Meet The Candidate: Deanna 'D' Ohlandt For Alexandria School Board

ALEXANDRIA, VA — As voters begin casting early ballots for Alexandria's Nov. 2 general election, one of the races they will decide is the Alexandria School Board.

The school board is made up of three districts, each of which has three board members who serve a three-year term. Members who are elected in the Nov. 2 election will take office in 2022.
Voters will either vote for Alexandria School Board District A, B or C depending on which district they live in. There are five candidates running for three seats in District A, seven candidates running for three seats in District B, and three candidates running for three seats in District C.

One of the District A candidates is Deanna "D" Ohlandt, a mother of three ACPS students, academic editor and group leadership facilitator. Ohlandt previously served on the ACPS Redistricting Committee and serves on the ACPS Talented and Gifted Advisory Committee.

For more information about the upcoming election in Alexandria, visit www.alexandriava.gov/Elections.

Learn more about Deanna "D" Ohlandt and why she is running for Alexandria School Board District A in 2021:

Editor's note: below are the unedited views of the candidate.

Age (as of Election Day)

44

Position sought (mayor, city council, school board, etc.)

School Board, District A

Family

My husband of 15 years, Chad, and I are raising our three kids, who are in kindergarten, 3rd, and 4th grade at Cora Kelly School. We share our house with our three rescue cats. As a family, we do a lot of camping, biking, hiking, cooking, and game nights, hopefully balancing out excessive amounts of Minecraft, YouTube, and Roblox.

Does anyone in your family work in politics or government?

My husband Chad is an aerospace engineer at a public policy research organization that works primarily for the federal government.

Education

I started high school in Iowa and then my family moved to New Jersey so I finished at a new-to-me school. I went to college for a BA at New College of Florida, which is an innovative public liberal arts college that prioritizes individualized instruction and academic excellence. Inspired by this model to become a teacher, I got a Ph.D. so I could be a professor. During my graduate work I won a Fulbright Fellowship to Australia.

Occupation

For the past seven years I have been freelancing as an academic editor and as a group leadership facilitator, using my skills in communication, education, and governance to help others work to their full potential while also being flexible to be home with my young kids. I’ve also been volunteering to teach for Encore Learning in Arlington. Before that, I worked for three years as a project manager at Arena Stage in DC and the George Washington University. Prior to moving to the DC area in 2009, for three years I was a college professor and an academic department chair. Before graduate school I spent a year as an arts teacher in after-school programs and as a special education inclusion aide in the Urbana (IL) Public Schools.

Previous or Current Elected or Appointed Office

Although this is my first time running for elected office, previously I have served on the ACPS Redistricting Committee (2016-17) and on ACPS TAGAC (2019-present).

Campaign website

https://dohlandtforalexandriaschools.com/

Why are you seeking elective office?

The plans and decisions being made now, as we move out of a global pandemic and look toward new growth in our city and schools, will shape ACPS for years to come. As an educator myself and an ACPS parent, I want to be part of those conversations, to advocate for equitable and creative approaches to giving all students an excellent education, no matter their family history or their path forward after high school. My kids are currently in kindergarten, 3rd grade, and 4th grade at Cora Kelly School for Math, Science, and Technology, and so I am invested in the present and the future of ACPS. I want to do right by my kids' classmates and friends as they come of age in our public schools.

The single most pressing issue facing our board, and this is what I intend to do about it.

My work on the school board will be shaped by my core values, which are: representing families, clear and transparent communication, equitable access to resources, and community building. These values, though, are not by themselves “pressing issues,” although they are connected to many urgent concerns. The challenges of the ongoing COVID pandemic are a short-term concern, but I do not want to overlook longer-term concerns that are no less pressing. For example, the coming changes to our high school are taking shape now and will go into effect in 2024 and beyond. The programmatic and physical dimensions of ACHS will affect ACPS students for years, even after COVID has faded into the background.

In the next ten years, ACHS will go from being the largest high school in Virginia to being an even larger high school. The changes being discussed will offer our students some wonderful opportunities, especially in the areas of CTE, health sciences, and STEM. A community-connected high school has the potential to strengthen the relationship between our schools and our community. On the other hand, research shows that in very large high schools some students "fall through the cracks" because it is harder for peers, teachers, and staff to know each student as an individual.

I want to see some structural mechanisms in the new high school programs that help to ensure every student has adults in the school who know them individually and can provide academic, career, and social support. Our International Academy already uses "community circles" to achieve this effect, and at times GWMS has also piloted a similar cohort approach. It is important that these cohorts, circles, or learning communities are not the same as the career pathways, that they are thoughtfully mixed in terms of academic pathways, SES, cultural identity, and geography. And it is important that they are stable communities with adult mentors who move with the cohort from 9-12 grades-- or, even better, from 6-12 grades. Each cohort should have at least two adult mentors who can communicate with parents, provide social and emotional support, advise individuals on class choices and extracurricular opportunities, and be retained for the entirety of the cohort's movement through ACPS.

