Mrs. Lisa Paris is running for a school board position in District 4 of Oldham Co. Schools, KY.

Lisa can be reached through email at: sparisdda@aol.com
(For more detail on the exact questions asked, see the Survey Guide)

TOPIC ESSAY ANSWER MOTIVATION:  I am running for many reasons.  The most important reasons for me are financial oversight, a return to respecting the number one stakeholder- the parents, a return to positive education that is grounded in material that informs and uplifts the student, is well written and interesting.  I feel like my finance background makes me uniquely qualified for the financial oversite aspect.  I feel like my 17 years having students in public school gives me insights from a parent perspective that educators and law enforcement don’t necessarily have access to.  I know how it feels to be told you cannot review your child’s test.  I know how it feels to have your child’s civil rights trampled.  I know how it feels to be word smithed by teachers and I know how hard it is to get your IEP followed and to get your female ethnic kid into a gifted program or robotics.  I know the dismay of seeing only wrong answers as options on a civics quiz you accidentally found in a backpack, and I know the trail of tears you go through with a chronic condition and a path of absences and nasty grams that come with it.  I know all about the too small chairs for an average 5th grader and the smell of septic at recess.  I know about the teachers who give bad grades for differing opinions and who brag about their abortions to 6th and 7th graders.  I know the school will have meetings with parents but won’t do what the parent requests, the number one stakeholder, requests and that I have found 100% of the time is the best thing for the child.  I know that the teachers are under paid and not valued for their worth and the admin is top heavy and I know that there are amazing teachers and staff who somehow make it through the day without getting burned out in spite of losing their autonomy as educators their medical freedom as citizens and not being able to check in with the 7 students they worry about because they have to update the daily log and I know that I am the kind of person that will shine a light on the injustices convince people to reevaluate what they think and challenge my own bias every single day and above all respect the wants and needs of the biggest stakeholders the parents and because I am who I am I am the only person for this position who can be a catalyst for getting OC back on track. ROLE OF EDUCATION:  These boxes are tiny and my thoughts are huge on this topic.  k-12 education should be fact based.  Completely factual.  The reading material should be elevated and challenging nonviolent and non-sexual in all ways.  All educators should have a firm understanding of neuroscience in order to be able to understand how kids learn and how to teach them facts.  Languages like Latin should be required in 5th through 8 grades.  Expectation needs to be raised and we need to stop teaching to the most oppositional student and start teaching to the most elevated student and they will all fall in line.  We need to stop taking the easy way out and using hot buttons to create interest.  Right now education has been captured and politicized and we may never get to the moon again because of it.   Kids cannot count change and don’t see any reason to read a book or figure something out.  At this point I think the best ways to fix the huge disconnect is to remake the public schools, give parents unlimited choices and let the competition begin because the parents know what works best and that will encourage all schools to provide better ideas better solutions and better outcomes which is what we all want.  Many people who have not really dissected the issues say that for instance charter schools would bankrupt public schools and I can tell you that is not the case at all.  It’s a blind spot the teachers union use to shut down dialogue.  I can explain all of this but not in 500 words or less.  Schools should make children hopeful proud of their world their country their community.  Schools should make them feel connected and special and should prepare them to be critical thinkers and knowledgeable adults who are eager to find truth in all things and who are not ashamed of their race or their ethnicity or their dreams.  School should be an extension of the family not an opponent to the family and above all it should be locally run with no pressure from outside the district that is tied to money.  Private schools are a place to run to if you have means.  Vouchers, charters all of those would elevate all students to above private school results. CURRENT DISTRICT ASSESSMENT:  Studies done Nationwide showed that free lunch programs for all students raised all math scores some as much as 16%.  It’s a socialist idea I don’t really appreciate but it’s also a family first idea that showed absolute results and I think we should find some waste in the budget and find a way to institute it in OC.  OC has never had so much money and I want to see where it is all going because the classroom sizes are still too big the teachers are under paid, but we keep getting more and more ineffective programs and rotten books and new paint.  We need to dig deeper make better choices and steer in a direction that produces real education and not hot topic mush.  