Because a student who is afraid cannot learn.
 

Every student should carry the equipment that makes them hard to harm and unwilling to harm: self-respect, healthy boundaries, and real conflict skills. This can be taught deliberately, the same way we teach reading.

Not every threat a child faces is in a hallway. Some students carry violence to school from home; some carry abuse no adult has caught yet. A district serious about violence prevention has to see the whole child and be the place where trained, trusted adults notice what's wrong and know exactly what to do next.
 

The long game is bigger still: every adult in Rochester's future is in someone's classroom right now. Teach this generation respect, boundaries, and what healthy relationships look like, and we are literally raising the neighbors, partners, and parents this city will live with. Prevention curriculum is one of the best investments we can make.
 

This is squarely the board's job. Minnesota law puts violence prevention curriculum under local board authority. Rochester decides how Rochester teaches this, and I want us to decide it out loud, with thorough evidence on the table.

On the board, I'll:
 

• Champion prevention curriculum with a track record. Programs with measured results at reducing peer violence, dating violence, and abuse.

• Strengthen detection. Every staff member is a mandated reporter; I'll push for additional training and clear protocols that go far beyond the legal minimum, so the adult a child trusts is never the adult who didn't know what to do.

• Protect the safety net in the budget. Counselors, social workers, and student-support staff sit close to students under the Student-Proximity Standard. When cuts come, those lines will have a defender in me.

• Advocate beyond our walls. Sentencing belongs to the legislature and the courts, but the board has a voice, and I'll use it: through the district's legislative platform and alongside our county partners, I'll advocate for stronger sentencing for those who commit sexual offenses against children.
   

The cheapest time to stop violence is before it happens. The second cheapest is the moment a trained adult first notices. We will not be a district that misses either one.