On Sunday afternoon, my kids participated in the annual Texas State University String Project Spring Recital. The String Project is a wonderful program started by Texas State professors Ames Asbell and Karla Hamelin that instructs elementary school children in the Suzuki method, while also training college students to become music teachers.

One of our greatest strengths as a district is our access to a wealth of community resources, including Texas State, as well as numerous church communities, innovative small businesses and nonprofits, and multinational corporations.

We need to expand access across the district to programs already on offer that draw on the resources of our community partners.

School Fuel—originally a partnership of First Baptist Church and CTMC, which provides hundreds of kids with nutritious food every week—is a prime example. Another is the after school computer coding club at my children’s elementary school that was created by Eduardo Rios, an SMCISD father who works at Microsoft.

We need to emulate and build on programs like:

• Creation in Motion, a modern dance class for kids taught by college students and created by Kaysie Seitz Brown in the Dance Department at Texas State;
• Early Act First Knight, a character building program sponsored by the Rotary Club;
• Lego Robotics, an after school club started by SMCISD father Johnny Vargas;
• ArtSpace, a studio art class for children held at El Centro and directed by Professor Linda Kelsey-Jones that trains Texas State art majors to become art teachers.

I believe that participation in extracurricular activities increases a student’s overall engagement in his or her own learning process.

As a board member, my priorities will be working for student equity, improving early childhood education, expanding extracurricular opportunities for all students—and especially at the elementary and middle schools, and ensuring that all of our students graduate college and career ready.

–Anne