Our purpose in sponsoring this forum is to pro provide you with an opportunity to hear directly from the candidates about issues that matter to you as questions tonight have been submitted by the public.

Tonight's forum is provided to give you an opportunity to learn about the candidates running for one of three open seats on the West Tonka School Board.

I want to continue asking the right questions, making sound decisions, and focusing on what matters most, providing the best educational experience for our students.

We continue to have the lowest taxes of any school district in Henipin County.

I am a reading specialist and the West Tonka school district is required to implement the Read Act. I am highly trained in the science of reading and I have been teaching children to read for six years.

My name is Gary Walner. I'm running for my fifth term on school board uh so that I can continue to support West Tonka students and the community with the educational direction that gives every student an opportunity to succeed.

One of the most important duties is making sure you give the opportunity for every student to succeed. And that comes down to the planning of our educational teaching and learning plans.

I see the role of a school school board member as overseeing policy, budget, hiring, and then transparency between the school board and the teachers and the administrators and our families.

One thing I learned early on in my school board career is that the school board are not the administrators, right? You let the administration administrate. You let the teachers teach.

All of us have strong views. Uh and we all have good reason for our strong views. But if we are going to be able to work to build consensus and to have our students do well, we have to be able to take differing perspectives and bring them together and come to some sort of a some sort of a resolution that honors the various views but also moves our agenda forward.

So I know that we are all trying to do what's best for the students. I I know I said last fall that if you had asked me how any of the other board members voted in a national election, I couldn't tell you because what we focus on when we get to our meetings is the students.

You got to be respectful to those people. Listen to them and not some of the other ideas that they come up with can be really fantastic for our district.

My top priorities are going to be number one. Um, working on getting this bond finished and we're about halfway through it and by fall of next year, we should have everything in place.

Assessing how we're doing with our students and also in particular reassessing the role of technology in the classroom and the use of digital devices. communicating communing with parents, teachers, and administrators about best practices in teaching, continuing to implement the ReadAct with rigor.

I believe our district right now is in a very healthy place. And so I see one of my priorities is working with the board and the administration and staff to continue the high quality of excellence we have here.

Currently underway, um, we just added recently more security at Hilltop and Shirley Hills, which includes shutdown zones. So, if there would be anybody threatening the school from the office now, they can shut down other parts of the school, lock down them basically.

It's sad that you have to think about this every day. What's what's going on? Um, and if somebody wants to get into your school, um, it's it's it's tough to stop them. I mean, it right now we doing everything we can to have everything in place to do it.

The trick to me is keeping the students and teachers safe from the outside world but trying to foster a sense of ease and safety and comfort in the school and that's the balance that we have to strike.

I absolutely support them. I think the most important thing we can do is to be on top of our students progress in real time. Um, I know like standardized testing happens in the winter or spring, I believe, but being able to use the fat the fast bridge and ongoing probes and I believe we now have professional um I'm not sure what it's called, but it's the teachers get together professional learning support groups. Um, and then with Edge Climber being a database where teachers and administrators can compile whether it's attendance or grades or behavior, it's all in one place.

As Liz said, I absolutely agree. I've been supporting this since we started it. We've been working with the University of Minnesota on developing this uh system of support which includes academic um mental health emotional support for all the students.

Yeah, I support it 100%. From the first day they started talking about this, I looked at it as such a positive thing where you can work with individual students, identify their needs and and the program.

It starts at the beginning if you if there is if there are problems you identify them and help the certain student work through them. And this this whole support system isn't just on the educational side. It's it's the emotional side too and the mental stability side um for for the students.

I'm hoping that as a school we can show that we respect all students and that all students belong and and obviously they're going to have students that are lower performing, higher performing, lots of kids in the middle, but that we have high expectations in a good way for them so that they all feel like I have something. I have some value. I have something I can provide.

We have a slogan in our schools. Many of you may know it. It's big school opportunity, small school advantages." And I think that the small school advantages is that part of that that tries to see the needs and the skills the the potential of each student.

You know, learning a AI for me is teaching an old dog new tricks. Okay. I'm 68. I'm learning that. Um the school district has already had a speaker come in and address the staff about AI and the possibilities of it.

Me too. I'm not an expert on AI, but we're starting the process, you know, and I've talked to a number of teachers about this and they think there's some really positive things that can come out of using AI, but they don't want students to stop being self-thinkers.

I feel very strongly that digital tools have a place in the classroom in a very limited manner. We know that um the use of technology actually can hinder learning and reading comprehension and it absolutely hinders the learning of spelling and reading for our earlier learners.

The read act really is why I decided to run because I am trained in the science of reading. It's it's I use an Orton Gillingham approach to tutoring my students.

We have to make sure that we're doing it uh with with rigor and looking at the whole picture of how we educate to make sure that it really sticks and that our students can benefit from this learning going forward and in the future hiring teachers who are already educated in the science of reading.