Candidates were asked to limit their responses to each of the following questions to 200 words or less.
Name: Kristin Brighton
Age: 48
Profession: Marketing Professional
Incumbent: Yes
Do you have children or grandchildren who attend(ed) USD 383 Manhattan-Ogden schools? My son graduated in 2022 and my daughter is a senior. I also have a niece at MHS and a nephew at AMS.
-Why are you running for school board? I served on the Manhattan Area Chamber of Commerce’s board of directors from 2009-2018, and what I enjoyed the most about that experience was addressing the challenges facing our community. After my term on the board ended, I decided it was time to apply all I’d learned in Chamber leadership to an elected role. At that time, I had two children, plus a niece and a nephew, in USD 383 schools, so it made sense for where I was in my life to run for a seat on the board of education. In 2019, I ran in a no-contest campaign (four people ran for four seats), primarily with a workforce platform inspired by my Chamber experiences. I was very excited to get started when I took my seat in January 2020.
Not six weeks later, the pandemic forced us to cut the 2019-2020 school year short, and my role as a school board member proved to be not quite what I had expected. Now that the dust from the pandemic has settled and we have a new superintendent and district leadership in place, I’m eager to help create a new vision for our schools moving forward. I hope to accomplish in my second term much of what I initially wanted to do during my first term.
-Parental engagement and community involvement are crucial for the success of any school district. What strategies would you implement to increase collaboration between parents, citizens, and educators? During the pandemic, parents and community members couldn’t come into our buildings, so the district is working to try to reintegrate collaboration and engagement with families and businesses. Many of our PTOs had to be rebuilt as many key families moved on during these three school years. Efforts to rebuild are mostly being handled at the building level, but community programs like the Chamber’s Classroom-to-Careers program are back up and running and bringing businesses and volunteers into classrooms. As things normalize, I think we’ll see continued opportunities for community interaction. As a board member, I welcome community participation in our board meetings and enjoy one-on-one conversations with members of the community. Partnerships are huge, and we need to always look for new ways to work together to further the education of our students.
-If you had one thing you could change about the USD 383 school district, what would it be?
We need to do a better job of introducing kids to high-demand careers needed in the Kansas economy so that we can 1) keep more of our kids from leaving the region after they finish schooling, and 2) fill more of the vacancies in our workforce.
One possible way to do this would be to create a Manhattan High School Life Sciences Career Academy. This would be at a facility located off the main MHS campus, which would help us lower the student enrollment at MHS; however, those students could still participate in MHS activities and sports at the main campus. This academy would provide four intensive years of scientific preparation to help young people explore health and life-science-related careers and obtain a solid foundational education for entering a wide variety of health and science careers — from technician jobs at our hospital to even PhD-level research careers at USDA’s National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF). This idea stems from inter-region visits the Chamber organized to Lincoln and Oklahoma City. Career academies at many other districts in Kansas also offer good models. Learn more about this idea at brightonfor383.com.
-What is your opinion of the USD 383 administration? Do you think you could work with the current administration moving forward? We’ve got an amazing new slate of administrators led by Superintendent Eric Reid. I greatly enjoy working with him and the team he’s assembled. We’ve got many ideas in the hopper to continue to grow and improve our district. I’m excited to dive in and create positive changes during my second term.
-What is your opinion of the current school board? Do you think you could compromise with the incumbents who will remain on the board? As an incumbent member of the current board, I’m excited to work with the remaining incumbents and newly elected members to create positive change in our community.
-What do you think the board’s role should be in the day-to-day operations of the district? There is no “think” here. A school board’s job is to set policy, approve expenditures on behalf of the taxpayers, and oversee the work of the superintendent. It is not our job to micromanage day-to-day operations. That’s what we hire a superintendent to do.
-Have you received money or in-kind donations from individuals, businesses, groups or PACs outside of the school district? No