Leigh Walker (Place 1)

Question 1- As a chamber of commerce, we are interested in hearing what you think is your desired relationship for the business community and the Independent School District to work together and how might you help us achieve that relationship?

“Two months ago when I decided that running for school board was something I wanted to do, I decided I wanted to talk to some people who’d been there, some experts. I’ve met with three former mayors of Coppell and the current mayor of Coppell, and almost every single city councilperson. I’ve also served with several businessmen and business people on the committees, the bond committees and things like that. This is a really exciting question for me because I think this is where the future of education is going, is this private and public partnership. One thing, House Bill 5, a couple years ago, actually provided for this. What it said was you need to partner with local businesses, partner with businesses and schools to produce graduates that the community wants and needs. That’s where this whole endorsement plan came from, this House Bill 5. They said we want the schools to have the control, to work with their local businesses to create graduates that the local businesses want. I think Coppell ISD has done a great job and has some really great examples of that. For one, I went to the Engineering Expo, have ya’ll seen the solar car? The solar car is out there. Nissan sponsors that solar car, and of course that’s a perfect correlation, cars and solar cars. Another example, the [Education] Foundation had a robotics camp, a major sponsor was Verizon. Not only did they pay for it and staff it, but it sold out in 15 minutes, there were no spots for it. There’s an incubator program that they’re starting at CHS, talking with Dr Waldrip that they are rolling out next year. CISD does a really great job of this private business and this public education already. I think this is where the future is going, and I think we are doing a great job.”

Question 2- What makes you the best candidate to serve on the board of trustees?

“I want to echo what everyone said, saying thank you to the seven people up here who put themselves out there to be involved. Thank you very much for your willingness to serve and take this on. What makes me unique? I have three children in the schools and next year I’ll have a first grader, a sixth grader, and a ninth grader, and let me tell you, I’m plugged in. When I started this I thought ‘oh parent’s perspective, that means i have kids, I understand what a parent is going through,’ and that still holds true, but what it also means is I have my eyes and ears on the ground. I’m talking to parents of all levels and all ages all the time, and I don’t want the dialogue to end on election day. I want this communication to continue, and I have the framework in place to have that continue. When I say parent’s perspective, that’s what I bring to the table. Secondly, I’m a dedicated CISD volunteer. I’ve spent the past nine years getting to know this district and investing my time and effort in our schools, and I’m really proud of what I’ve accomplished with a group of dedicated parents and teachers at different schools. Obviously as Pinkerton PTO President, there’s several things we did. We doubled volunteer involvement on our board, we gave the highest monetary donation to our school in its history, so I really believe in the power of parents and I’ve seen it work. I have put in the hard work and the homework to be ready to serve on the board. Last of all, I’m very deeply invested in Coppell. My parents still live here, my in laws still live here, I was a student here, a parent here, I substituted so I was a teacher here. This is my hometown and I believe in it.”

Question 3- Demographers project that we will have 29,000 additional students in the district in the next 5-10 years. What is your solution to address the increase in population and potential overcrowding in our schools as well as addressing aging facilities and infrastructure?

“When I was thinking of it, I thought of the bond in the past, in the present, and in the future when we are talking about what we want to do for our schools. In the past, I’m the only candidate up here who has served on the 2016 bond steering committee, and I just want to tell you that that process, we worked very very hard to come up with a no-fluff proposal that dealt with exactly what you’re talking about- the growth issues and the renovations of our aging schools. I don’t like to call them aging schools because again, I graduated from one in 91’, but it does need to be redone. One example working with that bond committee, we sat in tables, they had business members, people from different schools, people of different ages, we had to prioritize every single thing that was on that bond, and a lot of things didn’t make it. One of the things that didn’t make it was orchestra. I was a huge proponent, I think we should have an orchestra program here in CISD. After working together as a group, we decided that wasn’t a priority, that wasn’t dealing with the growth and the renovations so it went off the table. Now present. I’ve been to five or six presentations about the bond and I’ve listened to what the community has to say about it, and I’ve also had some questions, and when I have some questions I go ahead to the experts. I’ve talked to Kelly Penny, who is our CFO, Sid Grant, I wanted to know more about the bond bidding process, and I came away from that feeling really confident once again that this bond is something I should support. I’m going to vote yes, I hope you do too. When it comes down to it, in the future, on May 8, we are either going to have a bond that’s passed, or a bond that’s not passed, and that’s when the hard decisions are going to come in.”

Question 4- We are a very diverse community now, how will you unique the community behind our schools?

“I get really excited about this question as well and it’s something I can speak to from being in the trenches volunteering at the elementary school level. I’d like to tell you about something that we did do because we kind of experienced a waning parental involvement and we had to think out of the box and figure out new solutions and let me just tell you one. One was there are people who want to get engaged, we have to make that happen. We have to recognize that the way people volunteer and get involved in schools doesn’t look like what it looked like maybe 15, 25 years ago, so one thing we came up with is a dad’s club. We have a lot of dads that wanted to volunteer, my husband being one of that works downtown and said you know at the time and parents, all different types of parents that they couldn’t come and volunteer at the salad bar for 15 minutes you know on a Wednesday without taking a half day at work. But how could we get more male role models in our school?  And so we started this dad’s club and what we said is let’s have one day a year where a dad can take off and come and volunteer for the whole day.  At 7:25 a.m. in the car loop line, you know helping kids out all the way to 3:30 p.m. and we thought maybe we’ll get five dads you know that would be willing to take a full day off work.  Let me tell you, we filled the whole semester, every single Tuesday until the end of the year from when we rolled out the program in January and then we doubled back with Thursdays. We figured out a solution that worked for our population and and then we also looked at grandparents, at the same type of thing. We started grandparents club. You know I think in CISD we do what we talked about for a great job of interacting with business community and community volunteers as well. I think we just need to kind of think out of the box and come up with great ideas because our parents want to be involved we just have to make sure we drop all those obstacles and make it happen.”