This is the first part in a four-week Q&A series that candidates in the Fountain Hills Unified School District Governing Board election are participating in.

The school board election will be a part of the Nov. 6 General Election, with early ballots being mailed out on Oct. 10.

This week, candidates Wendy Barnard, Nadya Jenkins, Judy Rutkowski, and write-in Bob Shelstrom responded to the following question:

With enrollment continuing its downward trend, what can be done to make local schools the top choice for Fountain Hills students?

Bob Shelstrom

We first have to repair underachieving student academic performance in Fountain Hills Unified District that drives away town residents from our schools.

According to school report cards (azauditor.gov/sites/default/files/Fountain_Hills_USD.pdf) we score substantially lower than our peers in English, math and science.

We can perform far better by adopting a quality improvement plan driven by staff, students, and community members who chose not to attend FHUSD schools.

Latest census data indicates that about 1,000 of the 2,500 students living here choose to matriculate elsewhere. Whenever 37 percent of your “customers” reject your product, you have a serious problem.

Back in 2000, when our instructional quality was better, about 83 percent of school age residents attended FHUSD schools.

I’ve served on school improvement committees and taught honors physics at a higher quality high school about the size of FHHS. I’m confident our students can be top performers with the right leadership, process and people to optimize quality and effectiveness.

Sports and other extra-curricular activities are also important to attract students. We have some very good programs, but in the last budget the board approved 13 percent staff raises while cutting funding of sponsored athletic teams by 75 percent. We need to make the students our priority in future budgets.

We also need to address bullying of our students. This can be readily solved by techniques I’ve observed in over 12 similar schools.

Our challenges with academic performance and poor spending priorities in Fountain Hills can clearly be overcome if we have the right leadership!

Wendy Barnard

With fewer young families moving to Fountain Hills, a declining enrollment is inevitable. However, it is imperative to communicate the benefits of remaining in our district.

With school choice (one current study found an estimated 40 percent of students in the county attend schools outside their home district), FHUSD needs to be the school of choice for the families in Fountain Hills.

Keeping families starts with communicating the success within our district. Children who attend FHUSD are more than a standardized test score; children are supported academically, socially, and emotionally. Our district is committed to providing opportunities for the “whole child,” including fine arts (music, dance, art, band), STEM programs (K-3 special and robotics programs), leadership training (Falcon Leaders), volunteer groups (K-Club and Key Club), Homework Lab, and a variety of athletic programs including Fellowship of Christian Athletes.

FHUSD also includes psychologists, counselors, Fort McDowell Liaisons, reading specialists and interventionists to assist students who need additional support. The elementary school uses individualized student data to capture student progress and provide real-time remediation as needed. Fountain Hills Middle School and the high school implement a re-teach program where regular formative assessments determine what skills students have mastered and what skills need to be “re-taught” to progress to mastery. Further, at FHHS, teachers stay afterschool for PowerHour, providing students additional academic support.

Taken together, our district provides a small-school environment where teachers know each student, students are part of a community and every student is given a personalized education to reach their potential.

Nadya Jenkins

Having moved to Arizona in March of 2016, Fountain Hills Unified School District was, and still is, the top choice for my two students. After careful consideration and research, we chose Fountain Hills and FHUSD because of academic offerings competitive with the school district we moved from (the fourth largest in Wisconsin), within a smaller educational community we preferred.

FHUSD is competing with other districts, charter schools and homeschool options for every student who walks through our doors, and we therefore need to focus on families as our customers.

The district must showcase our value and successes: gifted and honors programs, AP courses, college and career prep, extra-curricular activities (including multiple state championships in high school athletics), a student-focused learning environment and close attention from teachers. We must continue to be transparent, listen to the community and provide better, more responsive customer service to keep families enrolled and engaged.

Changes and improvements in FHUSD over the last two to three years have introduced more desirable programs and stronger leadership throughout the district. We need to better and more widely promote all our district’s strengths and benefits through our websites, social media and community partnerships to reach our customer audience.

Judy Rutkowski

The past decline in enrollment largely reflected the demographics in Fountain Hills. Part of the solution, increased student numbers, will require attracting more families with young children to our town. In prior years, another reason for lower enrollment was the difficulty in attracting and retaining good teachers in our district. Teachers could, and often would, choose the higher salaries offered in neighboring districts such as Scottsdale or Mesa. In the past four years, considerable progress has made FHUSD more competitive and attractive to students and parents. New district and individual school leadership has identified ways to reduce administrative costs and increase teacher salaries, even before the passage of state legislation earlier this year. New teacher recruitment and current teacher retention have improved and this encourages parents and students to choose, and remain in, our schools. New programs were instituted at various grade levels and existing programs have been expanded, offering more attractive curricular options to students.

East Valley Institute of Technology (EVIT) opened a satellite campus at the former Four Peaks School, providing economic benefits to FHUSD, expanding educational opportunities to our students and potentially attracting new students from Scottsdale. Students no longer need to travel to the EVIT campus in Mesa.

Active community outreach has been implemented to develop cooperation and partnerships with business owners and others in town and more effectively communicate the strengths and positive elements of FHUSD.

These and other efforts will be ongoing to make FHUSD a stronger and attractive choice for students and parents.