of my platform that I want to tell you about is engaging directly with Frederick County residents through community conversations. If elected, I plan to hold conversations at libraries and schools throughout the county to hear directly from families on their experiences with FCPS. I believe that open, empathetic listening is needed now more than ever. It will help inform my perspective on all issues that come to the Board of Education.

Read David's October article