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Editor's note: A technical error prevented Justin Cook's letter from arriving in time for its scheduled publication last week.
My name is Justin Cook, and I am running for the board of Rochester Public Schools, position 2.
I am running because I think it’s past time we add a parent’s perspective on our school board. My wife of 17 years and I relocated to Rochester five years ago with our four kids, now in grades K-7.
Dr. Cook is a pathologist completing her fellowship at Mayo and I’m a lawyer for The Nielsen Company, where I serve as associate general counsel for intellectual property.
Like so many of you, my family loves our schools, and we value our children's teachers, but we are concerned about the future of our school district in the current environment that so often seeks to inject politics into classrooms and sow divisiveness in our community all to the detriment of our students. We are troubled by the challenges posed in the district’s financial forecast, and we are concerned by the recent rates of academic proficiency in our district.
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My vision is one in which Rochester emerges from this chapter as a true center of excellence in public education. As Rochester continues to grow, the next several years present opportunities to lay the foundation for an even more vibrant, robust economy to come.
I expect our district to lead the nation in ensuring that every third-grade student attains reading proficiency, and I will insist on equipping our schools with a multi-tiered system of supports framework that offers science-based structured literacy. And I am more than ready to witness real progress against the goals to attain educational equity.
Let’s think bigger together! I’m inquisitive, I’ll question long-held assumptions, and I love data. Let me bring my energetic problem-solving approach to bear, and let’s add public education to the list of things Rochester is best at!
Justin Cook
