Miriam Janechek
Candidate for ISD 622 School Board
Build Strong School Communities, Empower Students, Support Teachers—Together for a Thriving Community
I am focused on collaboratively running the North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale school district with policies and procedures that reflect child development needs, research-backed academic models, and good business practices.
Platform
More play, less tech: Increase recess and lunch periods to reduce anxiety and improve focus with less screen time.
Community-building through schools: Strengthen student independence, civic engagement, and hands-on learning opportunities to attract families to ISD 622 and build a stronger community.
Excellence with balance: Expand research-backed approaches to math, balance minutes of instruction with realistic academic expectations, and underscore the district's emphasize on grade-level literacy.
Support for teachers: Increase pay for new teachers, expand support staffing, and encourage teachers to live in ISD 622.
School choice expansion: Introduce unique intra-district school choice options, creating distinct programs between North and Tartan High Schools.
More Play, Less Technology
Policy: All K-6 students must have 30 minutes scheduled for lunch and a minimum of 50 minutes of scheduled recess. All 7- to 12-grade students must have 30 minutes scheduled for lunch.
Policy: iPads, computers, and other technology devices are provided only to 7- to 12-grade students. High school class offerings should expand computer science course offerings.
I advocate for reducing screen time and increasing recess and lunch periods to reduce behavior issues and increase student focus. This shift will help students stay more attentive and focused during instructional periods, even with fewer total minutes of classroom time. Allowing students more time for physical play and social interaction can reduce boredom and anxiety and increase student enjoyment.
Expand Civics, Shop Classes
Policy: K-12 students will have regular engagement with public employees, elected local officials, and small business owners. Engagement should include field trips that emphasize careers and businesses in our local community.
Policy: 10- to 12-grade graduation pathways should include opportunities to focus on technical skill building, trade work, and small business ownership.
Policy: The district will establish and follow an engagement plan to ensure the work of the elected School Board is transparent, widely available, and regularly engaged with by the community.
Public schools are essential to strong communities. My vision for ISD 622 is to attract families to our schools and our local area. I want high schoolers to envision their future here, connected to the district. To achieve this, we need to build initiatives that prioritize student independence, civic engagement, and experience with local businesses and trades. This will support ISD 622 as a district where students and families feel invested in their future and are committed to the success of the district.
Academic Excellence with Balance
Policy: The district should regularly rely on the expertise of its educators to review and evaluate the statewide standards. The standards provide guidance but do not include child development research or curriculum, which must be incorporated to balance academics and instruction. K-6 academic priorities should follow research, which emphasizes literacy as the first and most important subject for all students.
Policy: The district should develop a community engagement plan to educate all community members on the purpose of statewide assessments and the usefulness of these scores in evaluating student learning. Misunderstanding statewide assessment data is a key issue that creates dissatisfaction throughout the community.
Policy: The early childhood screening process should include support for parents in determining the appropriate time to start their child in school. Research shows many children would benefit from beginning kindergarten at age 6, and parents should be informed about this information and understand when the state requires their child to start school.
I advocate balancing where students are developmentally with what they need academically. I believe in spending appropriate time in foundational literacy skills before emphasizing additional subject matter standards. I think the district should create an 'opt-in' option for individual statewide assessment results, rather than sending out these misleading results by default.
Support Teachers' Work-Life Balance
Policy: K-6 grades will be provided a minimum of one para-educator to support each grade level. Para-educators will work with assigned grade-level teachers to determine how the team will benefit from having additional support, such as supervising a student taking a break from the classroom environment, tending to the playground during an exercise break, escorting students to/from specialized classes, etc.
Policy: All teachers will use a clock-in/clock-out system to collect data on work hour demands; in addition to work hours, teachers will log time spent doing professional development, classroom maintenance, grading activities, and extracurriculars.
Policy: Student teachers will work with identified and stipend-earning senior teachers for an entire school year. The district will work with colleges and universities to secure student teachers interested in working in the ISD 622 district. First-year teachers will maintain mentorship relationships with identified and stipend-earning senior teachers. Salaries for new teachers will reflect professional salary expectations for civic employees.
Policy: Teachers who choose to live within the ISD 622 community will earn a "Teachers Are Great Neighbors" bonus.
