Education

I taught school

Before I went into nursing full time, I taught school. So when a parent tells me their child's class lost a teacher, or the reading program went away, or the bus route got longer, I know what that costs a kid. It isn't a line item. It's a year of that child's life.

I've also seen it the other way around, as a nurse practitioner: a child who can't see the board, or who comes to school hungry, or whose asthma isn't controlled, is not going to learn to read no matter how good the teacher is. Health and school are the same conversation in a district like ours.

Where the money is supposed to come from

Missouri promises to fund its public schools, and then funds them partly out of gaming, lottery and tobacco revenue. Those sources have fallen short — about $138 million short in FY2026. When they fall short, the shortfall lands on districts like New Madrid County R-1, Charleston, East Prairie and Portageville — districts with the least local property wealth to make it up.

My position is simple, and it's the same one I gave the League of Women Voters: fully fund public schools from the general revenue fund, in addition to funds from gaming, lottery and tobacco, which have currently fallen short.

That means treating our schools as a first obligation of the state budget rather than as whatever is left over after the games are counted.

Reading and math

I'm worried about how our children are reading and doing math. In most of our school districts, fewer than one in four students read at grade level, and fewer than one in five are proficient in math.

Numbers like that are not a verdict on our kids or our teachers. They're a measurement of how long a place has been asked to do a hard job without enough. Small classes, reading specialists, tutoring, and teachers who are paid enough to stay all cost money, and all of them work.

A child who is hungry cannot learn

Pemiscot County has the highest child food-insecurity rate in Missouri — about one in three children — and all three of our counties are among the state's worst.

School lunch and school breakfast are, in plain terms, the most reliable meals a lot of children in this district get. Summer is the gap. When school lets out in May, those meals stop for some families, and you can see it in a child's chart by August.

Restoring and increasing funding for school lunch and summer feeding is one of the things I'm running on. I want Missouri to make full use of the federal summer food benefits available to families — roughly 338,000 Missouri children are expected to qualify for summer food benefits (SUN Bucks) — and every eligible child in District 149 should be getting them.

I am not going to tell you a particular program has been canceled. What I will tell you is that a child who eats at school in May and not in July is a child whose year gets harder in August, and that is a thing the legislature can decide to fix.

Where I stand on Amendment 7

I'm asking people in this district to vote no on Amendment 7 in November. It would establish a permanent public endowment fund — the Show-Me Prosperity Fund — meant to replace state taxes once it grows big enough. As I read it, there are no restrictions on who can donate to it and no oversight of it. Income tax is what pays for schools. You cannot get rid of the money and keep the schools.

Read more: Where I stand on Amendment 7 · A note on Amendment 7

What I’ll do