Cindy Kerr for St Paul School Board

I am raising campaign funds to help me get elected to St Paul School Board.  

Why am I running for school board?  

I believe there are a lot of kids in St Paul Public Schools that are not getting reached.  We are not helping them get the best start they possibly can.  I want to change that!  

My heart breaks when I watch the news and see young adults and teenagers getting into trouble.  I see one hurting kid after another that has been let down.  We need to change that and I vow to do that if I am elected on November 8th!

What makes me think I can do the job?

I currently live in St Paul and have for the past 11 years. I am a mother of two elementary school children. My daughter is in general education in St Paul Public Schools. My son was attending special education in St Paul Public Schools, but my husband and I have moved him to a private nonprofit specialty school for this upcoming school year due to shortcomings in the St Paul Public School District. I learned a lot about the IEP process, the lack of properly creating them and executing on them and seen several families of special education kids remove their children from the St Paul Public Schools due to these same shortcomings. We need to correct these issues and have great schools for both general and special education kids.

My husband and I adopted our kids out of foster care. In preparation for adoption/foster care (and since to understand my kids better), I taken a lot of training and done a lot of reading about trauma and fetal alcohol syndrome. I think we have a lot more kids in the St Paul Public Schools that have special needs, but have not been diagnosed. My son is very literal and expects when someone says something to him that it is fact. For example, if someone says they will do it in a minute, he will watch the clock and expect them to do it when the minute it up. He will be very frustrated after two minutes and the frustration just continues with each passing second, but he will rarely verbalize why he is frustrated. His brain gets stuck and can only focus on getting what he was told would happen. To an untrained person, they think the child has a behavior issue. The behavior is not the cause, but the output. I think training not only our teachers, but all staff on both trauma and fetal alcohol syndrome would go a long way in helping all of our kids get their needs met as well as feel respected and understood. We need specialists in schools that look at what is causing the behavior and adjust accordingly instead of punishing the child.  I think this would lead to safer schools. I am passionate about meeting all of our kids' needs and helping all of our kids be the best they can be!

I currently work as an Engagement Manager at ClickSoftware in Mendota Heights. Over my years in the business world, I have been pulled into special projects to analyze, brainstorm and create new processes. I think my personal and work experience together with my passion to improve St Paul Public Schools makes me an ideal school board member.