Shaffer Elementary

My oldest son currently attends Shaffer Elementary in Mrs. Cyprian's 1st grade class. My youngest son will be attending kindergarten this Fall. So, I would like to get involved in any way I can to ensure Shaffer continues to be a great school for my children and their friends/classmates. My father was also the President of the school board where I went to school in Big Valley. I saw the challenges he went through but also the satisfaction he experienced as a school board member.

I have never had the ability to sit idly on the sidelines. I want to get involved and help in anything I am a part of. I was the President of the Undergraduate Anthropology club while I received my bachelor's degree in Anthropology at CSU Chico. I then transitioned to become the President of the Anthropology Graduate Student Association while I earned my master's degree at CSU Chico. I was a teaching assistant for many classes while in grad school. Some of which had 200 students in the class. I learned to interact and understand the student's perspectives in order to better support their learning experience.

I highly stress the importance of education. As an anthropologist I find people fascinating and celebrate our differences. I am a leader at work. My federal job deals with a lot of government policies, environmental compliance, contracting, and consulting with the public and tribal entities in order to understand their concerns. I would like to think those experiences will translate to a successful tenure as a school board member.

I was sworn in on February 20th, 2024.

Initially, I hope to set my roots and begin to understand what we have and do not have at Shaffer. If another school in our county has a club or program that we do not have I want to know why. If it is a lack of interest that is fine. If it is a matter of limited staffing or funding let's find it. I played a lot of sports when I was a student in Big Valley. I would be curious if we can better support our student athletes in any way. Can we channel our passion and competitiveness towards education-based programs or competitions? How can we incentivize our students to improve our testing scores? I was also highly involved in agriculture programs when I was young and currently manage a small ranch. I would like to research if there are programs, experiments, or opportunities for our students at Shaffer to engage in agriculture. It would be wonderful to see our students apply what they have learned at organizations such as 4H at our school. It would be even more exciting for me to see our students learn or be exposed to something at Shaffer which resulted in them learning a lifelong skill or resulted in them joining an organization such as 4H or later on FFA.