There are ways to do it.  We need to do it. ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE:  I think there are some immediate and easy ways to elevate instruction.  Hire teachers with degrees in the area they are teaching. Let teachers teach their way.  Pay the teachers whose students do the best on standard tests more. Teach languages in elementary and middle school.  Make memorization a thing again by requiring public speaking of memorized texts like speeches and poems in every grade. Bring back better reading choices that force thinking about issues that are not on tik toc and reward excellence.  Let kids test out of classes all the time every class every semester make it a big production.  Don’t force smart boards on teachers who don’t use them or need them leave the chalk board and white boards alone.    Put friend groups in same classes the same lunch and let them learn friendly competition with each other and push each other to excellence.  If they are disruptive then they get broken up the next semester.  Make discipline have a pinch.  Acted out in class?  Write complete sentences by hand before you can come back.  Copy the constitution 5 times or write a letter to congressman about an issue something to earn the right to be in class and a public apology for disrupting.  The apology to the class is important.  How about pairing an 8th grader to incoming 6th graders to show them around and check on them help with homework etc in pride time?  I can go on there are lots of ways to promote kids wanting to learn and the testing is already in place for tracking these things.  I would actually not test any k-5 kids at all.  But most of these ideas are just ideas in a board situation with multiple votes these kinds of things would not be addressed in a cut and dry way but in a gentle morph over time. TAXING & SPENDING:  I will never raise taxes.  If they cannot educate 12k kids for 12000 each then we just need to cut back until we can.  Smarter spending sharper pencils less fad programs and forced expenditures.  We can do it I know we can.  There is a lot of waste like all government institutions. We just need to say put the math program fund into free lunches for all and that alone will produce results as the studies show and we can use math programs we already have to teach from we don’t need the next new thing every year.  Math hasn’t changed in 40,000 years.  Common core is not developmentally appropriate in the math area we should scrap it in elementary altogether and go back to basic math anyway.  I sound radical.  Still if we don’t consider radical change, we cannot possibly make the best choice.  I think we should think radically discuss it and see what our teachers think they know what works and once we decide we stick to it until its not working or something changes our mind.  Listening to salesman tell us what we need and voting yes across the board is the last thing that should be happening and that is what I see at every meeting. CHARTER SCHOOLS:  I think parents have an intrinsic and constitutional right to choose for their students.  If there is a charter presented that is soundly planned and vetted, I would support it.  I have many reasons why and I can explain why it would be better for other schools like common public ones as well on more than 2 major fronts.   SEL & DEI:  SEL is also a brain washing technique devised by the earliest communist governments to turn soldiers into spies.  In the hand of government institutions, it is suspect and if dabbled with should be kept on a very tight leash.   DEI is another form of SEL with a target agenda punch.  By elevating the reading material and removing violence and sex from curriculum choices these two insidious programs would be heavily watered down.  These two programs might be the single biggest reason for the mental health emergency we currently have among children.  I think once again calling it what it is speaking truth showing people good people who have been taught this and who teach it this way need to know they are being manipulated its mind games and brain teases all k-12 should be fact based.  Not esoteric sad depressing stories or fictional perfect characters to provide that .00001 percent possibility and make an impressionable mind think that is how the world is.  We got the report card this is a bad curriculum model it needs to go it’s a failure we need to go back to what works. RESOURCE ALLOCATION:  Well as my ideas usually are they are out of the box.  Why are there hardly any ethnic kids in gifted and talented?  Why are the kids segregated into the English learner school doing so much better on standardized tests than the general population of kids and why when we absolutely know that 17 to 1 student teacher ratios have the best outcomes are we filling faculty lounges with administrators instead of classrooms with teachers?  Why are we spending 43000 for a critical race theory consultant instead of demanding 30% of gifted and talented classes include kids of color and showing all kids that they all are on the same playing field by our actions?  Why don’t we insist that only 30% of gifted and talented classes can be district staff relatives? Why don’t we insist that robotics include 50% female and 30% students of color or protected class?  