Where I stand

Five important issues facing our schools

Our students' future is on the line. Here are five issues where judgment, clarity, and trust will matter most.

Equity & Belonging

Every kid gets a fair shot.

Every student should feel known, safe, and like they have a fair shot. Equity requires action, not just intention: asking what kids actually need, whether current programs are working, and whether each decision leaves students more or less supported.

Students also arrive carrying histories that can be a source of advantage or disadvantage, and a fair process accounts for that. I'll work to make sure every student has a real opportunity to learn and to become a full part of this community.

Academics & Future Readiness

Strong fundamentals for an uncertain future.

Strong academics are the foundation: deep reading, clear writing, real fluency in math and science, and the habit of thinking hard about difficult things. That foundation matters more now, not less.

Our kids are coming of age when the old promise that each generation will do better than the last feels less certain. Schools can't fix all of that. But they can help prepare students to adapt, create, and lead, and to be ready for college, work, and life, not just credentialed but genuinely able to think for themselves. Getting there means working alongside teachers, who know better than anyone what rigor looks like in their classrooms, and holding the bar high together. The board's job is to insist on a curriculum that pushes every student to grow, build civic literacy, and tackle hard problems.

Budget

Hard tradeoffs, made transparently.

The district faces real fiscal pressure, and the choices ahead are harder than they've been in years. I'll approach them with disciplined cost-benefit analysis that takes our community values into account. "Benefit" has to be defined broadly enough to include student outcomes, belonging, the distinctive programs that give each school its character, and the teachers who make them work.

When a program families rely on has to change, the people who depend on it deserve a real seat at the table before the decision, not an explanation after it; and then the board should make the call transparently and explain its reasoning. Much of our budget comes from a local parcel tax that's set to expire; I support renewing this locally controlled funding, and that renewal will pass only if budgeting is honest enough to earn the community's trust.

Phones & Focus

Protecting attention and real relationships.

Phones and social media are reshaping how students pay attention, relate to one another, and learn. I support protecting focused, phone-free learning time and the in-person relationships that make school work. Attention is the foundation of everything else we ask students to do.

Policies should be set with teachers and families, and be clear, consistently applied, and explained, with the humility to learn from what's working and adjust what isn't. The goal is to give students the conditions to think, focus, and connect.

AI & Thinking

Not anti-technology. Pro-thinking.

Students need to understand AI, because it will shape their education and their work. But the purpose of school is to develop students' critical thinking skills, not to provide machines that think for them. I'm pro-thinking, not anti-technology. How we draw that line should be worked out with teachers, the experts in the room, who see every day where these tools help learning and where they short-circuit it.

The principle I'd bring to the table is simple: most core learning stays AI-free, AI literacy is taught directly, and any AI-assisted work is designed so students still do the thinking and can show how they did it. Our kids will thrive in an AI world only if they first build the human capacities AI can't supply: judgment, creativity, ethical reasoning, resilience, and independent thinking.

If this is the kind of judgment you want on the board, join us.

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Paid for by Brian Sutherland for School Board 2026.