Our Mission & Values

Transparency is a critical component in building and maintaining trust, understanding, and consensus on issues affecting Westfield Washington Schools and our community. That means when changes to the agenda or deviations from normal procedure occur the board should not only follow all formal open door policies, but take additional steps to inform the public in a timely manner. Also, during closed door sessions, decisions and deliberations should be well documented to help the public understand how and why the board reached their conclusions. We support school board candidates that value transparency by keeping open lines of communication between all parties.

The optimal form of fiscal responsibility is not cutting budgets, but rather maximizing the value of every taxpayer dollar. Sustainably growing programs and services that have a high return on investment is not just crucial for growing businesses, but also growing school districts. Perhaps just as important is when responsible district spending is proposed it always ties back into the long term vision and mission of the district and directly benefits the students. The current Westfield Washington Schools Business Department has made tremendous strides over the last four years to dramatically improve the district’s financial position. We believe candidates for school board should look to support the department’s solid business practices to compound the learning opportunities provided to students.

We are extremely lucky to have so many experienced, high quality, teachers and staff in the Westfield Washington School District and supporting them has always been the right thing to do. Unfortunately, the current national teacher shortage makes the consequences for falling short in doing so higher than ever. The Indiana Department of Education is reporting thousands of open positions and neighboring school districts will be fiercely competing with us for our students’ greatest resource. Comprehensive support for our teachers should include progress toward pay more reflective of our educational success, a community that rallies behind them, and a board that sets clear policies and procedures to protect them and allow them to in turn protect the students. Our District’s average salary in 2019-2020 was 18th in the state, behind competitors Carmel (#5) and Hamilton Southeastern (#1), and needs to be improved so we don’t lose the pillar of our schools to neighboring districts. The last few years have seen an explosion of money and resources from national groups, whose main goal is the privatization of schools, being pumped into districts nationwide. Their strategy has been to spread misinformation leading to targeted harassment of teachers and overrun local school boards leading to policies that are actively harmful to teachers and students. In order to push back and protect Westfield school’s students, staff, and teacher from outside agitators, we need school board candidates who will take a firm and public stance against such actions and encourage the community to do the same. We believe disciplinary policies and procedures should be solidified at the district level, especially on sensitive topics such as bullying. Teachers should not be put in the position of guessing intent or impact when it comes to prescribing discipline. Consistent and transparent policies set clear expectations for both students and parents while ensuring matters are handled equally from student to student and school to school. We support candidates that will strive to build relationships with administrators, teachers, and staff to show support in each of these key areas.

Above all else, parents & guardians want to know that when they send their kids to school they are safe. There are countless examples every year of teachers and staff jumping into action to protect our children from threats, both physical and psychological. We ask so much of them, but they shouldn’t have to do it alone. That is why we strongly support candidates who will partner with administration and staff in their continued efforts to keep students physically and mentally safe. We believe school board candidates should work to build policies and procedures to ensure all students in Westfield feel safe in their school community. Our children need an inclusive and diverse space to develop their social and emotional skills. When students learn how to identify and understand others’ feelings, they are more likely to show kindness and compassion. In addition, increased empathy can lead to decreased aggressive behavior, both verbal and physical, and incidents of bullying. All of which lead to safer schools for our kids.

The diversity of language, culture, socioeconomic status, race and abilitity continues to grow within our school district and as a result, the tools and strategies used to unite such a wide range of students and community stakeholders must grow as well. Our belief is that any successful effort to solve this will be rooted firmly in building strong partnerships between schools, families and their community, supported by positive and proactive communication. As a public representative of the schools, the school board and any candidate seeking election should be helping to lead the way. Here are some ideas we’d like to see candidates pursue to build partnerships and improve communication:

• Deliberately work to build partnerships with community groups that have been historically under-represented.
• Deliberately work to build partnerships with local small businesses that may be unable to finance large sponsorship or partnership opportunities.
• Work to create fun and unique volunteer opportunities for community members, especially kids and older adults who may not be reached with existing options.
• Continue to build and grow the district’s positive and proactive messaging around our schools. Positive examples include the Student of the Month and Rock Strong Awards.
• Encourage school leaders and administrators to actively seek input from new sources before making decisions impacting families to better uncover conflicts that might not be obvious. For example, small accommodations may be helpful in making after school activities more accessible to single parents.
• Continue to test the capabilities and creativity of our district’s communications team to find innovative ways to get information to parents in a way that is most useful. Advances in technology have made this a key area where trial and error makes sense and the growth here in the last two years has been very encouraging.