What is your connection to the Wauwatosa Community? 

I moved here in 2008. I moved to the Milwaukee area because my wife was accepted at the Medical College of Wisconsin, and we were choosing which area we wanted to land in. And we chose Wauwatosa specifically because of the schools which are some of the best in the state.

Why are you running for school board?

 I joined the Eisenhower PTA. When my son joined Eisenhower in 2022 we went through some very fairly serious issues at the time, we had a lot of turnover one year, and what I found out is that the teachers weren’t feeling supported in that building, among other things. So I started to work on that problem. Then I got involved in the Yes to Tosa Kids campaign. I was the treasurer there, because I realized that in order to get the support that the teachers needed in Eisenhower, and if we were to roll that out across the district, we were going to need more money. So I got involved in the Yes to Tosa Kids campaign, and now it’s the completion of the arc. Right now, I need to make sure that everything that I worked so hard to do for Eisenhower and then for the district is then executed across the district responsibly.

What will be your number one priority on the school board? 

If I am elected on April 1, April 2 is when the job starts. The next two to three months are going to be me focusing all of my extra time on changing the state legislature’s funding of public schools. I’ve already spoken at the Capitol Building in favor of increasing school funding. I’ve been on radio interviews in Boston, which if they did not pass their referendum, they were going to have to dissolve and be absorbed by other things. We’re not necessarily overspending. We’re spending what we decide that we need to support, and we get a certain amount of funding, but that funding from the state is not kept up with inflation. If you can’t keep up with inflation, you’re going to have to have cuts, and that’s what we’ve been doing for the past 15 years. And it’s only been recently that we started to reverse that, only the past two, three years. So that’s the first thing that I’ll get to do among all my other competing priorities. 

In your opinion, what has our school board/district done well?

 In the past three years, there’s been almost an entire revisioning of what school should look like and comparing that to where it is now. That’s why, when Eisenhower had its issues, we fit very easily. The argument was not very tough to get more resources, because they realized that it was a crisis point for that school, then they reacted well, the goal is to make sure that every student is fully engaged in their educational development. And that means everything from the boring history classes, making those better, to making sure that the students who prefer to go into technical schools are supported, because that’s important, and making sure that the kids or the students who don’t know what they’re doing, have the guidance to figure out where their passions are and where they want to go .In order to do that, you have to understand what’s going on across the board. And there’s been a lot of work trying to figure out where the buildings are.

What unique professional or personal perspective will you bring to the board?

In 2008, I immediately took a teaching position in Milwaukee as a teacher of at risk youth. So those are the kids who are teen parents. Those are the kids who have significant behavioral challenges. Recently, there’s been a development of a program where we take those types of kids, put them into a smaller building with smaller people, so they have more dedicated one-on-one time with teachers. So I’ll bring that to the board, because those are the types of students that frequently slip through the cracks. I’ve worked with colleagues of Sarah Burzynski but I worked with her colleagues to teach teachers how to teach. So that’s like, how do you teach math better? How do you engage students more? It’s not standing up in the front of the classroom and just lecturing at them and giving them a worksheet that doesn’t work anymore. So how does that change? And how can we change our practices as teachers in the buildings? So I played with that, and then I got burned out, and I retrained into finance and into business. So I’ll bring that perspective, because I’m currently the chief financial officer of a small consultancy that helps. Part of my job is literally teaching how to run a business to people who don’t know how. And you would expect that if you start a business, you know all this stuff, but it’s absolutely not true. So trying to build those connections with people across many different backgrounds is part of all of my jobs, whether it was teaching or finance and business.

How will you ensure students’ perspectives are represented on the school board? 

Why aren’t there mechanisms to influence the school board students as they come into it,  whether that’s through student council or student governance, whether that’s through National Honor Society. Do they have accurate representation, or do they even meet? So there’s work that can be done there. I care about everyone’s voices. So let’s have meetings and let’s talk. If we can change the structure of the school, such that, as already embedded and enmeshed and expected, we’re going to have more success. If we can figure out a system where voices are being heard by students, we can funnel those voices into them, they can then speak at the board when they’re recognized by the President, and then it all kind of clicks.

What do you want to bring to the Tosa Schools? 

The financial aspect already, I’ve talked about getting more voices in there. What about the voice coming out of this district and the school board and in representing what is positive and going on, that’s a piece that is not missing. It’s there, but it’s lacking. there are dashboards that exist that have behavioral issues and the number of majors and minors and all this other stuff, but no one seems to know where it is. So improving the communications coming out of the schools and celebrating the positives that are going on in almost every school. How can we celebrate that, but then also at the same time, focus on the things that need to be improved, because there are always things that need to be improved in any system.

Are there any fun facts about yourself?

Quite honestly, was dreading this question because I am the world’s most boring person. I multiple times throughout the past couple of years as I’m watching school board meetings, I’m texting my friends talking about how, like, Ooh, did you see that? My family is important, that sort of thing, the only other thing that I get that genuinely excited about in any other realm is Dungeons and Dragons. I have been playing Dungeons and Dragons for 30 years. And the revival in popular culture, the fact that we’re getting good movies made about it, and the fact that people not my age are playing it at times.