Opinion

Progressive Voice is a bi-weekly opinion column. The views expressed are solely the authors’. 

The editors of Progressive Voice believe a core value of progressive government is for leaders to self-examine, strengthen and innovate to enhance opportunity for every person. In that vein, we explored Democratic candidates’ approaches to leadership and decision-making as we interviewed Mary Kadera, candidate for Arlington School Board, and Takis Karantonis, candidate for Arlington County Board. The two interviews have been edited and condensed.

Mary Kadera

PV: On the election trail, what have voters told you they want in a leader?

Kadera: Some of the messages I am getting loud and clear are these:

Accountability. There is a sense on the part of many, rightly or wrongly, that there’s not a tremendous amount of accountability in terms of the School Board asking hard questions, or taking ownership of hard problems. People want to see a School Board leader asking critical questions, not in the sense of setting fire to everything the staff is doing, but the injection of healthy skepticism.

Willingness to admit missteps. It has felt to some that we talked about our school system as our jewel, and that there were no flaws in this stone. For many people, their lived experience didn’t match that, and particularly families of our English-learners or students with disabilities… parents of gifted students…it runs across a range. …Being honest about the reality is the first step to improving.

PV: What would demonstrate effective leadership, in your view?

Kadera: On a micro level, that I have taken the time to engage with someone, and I voted in a way they didn’t like, and they said, ‘I don’t agree with the decision you made, but you explained why you did that, and you heard me, and handled this is a responsive and responsible manner.’ On the macro level, it would be people having a higher level of trust in the School Board. We’re in an environment now where …it’s kind of a gotcha moment, and ‘when you do wrong, I’m going to go on social media and blast you,’ and that’s not healthy. It’s essential that the public have healthy skepticism, but also that we feel that we’re partners in improvement, and that feeling is lacking right now.

PV: Hundreds of kids did not come back to APS this year. They had the choice, and the means, to do something else. How do you balance competing needs and priorities so that we have a school system that really does “work well for every single family”?

Kadera: I’ve talked with families that made the decision to pull their kids… one category was students with disabilities, either there were medical/safety concerns, or they felt interventions their kids were getting in private school worked better than when they were in APS. The second was parents of kids who were identified as gifted, or academically high performing, and they were worried that APS would be so necessarily focused on addressing learning loss that the more advanced students wouldn’t have enough of a challenge, enough attention paid to them. To me, equity is about making sure every student has the right level of support and challenge…it has to be everybody. We are in a dangerous situation if we communicate, either intentionally or unintentionally, that public education only works for certain ‘kinds’ of students; then that’s a slippery slope to a situation where we find ourselves in the land of vouchers and privatization of education.

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