Teachers deserve more workday support. I want to expand school support staffing and increase pay for new teachers. Increasing new teacher pay will help the next generation of ISD 622 educators build lives within ISD 622 while maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Encouraging teachers to live in our district will further strengthen the connection between our schools and the community. I want to make sure that ISD 622 has a long-term strategy for building our next generation of excellent teachers, which means establishing new teacher support systems and committing to new teachers in collaborative ways.
School Choice and Student-Focused Schools
Policy: The district will prioritize student age to determine building assignments. The School Board will prioritize students' socialization, emotional maturity, and child development needs when determining which grades to assign to which buildings.
Policy: The district will offer an alternative kindergarten choice for students who would benefit from enrolling in traditional kindergarten at age 6.
Policy: North and Tartan High Schools will have course offerings and graduation plans that create distinct pathways for students as they move into adulthood.
School choice is key to retaining students in ISD 622. We can explore unique, student-centered options that don’t create transportation issues, such as distinguishing North and Tartan High Schools with different academic and/or scheduling focuses. This would give students meaningful choices within the district, helping keep more students engaged, enrolled, and prepared for adulthood.
Additionally, building organization should prioritize age groups that make sense socially and emotionally; the district should consider building groups as follows: PreK, Alternative K, and Kindergarten; 1-4 grade; 5 and 6 grades; 7-9 grade; 10-12 grade.
Comments on School Safety
I was 14 years old when the Columbine High School shooting changed America's relationship with school safety. This means I spent all of high school, college, and my adult life thinking about why our schools have become a target for social, emotional, and political struggles. It is uncomfortable to say, but the truth is there's no single policy- or person-based solution for protecting our kids while they attend school.
So, what can we do? I'm not sure, but here are some thoughts about where we could start.
First, school safety begins in our homes. As adults, each of us is responsible for securing our firearms, storing ammunition separately, and communicating with our kids and the kids who come into our homes about how to be safe in a house with firearms.
Second, if we have a child in school, we need to commit to the district that we will keep any firearms secured in our homes. The problems with school safety begin long before a child steps into a school with a gun, and those problems need to be addressed by parents. We need to accept our responsibility to keep other kids safe as parents and community members.
Third, whether we want to own guns or don't want anything to do with guns, our community needs to face the reality that not talking about firearms with our kids doesn't keep them safe. We should have firearms safety classes offered regularly and expect widespread community attendance.
Fourth, any systemic change has to take place in the legislature. Our principals and superintendents will have protocols in place to follow in the event of a school safety incident. But, change starts with politicians and our school board and community should work together to advocate for legislation to support sensible school safety.
About Miriam Janechek
I am the mother of two ISD 622 elementary kiddos! My two daughters attend Richardson Elementary. We love the principal, teachers, support staff, and bus drivers who make it possible for them to attend our neighborhood school.
My favorite part of every day is hanging out for the morning bus with my neighbors and neighbor kids. We get to know each other a tiny bit more each day. The kids bounce around with anticipation of the day ahead and the adults commiserate on the struggles and celebrate the fun of being parents.
My background is in teaching, state-level education policy and administration, and I spent a decade researching childhood and children's books. I'm a passionate person, and I put my passion into finding collaborative solutions to problems and enriching my community. My husband is an engineer at 3M and uses his time and talents to keep his wife and two daughters happy, which is why he spent his summer building us a chicken coop and maintaining the above-ground backyard pool! We moved to Minnesota in 2016 because we wanted to spend our lives in a diverse, rich community and we are so glad ISD 622 is where we've chosen to put down roots.
Experience
Department of Education: I worked for over 2 years at the Minnesota Department of Education in the Statewide Assessments division and on a district-level technology project. I supported MDE in communication efforts with the agency's constituents.
K-12 Education Technology: I worked for 5 years on multiple states' statewide technology modernization projects. I worked with tech teams at state departments to engage with non-tech staff and district staff. I worked with many communities to understand education data, from what is tells us to what it doesn't say.
Educator: I worked for 8 years in undergraduate education, specifically with college students adjusting to being adult learners post-high school. I also spent time as the summer program administrator at a PreK-6 school.
Education
2011 - 2019
University of Iowa
Master's in English
PhD in English
Iowa City, IA
2008 - 2010
University of Iowa
Bachelor of Arts in English
Iowa City, IA
Contact
Email mm.janechek@gmail.com
Location Maplewood, Minn.