By Wafir Salih | wsalih@alextimes.com

Donna Kenley, a retired United States Army colonel and tutor, is running for her first term on the Alexandria School Board and hopes to focus on addressing teacher staffing shortages, expanding tutoring programs and coming up with solutions to address overcrowding.

Kenley grew up in Charlotte, North Carolina, where her mother’s involvement as president of her school’s PTA and her father’s military service during World War II inspired her to pursue education.

“Growing up and seeing the importance of education in my family … and the relationship that my mother always had with my teachers, with the school and with the principals – that sparked my interest,” she said.

Kenley graduated from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with a bachelor’s degree in political science and later earned her master’s degree from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in the same field. She also earned a teaching certificate in 12th-grade civics during that time.

She joined the U.S.Army in 1974 and served for 30 years, rising to the rank of colonel before retiring in 2004. Kenley has 18 years of teaching experience, including roles as a professor and associate dean at various military universities during her time in the Army, and later used her GI Bill to earn her doctorate at George Mason University in conflict analysis and resolution in 2009. She then taught at both George Mason and American Military University.

Kenley has remained active in education since moving to Alexandria in 2004. She serves on the Special Education Advisory Committee and tutors at Samuel Tucker Elementary School through the Book Buddies program.

Kenley highlighted the nationwide teacher shortages.

“Right now, we need people in special education. We need teachers, we need tutors, we need people in all areas,” she said.

Kenley plans to address teacher shortages by tapping into the local retired mili-tary community.

“[Retired military personnel] are trained, well-suited people … with lots of experience that we could put into a variety of positions, from administrative to being teachers,” she said.

She also wants to enhance tutoring programs, particularly by encouraging senior citizens to get involved.

“[Tutoring] would be a great program for seniors to give back to the community, give back to society, to see the values that are put into the system long after they’re gone,” Kenley said.

Kenley noted how there has been a large influx of immigrants in the West End and said she wants to ensure all students, including those learning English, have an equal chance to succeed. She said tutoring can help with that.

“The school’s strategic plan emphasizes the importance of equity. If a child can’t read, [they] can’t learn,” she said. “So, you have brilliant children that have to learn a language. English is not a first language [for them] and when they go home at night, there’s nobody to help them with English. That’s where a tutor comes in.”

Kenley shared her experience tutoring an Afghan child as an example of how beneficial tutoring can be.

“I was given an Afghan child … and by the time I finished, the child was at a higher level of learning, maybe second or third grade. So, we can make a tremendous impact equalizing equality,” she said.

Kenley said overcrowding needs to be addressed in a way that’s least disruptive, and suggested modular classrooms as a stopgap measure.

“We have to think in terms of how to be as least disruptive as possible,” she said. “Instead of moving children, maybe we could put a classroom here, we could put another teacher here. It’s a stopgap while we’re doing construction and studies and trying to figure the problem out.”

Kenley said her decision to run for School Board came after years of considering the role.

“Since 2019 I’ve thought about it, in terms of serving on a School Board subcommittee,” Kenley said. “I think that the timing was right, and I felt the call to serve.”