Hello!
I’m Nancy Zettler and I am running for re-election to our Board of Education. I am running again because I believe in public education. I was brought up in a public education home. My mom was an elementary ed teacher for over 20 years and loved it. She raised me and my sisters to love to learn and to believe that we could be anything we wanted to be if we worked hard enough. I believe that education is the one thing that you can earn throughout your life that no one can take away from you. I also believe that every child is entitled to a great education and the chance to learn to love to learn. To accomplish these goals we have to make sure that every child who walks through the doors of one of our schools feels welcome, valued, safe and loved. Only then are they really “ready” to learn.
I brought these beliefs with me when my husband and I moved our family here in 1999. I almost immediately became involved in D300 and have spent a lot of time over the years working to support the district and the community. In 2005, I worked as Co-Chair of Advance 300, a grassroots community driven organization crucial to the passage of referenda in 2006, that helped put the district on a course towards being one of the most financially healthy and transparent districts in the state. In 2011, we resurrected Advance 300 and worked with the board and administration to fight the state’s continued diversion of property tax dollars, meant for our schools, to Sears Holding Corporation. This diversion has cost D300 hundreds of millions of dollars over the years and while we weren’t able to prevent the extension, we were able to get back several million dollars a year that would have otherwise continued to be given to Sears.
A few years back I was asked to run for the Board of Education. And I did. Being on the board has been one of the most rewarding and challenging things that I have done throughout my life. It was wonderful to see how far we had come in creating new programs such as the Dual Language Program, the Pathways Program and the Dual Credit Program but it was obvious that like most of the country, many of our kids were struggling with some basics of education like reading and math. We were also struggling with resource equity and striving to make every child who walked though one of our doors feel like they were valued, belonged and were “ready to learn”. Luckily, our educators and administrators were eager to change the trajectory of our schools and instituted our DEI program and began working on programs that gave all kids the help they needed. And, just as it seemed that we were starting to make some progress, COVID hit.
We all lived through COVID and there are not many people who were not negatively impacted by it. As members of the Board throughout, we were responsible for making sure that the students and staff of our district remained safe during a time when what would happen next was not easy to predict. Of course, that meant making several difficult decisions. Making those decisions was not easy but the thought of a child or employee dying or getting seriously ill, was too much to bear.
Now we are back in school and in the recovery stage and things seem to be going better but we still have a lot to do. Many of our kids are still suffering from emotional issues and we still have work to do to get our kids where they should be academically. And, while we are doing great financially (we just built an amazing new elementary school without having to run a referendum) the district is still growing and we may need another new school soon. I’d like to continue working on these and other issues like finding and retaining great educators and support staff and strengthening the working relationship between the district and our community.
To do so, I need your vote and your help. If you have any questions for me, please feel free to ask them here or at my Facebook page, Nancy Zettler D300 Board Member or email me at Nancy@NancyZettler.com. Thank you for your interest.***