Instead of paying out the ear to talk about discrimination let’s do something about it.  How much is it to have a speech therapist on staff for phonemic awareness issues and if we have that person on staff can we do away with the mental health therapist later because of it?  Because kids who have the right kind of instruction early so kids don’t check out later in various ways.  Why can’t we spend the teacher training time on boots on the ground techniques that work for teaching the dyslexic kids so every class these kids get the right kind of scaffolds instead of spending that precious time teaching teachers how to think the same group think we should be teaching them how to think differently and glory in their creative solutions and the ways they apply the knowledge and set them up for success in their career and make it rewarding?  The English learners have 17 to 1 ratios.  Let’s make that happen for all the kids in the district and feed them all every day and let their dads guard the halls and maybe in a short time we would see huge results with not much money spent on the newest thing. STUDENT DISCIPLINE:  All discipline should be the same.  Not every infraction should lead to criminal charges and children should all be handled with love as the school is an extension of the family.  Major infractions should be punished the same for all students. Teachers’ kids should get harassed for wearing skimpy negligée just like the girls of color and the jock chewing gum should get called out 5 times in class just like the trans kid and teachers should be disciplined when they do not follow this protocol.  Teachers should challenge their own bias when outing a child in school and if they find they are afraid to out a jock or a popular kid they need to address that with training.  Anonymous surveys could help identify the teachers that need help treating everyone the same.  Stopping bullying starts with the leadership and it needs to be a serious discussion.  A kid who disrupts class should have a punishment that is difficult, time consuming, and rigorous in order to earn a place back in the class and they need to publicly apologize to the class.  I think there would be flippant kids who won’t do the work and they can sit for days in detention until they do their own check up from the neck up and if they fall behind so be it, respect for authority is an important lesson all of its own.  Parents would be informed, and it would be the case for all kids who disrupt class. COVID:  Parents should have the ability to opt their children out of any mandates. ANY ILLICIT PERSONAL CONDUCT:  No, I have never been convicted of a felony.  I have never had any sort of civil or criminal penalty regarding sexual misconduct.  I served on a water district board for 2 terms and resigned before the second term expired because we moved out of state.  I was elected 2x to that position by my neighbors, a community of 375 homes.  I am not under any investigations at all and have never been under investigation for any license I have ever held including insurance sales, teaching certificates and others.   OTHER THINGS VOTERS SHOULD KNOW:  I solemnly promise to all of the citizens of OC that I will think through every decision and talk to stakeholders and find solutions.  You will not always agree with me but I will never lie to you.  I will never deny that something is happening when it is.  I will always choose what the parents think is best for their child. I will bring back a culture of Parents as the number one stakeholder.  I with push back the dehumanizing and policing culture that has overcome our district.  I will make choices that I know are best for families and students based on what I know and have learned about education in my life and with all of my kids and their various issues over the years.  I have 6 kids in the district right now.  I will keep you in the loop and listen to you in order to find solutions that incorporate your insights and not just as a formality to make you feel heard.  I am a little bit of a loose cannon for people.  Even my friends disagree with me on key issues.  I might shake things up now and then.  I will never have you removed for spirited discussion.  I will never treat you with disdain.  I will never sell my vote for money or power or prestige or consensus.  I will never do what I am told.  I will do what I think is right and best and, in the interests of our students our parents and our community I will challenge what I see as wrong, and I will persuade and disagree and always tell you why.  I will ask questions until I get my answers and then I will find a way to make it work.  I have a lot of talent in this area I am not arrogant it’s a fact I am good at problem solving budgets and cutting to the heart of problems.  Don’t be scared off because I am assertive, I came by it naturally and I use my powers for good and I always second guess myself before I second guess anyone else and I have to pass my own scrutiny before I engage in friendly debate.  I can be wrong and sometimes I am but not usually.  Anything I have said here I believe in my heart and if you disagree, I welcome a discussion with you.  Change my mind it won’t hurt my feelings at all.  I’ve seen how things operate and this community does not have a school board that represents them, and they really need it. Our kids need it.