“How can I make a difference?” -Austin Daily Herald

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Kathy Green smiles as she is recognized at the final school board meeting on Monday. Green will retire Nov. 4 after serving 25 years on the school board. Eric Johnson/[email protected]

Kathy Green described herself as someone passionate about involvement, and she did just that. has served on the Austin Public School Board for over 25 years. He retires on November 4. Eric Johnson/[email protected]

Kathy Green reflects on her 25 years on the school board

When Kathy Green was first elected to the Austin Public Schools Board in 1999, it was not a long-term position.

A self-described person with a passion for involvement, Green wanted to do something that would make a positive impact on her own children’s neighborhood.

Twenty-five years later, Green is finally calling it a career, and her last school board meeting was held Monday as a work session. Her last day as a school board member is Nov. 4, the day before the general election.

“I didn’t say, ‘Hey, this is going to be my career,’” Green said Monday morning before turning in her district-issued laptop late in the afternoon. “It’s just an evolution of what I’ve been able to do with it.

In July, Green officially announced that she would step down from her position to spend more time with her family, with the goal of officially retiring on December 31. Green agreed to move that date to November so the district could call a special election for that date. November 5.

Dan Zielke and Isabella Krueger are trying to determine who will serve the final two years of Green’s current term.

“I think it’s important that we allow people to learn about opportunities and people who would like to step forward,” Green said at the time.

Now, just a few months later, Green can fully look back on a career that gave her the opportunity to make an impact at the local, state and national levels.

“If you’re a parent, you look at education in terms of what’s best for my child,” Green said. “In my situation, when I first got involved, it was conversations. What about my children?

“The more I looked into it, it wasn’t just about my kids. They were all children,” she continued. “It’s a system. It includes a variety of children with a variety of needs, and I have always been a great supporter of an individual approach to each child.”

Although she was elected to her first term in 1999, the school board journey actually began in 1987 over a class size issue. At this point, Green and her husband Peter’s first child began kindergarten, with a total enrollment of 32 students.

It was September and Green said she found it strange, so she started questioning the teacher. Ultimately, her calls led Green to the probation officer’s office.

In turn, this movement created other opportunities in the future, including serving as co-chair of the referendum committee that passed the school improvement initiative on its third try.

“My approach has always been: How can I make a difference?” – said Green. “What needs to happen for something to be achieved. Besides, what needs to happen for something to be achieved?”

Green said serving on the school board was a chance to put her goals into action and work with people who had similar goals and passions.

But it was not only about the board, but also about the work of the committee that played a role in these efforts.

“The school board was the structure. Political arrangements,” she said. “Here you will find answers to your questions.”

During their time, Green and other board members worked on a variety of activities that impacted the district, its students and employees.

Among those board influences was directing a system tailored to each child’s needs, and for Green, that started in her own time as a student at a school in south Minneapolis. It was there that she saw the benefits of ramps for students who needed a slightly different approach.

At the same time, she saw that the chances of narrowing the exits were getting smaller.

“Suddenly, kids had everything they needed to be proficient in algebra. All children had to be fluent in English, and in the 1990s, the way it worked was that if a child had deficiencies in some area, their weaknesses were corrected rather than their strengths developed.”

Now districts – including Austin – are aware of the benefits of leveraging these strengths. Green points out that Pi Academy is one such initiative. Similar initiatives are also underway to meet other students where they too are.

“Now we have a classroom where kids in the 1-3% group have the opportunity to choose activities that challenge them at their level,” Green said. “This is just a microcosm, but we can do this in other areas as well.”

Another triumph of the district that resonates with Green is the way diversity was incorporated when it really began to flourish in the 2000s.

But Green remembered seeing it before, when football began to gain popularity in the 1990s, when the Green family became heavily involved in it. Since then, Green said the diversity of the APS district has become Austin’s strength.

“I think schools have played an integral part of the welcome,” she said. “Austin did it right. Not only has this been done passively, with an influx of a few immigrants, but in the last five or six years we have obtained an excess of students from a certain population. We have become a district that can absorb large numbers in a relatively short period of time.”

That’s not to say it hasn’t been a challenge at times, and one of the biggest challenges for Greens across the country is the politicization of school boards.

“We need to have children who can read. Do some basic math,” Green said. “We can have children who can write and communicate. We don’t necessarily have to teach children everything political.”

Overall, during her time on the district board, Green was able to sit down and find the answers that were best for the district.

This has been a point of pride for Green during her twenty years on the board, including her stints as its chairwoman.

“I think one thing, and this has been touched on by several councils, is a real desire to find solutions, and when solutions are brought to us from any number of avenues, I’ve often seen work on how are we going to become that?”

As evidence of this, Green said the district has managed to avoid some of the pitfalls that other districts have fallen into: having to cut staff and cut programs.

When her time on the board comes to an end, Green said travel is important to her and Peter, which will also include a desire to spend more time with family.

Motivating her to make the decision to call it a career are the rewarding aspects of her time on the board, filled with moments of pride and achievement.

“It was fantastic to be a part of the enrichment that these children experienced,” she said.