I am a first-generation American – New York-born, Plano-raised and proud to be a Texan and the daughter of Immigrants. My parents came to America for a better life and succeeded in finding it. I went from
Synchronized Swimmer as a child to Cheerleader at Plano East to Fashion Design major at UNT to Senior Designer at JCPenney, to wife and concerned mom of two boys.
I have a BFA from UNT in Fashion Design which propelled me into a 15 year career rising through the ranks exiting as a Senior Designer for Jcpenney.
In 2020 I pivoted into being a boutique travel advisor and currently an account manager for TEKsystems selling IT professional services.
2. What motivates you to want to become a board member?
Because all politics is local, all politics is downstream from culture, and culture starts in our homes and in our schools. It belongs to us, to impart to our children. When it comes to preparing our kids for the future, we ALL deserve a seat at the table, and we ALL deserve to have our voices heard.
3. What particular skills or experiences qualify you to serve as a school board member?
I was the head coach of a synchronized swimming team for 3 years and assistant coach for 7– coaching, mentoring and upskilling girls ages 8 to 18. I chaired the largest diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) business resource group at JCPenney, growing membership by 38% in 2 years. So I have a clear understanding on how D&I should be done correctly before it became politicized against our children.
In addition, networked throughout DFW during my time as the chair of WINGS participating with non-profit organizations who worked in closing the gap in the community. My key strengths I bring to the table are being able to build relationships and lead the bridge of conversations to understanding.
Something that is lacking from society presently.
4. If elected, what would you hope would be key accomplishments of the board during your years of service?
To bring some sense of transparency and stability to the district. To bring empowerment and true support and recognition to the good teachers in our district. To end the leadership of FEAR and replace it with SERVANTHOOD. Our children deserve better, our teachers and staff deserve better, our taxpayers deserve better.
5. What do you believe are the most important characteristics of an effective school board? Of an effective school board member?
If I do nothing else right, I can serve in this role without shying from controversy. I will have the courage to ask the correct questions and speak truth to power, all with a view toward what I believe the people want and deserve, at the end of the day: Accountability from their elected officials. To have the courage to not be indoctrinated by the broken administrative system to follow the vison of ONE person but of the community as a whole.
Jill’s Campaign Announcement
Back to basics
Now more than ever, we as parents need to be involved as much as possible in the education process. Whether it’s joining the PTA, planning or chaperoning school functions, etc.
We need to be involved. We need to build relationships with teachers and staff. We need to know that our children are safe.
Never could I have imagined taking the monumental leap I just took, and of course – true to form – I upped the ante.
Today along with these fellow courageous patriots, I officially turned in the paperwork to run for a seat on the Wylie ISD school board.
More officially – Trustee, Place 1
WHY?
Because this job is too important and the stakes are too high to entrust it to the vision of ONE person.
This job should be a collaborative effort among parents, teachers, administrators and taxpayers.
Aside from parenthood, this is going to be the biggest job I have ever taken on, and I hope and pray that given the opportunity, I can make a positive impact on our community’s schools.
What does that look like? Well… follow me and you’ll see.
Website and FB page coming in HOT this week. Keep an eye out, and THANK YOU to my family, friends, neighbors and this beautiful community I proudly call home, for all the love and support you’ve shown me.
I was born the first of two sons to John and Geraldine Keech in 1970. I grew up in Ansonia, Ct, attending the local public schools, playing youth baseball, basketball, and football, and achieving an Eagle Scout rank in the Boy Scouts. My parents were devout Roman Catholics and sent me to a Catholic high school.
After completing high-school, I attended the University of Connecticut for two years. I then transferred to the Catholic University of America, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Math (1992).
After graduation, I stayed in the Washington DC area and began my career as a financial analyst in 1993 while also attending Graduate school at George Mason University. I graduated from George Mason in 1998 with a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering. I switched my career focus and became a Radio Frequency Engineer in May 1995.
In the Summer of 1999, I began working as a software developer, and I remain in this industry. I have worked on websites, handheld barcode scanner software, mainframe applications, windows forms applications, and as a software industry consultant.
Additionally, I made an ultimately unsuccessful attempt at owning and running my own business (2014-2017), a franchised home care business. While I failed in the venture, I learned much about the incredible hard work a small business owner must do daily.
In 2004 I moved to Euless, Texas, and then a few years later, I moved to Dallas. I met my wife in the summer of 2013 at Watermark Community Church in North Dallas. We married in October 2015 and welcomed our honeymoon baby, John Michael, in June 2016. In 2020, we were blessed with twin girls, and in 2021, we received the surprise of our life when Rebekah was born. I have lived on three continents, climbed a few 14ers in Colorado, hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, gone scuba diving in French Polynesia, and walked through a Camel Market in Cairo, Egypt, and a Bazaar in Delhi, India. I can say that watching your children’s birth is the most amazing thing a man can witness.
What motivates you to want to become a board member?
