CHARLOTTE WILSON

We need to look honestly at academic data, identify where students are falling behind, and determine whether district programs are producing measurable improvement. That means looking beyond presentations and averages. • Which campuses are improving? • Which student groups are struggling? • Are interventions working? • Are students who have spent multiple years in Princeton ISD making the academic progress we should expect? If a program isn’t producing results, we should be willing to change it. Our students don’t have years to wait for adults to acknowledge that something isn’t working. Measure it. Evaluate it. Improve it.

Families should not feel that the quality of their child’s education depends on which side of an attendance boundary they happen to live on. This issue became especially important as growth and rezoning affected families in the peninsula area. Families were reassigned while the school intended to serve their growing area was still years away from opening. Some were assigned to James Elementary, a campus already facing significant academic challenges. Moving attendance boundaries should have been accompanied by an equally serious conversation about what additional support the receiving campus needed. If we move the students, we must be willing to move the resources. When a campus is struggling academically, adding students without providing resources and intervention commensurate with the campus’s needs is not a long-term improvement strategy. And Princeton ISD does not operate in a vacuum. Families have choices. For some families in our growing areas, a higher-performing campus in a neighboring open-enrollment district may be approximately as convenient as the Princeton ISD campus to which they have been rezoned. When families lose confidence and choose another district, Princeton loses more than enrollment. We lose students, associated funding, community confidence, and families who should be helping us build the future of Princeton ISD. Don’t just move the boundary. Move the resources. Move the outcomes.

An IEP is not simply paperwork completed for compliance. It is an educational commitment to a child. Parents should be able to trust that services are delivered, accommodations are implemented, goals are meaningful, progress is monitored, and decisions are based on actual student data. Teachers also need the staffing, training, schedules, resources, and support necessary to implement those plans correctly. Accountability must exist at every level. I want Princeton ISD to become a district families can point to as an example of what strong special education can look like. Compliance is the floor. Student progress should be the goal.

We need to examine the systems affecting their daily work. Teachers should spend their time teaching, planning, collaborating, analyzing student data, communicating with families, and improving instruction—not completing unnecessary tasks simply because 'that's how we've always done it.' Before implementing another initiative, platform, assessment, or requirement, district leadership should ask: 1. What problem does this solve? 2. What evidence shows it will improve student outcomes? 3. What will we remove from teachers' workload to make room for it? Teacher retention is connected to working conditions. Listening to educators is not lowering expectations. It is how we build systems that actually work.

Families should be able to understand what the district is doing, why decisions are being made, what those decisions cost, and whether they are working. Board members should ask difficult questions respectfully, examine data before voting, and understand the long-term financial impact of major decisions. Disagreement is not dysfunction. Healthy governance requires independent thought. I will not measure success by whether everyone at the board table agrees. I will measure it by whether decisions can withstand questions, evidence, and public scrutiny.

That requires long-term planning for schools and capacity, attendance boundaries, transportation, staffing, teacher recruitment/retention, special education, technology, academic programs, student safety, and financial sustainability. Building another school solves a capacity problem. It does not automatically solve an academic problem. As taxpayers invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the future of Princeton ISD, we should expect excellent facilities and excellent educational outcomes inside them.