2024 Fall Voter Guide: Kelly Carmichael Booz (School Board)

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2024 Fall Voter Guide: Kelly Carmichael Booz (School Board)
Kelly Carmichael Booz is a District B candidate for School Board. (Graphic/Jessica Kim)
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Want to read the Fall 2024 Voter Guide in full? Click here to be taken to all of the candidates’ responses. 

Age: 45

Occupation: Director of Share My Lesson, American Federation of Teachers

Bio: I am the vice chair of the Alexandria School Board with more than 25 years of experience in education. As the director of Share My Lesson at the AFT, I support educators nationwide. A proud ACPS parent and spouse to a public school teacher, I am dedicated to improving schools and advocating for student success.

How should ACPS address transportation staffing shortages?

ACPS should continue to focus on offering competitive pay, improving working conditions and enhancing recruitment efforts. We should leverage public transportation like DASH for secondary students, allowing our bus system to prioritize younger students and those with limited transit access.

What is your goal for collective bargaining?

My goal is to ensure that collective bargaining delivers fair compensation, better benefits and improved working conditions while giving educators a formal voice in decision-making processes. This will enhance recruitment, retention and staff satisfaction, which will benefit our students.

What do you see as the role of the School Board? Is it subordinate to the superintendent or their boss?

The School Board governs, sets policy and holds the superintendent accountable, but our relationship should be one of mutual respect and cooperation. While the superintendent oversees day-to-day operations, the Board and superintendent must work together to achieve the best outcomes for our students, staff and community.

Two students, one who is disabled, have recently left school in the middle of the day at Francis C. Hammond Middle School. How will you work to solve this problem?

These incidents are deeply concerning, and student safety is our top priority. We need to continue strengthening safety protocols, evaluate current policies, improve staff communication and training, ensure proper funding is focused on safety and make certain that all students are accounted for throughout the school day.

What is your plan to equitably address overcrowding?

As chair of our redistricting efforts, our current work will address student placement for the short term. Long-term, we need to regularly review school growth and capacity, redistrict when necessary or when new buildings open and continue expanding capacity to meet the needs of our growing student population.

How do you plan to increase teacher retention?

We must focus on retention by ensuring competitive salaries and benefits and improving working conditions through collective bargaining. Creating an environment where teachers feel valued, supported and heard will help keep educators in ACPS for the long term.

What specific steps can be taken to enhance school safety?

Safety is always our number one priority. We’ve come a long way through the work of the School Law Enforcement Partnership, adding weapons abatement programs and improving incident tracking within schools. We must continue these efforts, monitor their effectiveness and make adjustments as needed to ensure the safety of all students and staff.

How can central office communications become more effective and accessible? 

ParentSquare has been a great tool for improving communication, especially with its translation features, but we also need to streamline the ACPS website, making it easier for families to find information. We should prioritize more community face-to-face meetings to foster open dialogue and ensure that all voices are heard.

How can standardized test scores be improved?

We must continue strengthening Tier 1 instruction, providing teachers with the resources they need, and offering targeted interventions through our multi-tiered systems of support to help all students succeed. However, with the new state accountability system changing the goal posts, we must remain vigilant in ensuring that our focus stays on genuine student growth rather than shifting metrics.

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