There are a few reasons why I want to serve on the school board. I have four small children, ages 6, 2, 2, and 7 months. My oldest is in first grade at Groves Elementary, and my wife and I intend to enroll the other three in the Wylie schools in the future. No one has more personally at stake in the Wylie ISD than I do. In the past few years, I have seen news stories about the increasingly horrific things taught and done to our children in public schools. With four children attending or soon attending Wylie schools, I have too much at stake to ignore this problem. Wylie has outstanding schools with excellent teachers.
However, our schools can be improved and protected from some of the awful things we have seen occurring in schools nationwide. I have a moral compass and a strength of character that will allow me to bring improvements to our schools and also protect the schools from some of the more harmful societal trends leaking into schools across our nation. I believe it is my duty as a citizen to be involved in the governing of our country. I will never serve in war as my father or uncles did (WWII, Korean war), but I believe I can make a small but very significant contribution to our nation.
It is my duty to “love my neighbor as myself,” which includes loving my neighbor’s children enough to care about the education they receive in
public schools. I do not believe for one moment I can claim to ‘Love my neighbor’ if I do not care about the future shape of this society, and I instead choose to leave all the policy, all the government, all the hiring, all the questions about the future of society in the hands of others.
What particular skills or experiences qualify you to serve as a school board member?
I have never been an employee of a school (except for a few substitute teaching assignments when I first graduated from college). Having outside experience will be a strength for me on the board. While many who serve on school boards, both in Wylie and nationwide, are long-time teachers and administrators with little real-world experience outside the school classrooms, I have worked my entire adult life in the private sector. Through my experiences, I am keenly aware of the skills needed to be successful in the workforce. My experience running a small business taught me a great lesson in planning, budgeting, and realizing that every resource (time, money, etc.) is finite. Priorities must be set, limits must be respected, and the well can run dry any time.
What do you see as the most pressing issues facing the school board?
I believe two critical issues are facing the school board, and it is hard to specify which of these issues is the most pressing. The first is the school budget. Without question, it is growing at an unsustainable rate. Between 2012 and 2021, the student population grew by 35%, from 13361 to 18155 students. In that same 9-year period, the school budget grew by 82%, from 119 million to 215 million. Inflation increased by 23% in the same period (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics), so the school budget grew 24% more than the combined increase in student population and inflation. At the August school board meeting, the current board voted to increase property taxes on the average Wylie homeowner by 11%. Collin County, Collin College, and the City of Wylie (the other taxing entities for most taxpayers in the ISD) were all able to pass fiscally responsible budgets that kept these entities’ share of the property tax rates the same as last by setting the tax rate at the No-New-Revenue rate. By comparison, the ISD board increased taxes by 11% on the typical resident of the ISD.
The second issue is the introduction of many of the same social and sexual ideologies into the Wylie schools we have seen in schools across the country. For example, in 2020, children in a middle school class in the ISD were shown a comic strip that compared the police to the KKK. Recently, a male middle school student and his parents received a flyer advertising a STEM event for “girls and non-binary students.” There is an LGBTQ category at the Wylie High School library, and Wylie East High School contains the same books (although this school does not have the explicit category). There are obscene and explicitly pornographic books at school libraries all over the district. I am NOT commenting on the LGBTQ lifestyle, but I want to know why these books are in our libraries.
When I was in school, if I had brought one of these books to school with me, I would have been suspended from school. Now they are in the libraries. Why? There are books explaining how to deal with white privilege and be a better white person. These are not legitimate history books; these are books that tell the reader there is inherently something racist about a specific group of people purely because of the color of their skin. Why are books like this in our school libraries? Our society has enough racial divisions, and these books pour gasoline on that fire.
The current board is doing nothing to put a stop to these extremist ideologies slowly but surely advancing into the Wylie Schools. These ideologies will harm our children. Teaching these ideologies is against the wishes of the vast majority of the parents of children in the ISD.
A third issue is teacher retention. I believe the ISD currently experiences a yearly 5%– 10% turnover in classroom teachers. A high turnover rate indicates something is clearly and deeply wrong in our classrooms. I have a few family members who are retired teachers. One told me she spent her entire career against school vouchers and charter schools, but since her retirement, she has completely changed her mind and would like to see me withdraw my own children from the public schools. Another told me she is embarrassed to say to others she is a retired teacher. I believe what these two have shared with me is indicative of a significant problem in our schools. Many of our best teachers are quitting; they give up what they love to do because they refuse to go along and teach some of the more harmful ideologies forced upon them by the state and national governments.
As a trustee, I promise I will restore the INDEPENDENT in the ISD; I will lead the effort to free the classroom teachers to do what they signed up to do, which is to teach children about math and science and history, and how to read and write.
Jeffrey’s Campaign Announcement
Today I filed paperwork to run for the Wylie ISD School Board Trustee Place 2.
Why? Because our children and their education is too important to entrust to a select few school administrators. For too long parents have given their children to the public schools and remained on the sidelines.
