How I Plan to Show Up, Pay Attention & Fight for Students!

Every time a school board faces budget pressure, arts programs are first on the chopping block. Music teachers gone. Drama cut to one period a week. Visual arts sharing supplies across three classes. It happens quietly, without a public vote, and the cumulative effect on students is enormous. The same pressures that hollow out arts programming are quietly killing student clubs that aren't sports. Debate teams. Drama clubs. Film clubs. Environmental groups. The things that give kids who don't fit neatly into the athletic stream a place to belong inside their school.

This is what underfunding actually looks like on the ground. Not a dramatic cut, a quiet erosion. Year by year, program by program, until the school that remains is a narrower place than the one it used to be.

The arts aren't a reward for finishing the "real" work. They are real work. Research consistently shows that arts education improves academic outcomes, builds emotional regulation, and develops creative problem-solving that no standardized test measures. For neurodivergent & special education students in particular, arts programming and non-sport extracurriculars are often the place they find their footing, where school finally makes sense.

I say all of this as someone with a direct personal stake in it. I'm a graphic designer, it's how I built my career, my studio, and my life in this community. Not everyone can afford private lessons or specialized programs. For a lot of kids, what the school board funds is the only access they get. That matters. It mattered for me.

At Cobourg Collegiate Institute, students in the Fashion Arts program are building portfolios, learning design fundamentals, and developing real pathways into creative careers. At Adam Scott right here in Peterborough, over 170 Grade 11 and 12 students, more than a third of the senior student body, are participating in Specialist High Skills Majors including Arts & Culture. These programs work. They open doors.

KPR manages a $552M budget and arts education doesn't appear anywhere in it as its own line item. It's folded into general instruction spending. That is something that should make parents and fans of transparency nervous. When you can't see it, you can't protect it. When you are looking at extracurricular programming, it doesn't even get that. It runs on teacher goodwill that nobody is tracking until it's gone.

As your trustee I'll push to make arts education a distinct reported budget line. I'll advocate for structural support for non-sport extracurriculars that doesn't depend entirely on already-exhausted teachers volunteering their time.

• I'll protect existing arts programming before other discretionary spending is touched,

• I’ll push for dedicated arts positions rather than combined itinerant roles,

• I’ll support partnerships with Peterborough's arts community; SPARK, the Art Gallery of Peterborough, community music programs; to extend what schools can offer.

I'll make the case publicly, at every board meeting, that arts education is core curriculum and that the clubs built around it are not optional extras. They are part of what makes school worth showing up for.

Every student deserves to learn in an environment built for them. For students with exceptionalities; whether learning disabilities, autism, physical needs, or developmental differences; that means having the right supports in place, not just on paper.

KPR's special education funding exists. The question is whether it's reaching students the way it should. Caseloads for special education resource teachers are too high. Educational assistants are stretched across too many students. Identification and placement processes can be slow, opaque, and exhausting for families who are already advocating hard for their kids.

I know this terrain personally. As an adult navigating a formal assessment, I understand what it means to move through systems that weren't designed with you in mind and what a difference it makes when the right support arrives versus when it doesn't.

As your trustee I'll push for transparent reporting on special education resourcing across city schools, advocate for reasonable caseloads for resource teachers and educational assistants, and ensure that identification and placement processes are clear and accessible for families. Every student with an IEP deserves a team that has the time and resources to actually implement it, not just file it.

Special education isn't a budget line to protect when convenient and trim when tight. It's a legal obligation and a moral one. I'll treat it like both.

You can't learn if you're not okay. That's not a slogan, it's what teachers, support staff, and parents tell us every day. Too many Peterborough students are waiting too long for help, working with support staff who are stretched impossibly thin, or falling through gaps between school services and community resources.

KPR has a tiered mental health framework that begins in Kindergarten and follows students throughout their academic journey. That foundation is exactly right. My job as trustee is to make sure it's actually resourced at every level not just described in board documents while caseloads grow and wait times stretch. Mental health supports that exist on paper but aren't staffed adequately aren't supports at all.

This includes digital wellbeing. KPR's own parent engagement work has begun addressing screen time, social media, and youth connection because mental health in 2026 can't be separated from the online environments our kids are navigating every day. I'll push for the board to treat digital wellbeing as part of its mental health mandate, not a separate conversation.

I'll advocate for adequate resourcing for learning support staff so caseloads are actually manageable, clear board policies that protect vulnerable students including neurodivergent learners and 2SLGBTQ+ youth, and a board culture that treats student wellbeing as the foundation everything else is built on, not an afterthought funded with whatever's left over.

KPR just approved a $552M operating budget against a backdrop of declining enrolment and rising costs. That math is going to require hard choices in the years ahead. Trustees will be making those choices and you deserve to know exactly what they are and why.

I'll push for transparency in spending decisions, ask hard questions about where efficiencies are found before they touch classrooms and support staff, and communicate clearly with the public about what the board is deciding and what trade-offs are being made. Fiscal responsibility isn't about cutting quietly, it's about being honest.

Land acknowledgments matter only when they're backed by action. KPR's Indigenous Cultural Knowledge Credit is an example of reconciliation that actually means something in practice, giving Indigenous students in Grades 9-12 the opportunity to earn up to two OSSD credits for cultural and land-based learning that reflects who they are and where they come from. Programs like this, and initiatives like the "All Our Relations" installation created by Thomas A. Stewart students in collaboration with the Indigenous Education Department, show what's possible when the board takes its reconciliation commitments seriously.

I'll support the integration of Indigenous perspectives across subjects and school years, champion relationships with local First Nations communities, and ensure the board's reconciliation commitments translate into concrete support for Indigenous students and educators.

On Williams Treaty and Treaty 20 territory, that's not a formality, it's a responsibility.

New provincial history curriculum for Grades 7, 8, and 10 introduces important content on Black Canadian history, the Holocaust, and the Holodomor. Good curriculum is only as good as its implementation. I'll advocate for the professional development and classroom resources teachers need to do this material justice, not just compliance on paper.