What are the critical differences between you and the other candidates seeking this post?

I am a parent of three elementary kids in ACPS, and so I am aware of the impact school board decisions have on current families, and I am also looking down the line at what ACPS will be like when my kids are in middle and high school. I am an educator with administrative experience as a college department chair, so I understand the opportunities and constraints of educational administration. I have trained others in policy governance, which is the governance system our school board uses, and so I understand how to use the system to work with other board members and the superintendent to make progress.

How do you think local officials performed in responding to the coronavirus? What if anything would you have done differently?

Under the conditions of a global pandemic, ACPS attempted to chart a path that considered the diverse concerns of students, staff, and families, all the while striking a balance between state and federal requirements and local circumstances. Many ACPS families are rightly critical of the timing and content of information communicated about reopening and hybrid options; some, like myself, are disappointed that creative approaches to safe in-person learning were not pursued more aggressively. Still others noted that the implementation of virtual and hybrid instruction varied widely across ACPS. The biggest stumbling blocks to enacting creative and agile solutions to COVID problems were funding and staffing.

That said, among neighboring public school districts, ACPS emerged as a positive model for its handling of the 2020-21 academic year. Providing a full-time in-person option for all students while the pandemic continues has required changes to facilities and procedures, most of which ACPS has addressed with an eye to equity and safety. The ACPS COVID dashboard shows that, so far, the measures in place have held the spread of COVID in our schools in check.

If I had been part of the decision-making process for the schools during COVID, I would have advocated for emergency funding from the city and more aggressive hiring and retention strategies so we could put into place more creative ways to get students and teachers back into in-person instruction safely. For example, city spaces that could have allowed for better social distancing and temporary outdoor spaces with natural ventilation were underused. I would have advocated for hybrid instruction to begin sooner and for child care for teachers trying to teach full-time with their own kids in virtual or part-time in-person learning. Most importantly, though, I would have stressed the critical importance of communicating the rapidly changing policies and procedures to both families and staff.

Describe the other issues that define your campaign platform.

My priorities are 1) Giving parents a voice on the school board: the top-level decisions made by the school division administration and the School Board have a direct impact on our students and their families, and it is critical that we have parents of current students on our Board both to consider the impact of those decisions and as a contact point for other parents. 2) Promoting clear and transparent communication with families, students, and teachers about school division policies: communicating school policies and the reasons for them is a critical part of building trust between families and schools. 3) Ensuring equitable access to resources, especially co-curricular opportunities and support to empower teachers to differentiate lesson delivery to meet the needs of individual students: ACPS elementary and middle schools vary widely in the kinds of co-curricular resources students can access– including field trips, classroom technology, playground and PE equipment, and after-school programming– in part because of disparities in parent donations and fundraising outside of the division budget. And 4) Connecting our communities to our schools and our schools to our communities: there is a wealth of resources and expertise in our communities that can support the whole student, both in the classroom and outside of it, and both students and community members benefit when neighborhood elders, residents, businesses, and organizations are invested in our students.

What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?

Many of my past experiences have given me some insight into the situations of ACPS families and staff members, which will help me engage with ACPS community members across various backgrounds. For example, study abroad experiences allowed me to experience navigating a new-to-me culture. I specifically studied and practiced excellence in college teaching. I have done research on the impact of representations of disabilities in popular culture and trained to be an ally with people with disabilities. I have managed large projects with a team explicitly committed to diversity and inclusion, which taught me how to be intentional about seeking out the full range of voices to come to the table. I chaired an academic department at a college following the misconduct of a predecessor, earned the trust of the students, and rebuilt trust between the department and our colleagues elsewhere across campus.

The best advice ever shared with me was:

"A big ship turns slowly." A trusted mentor gave me this advice when I was chairing a college department several years ago, a department that badly needed a culture change internally and to rebuild trust across campus externally. I had many ideas I wanted to put into action, but this advice was a reminder that lasting change takes time. Leadership means charting a course and then making sure everyone knows why and how to get there, listening to your crew when they have concerns, and understanding that change can be hard-- and emotional. Keep steady on and even the biggest ship will come around eventually.

What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions?

In addition to being a mom, an educator, an arts professional, and a non-profit administrator, I am influenced by several years of experience as a summer camp counselor. Being a camp counselor gave me the opportunity to work with a large range of people across diverse sets of beliefs, and it taught me how to value and support the many different ways that kids and adults engage with each other and with the world around them. Creating authentic communities is at the heart of the camp experiences that I have led, which requires respecting the inherent worth and dignity of all people and practicing conflict resolution that begins from shared values and mutual respect.