The task of educating our children is too important to be given over completely to the schools. It must be a collaboration between the parents, teachers, school administrators, and taxpayers. And it must be led by those who love the child more fully, more passionately, more completely, than anyone else can – the parents of the children.
As I have watched the problems surrounding schools and the educational system in our nation, a recurring thought came to me. No matter how hard I tried, it would not leave me. All that I see happening in our schools and to our young people is happening on my watch. My Watch.
It is my time to stand up. These are my children. Our children. Raising them, educating them is the responsibility of We the Parents.
My name is Kevin Brooks. I am a husband and father of 3. I am a US Army Trained Nurse. I have been a Nurse for 30 yrs. I left Nursing about 8 yrs ago and started in Sales and then started my own Lab Business. Nursing was good but with a family of 5 I knew I needed something where I could spend time with my family. My wife and son had come from Brazil and I was working all the time and sleeping odd hours.
I started a few things and took a beating as I learned how to be a businessman. Just within the last year we took some losses that ended up with us losing our home but even then God has been great! He allowed me to go independent and begin rebuilding my business and still provide for my family. In the middle of all that I was asked to run for School Board then asked to wait 2 yrs, then asked to run again by David Russell of We The People, and so I did!
With no home to call our own and living in a hotel I could not say no when I was asked to run. My daughter had come home and told me she was being harassed by another young lady about LGBTQ issues and the colors she was wearing. After talking with Coach Howard I wrote a letter and sent it to Coach, Scott Winn and Beth Craighead. They were all awesome! Where it all fell apart was when the counselor called and in the end I realized the process had been corrupted and my child was not protected from the societal decline I had railed about for a long time. They asked me to run and I said yes.
So, here I am!
What motivates you to want to become a board member?
There is no reason our kids should have to deal with the issues they are facing…especially in the schools. I want to allow kids to be kids. Keep the BLM, LGBT and CRT away from our children. That stuff is for the adults to deal with. Keep your politics in your world. The obscene books! That should be reviewed before being allowed to be an offering in our Libraries. Parents, Teachers and Administrators should form Review Committees to review the books then a decision be made.
What particular skills or experiences qualify you to serve as a school board member?
Husband, Father, US Army, Nurse, Business Owner, Christian, Life
If elected, what would you hope would be key accomplishments of the board during your years of service?
I would like us to be able to restore the trust of the Electorate in the Board. That the Parents, Teachers, Staff, Administration, Children and Voters will once again know they are not the adversaries but we are their Allies and they can come to us with no fear of retaliation.
They can confide and trust we are doing what is best for WISD. I would like the citizens of WISD to know they can TRUST their TRUSTEES with the wellbeing and safety of their most treasured possessions…their children.
What do you believe are the most important characteristics of an effective school board?
Ability to communicate with the constituents. Fiscal Responsibility. The Board is that wall erected to stand for the District as a defense and as a Trailblazer to find what is new and what works. To analyze, evaluate and implement policies and procedures that best fit and benefit WISD. The effective Board is the protector of the Schools and the children. The Board is charged with the keeping of the Purse also. Leadership is not just a follower and a rubber stamp. It is charged with setting the vision Even if alone the Board stands for what is right, not just what is popular.
Of an effective school board member?
Honesty, Integrity, Leadership, Courage
Kevin’s Campaign Announcement
Hello Everyone! Thanks so much for visiting my site.
It is now official! We have all declared our Candidacy for Wylie ISD Board of Trustees, I am running for Place 5.
We have a great Group of Patriots who believe there is nothing that cannot be fixed if we all get involved and decide to fix it!
It has been through inaction and complacency that we have come to this place where evil and indifference has been normalized. It is our kids that are suffering and their kids that will suffer in the future if we don’t do something.
That is why I decided to get in the game! All I am asking for is your vote. If you can donate time to man the phone bank and Block Walk…then come on out and join us!
We are starting this Saturday at 0900. For more information please drop me a line.
I have been asked by many friends and family members why I have chosen to run for School Board. I feel I was called to run after an enormous amount of prayer and conversations with my wife, Brittany, and my daughter Rosie.
With 16 years of nonprofit leadership experience, I bring a unique skill set to the Wylie ISD School Board. As someone who has worked for several nonprofits – large and small – I have spent years creating and implementing budgets. As a fundraiser, this also meant creating budgets that would meet the needs of the organization, but at the same time were fiscally responsible. I spent years knowing how to create budgets that were efficient but yet helped the organization grow and succeed.
Unfortunately, that is not what I am seeing within Wylie ISD. After sitting through every board meeting during the current budget cycle, I noticed that there was not a single thought to ensuring costs were appropriate or that new spending was justified.
As your next Trustee for Place 6, you can be assured that I will ask the administration to look for redundancies and savings within the budget. As a Trustee, it is not my job to manage the organization, but as the steward of taxpayer dollars it is important that I ensure that money is being spent wisely.
And, I promise to you that I do not, and will not, advocate for cuts to the number or pay of teachers. There are always ways to trim a $180 million budget without touching teacher pay.
