
With young children, Laura & Hank became actively aware of the education choices surrounding their and other families. Recognizing the great disparity, they decided to get to know their neighborhood Title 1, (then) D-graded school. Laura founded the support group Friends of North Shore Elementary in 2015, then with her children attending the school, served as president of the school’s PTA 2017-2019. During this time their team worked collaboratively to identify the keys to improving education and experience for teachers, students and families, then planned and implemented: extended learning days with enrichments; teacher professional development funds, classroom support and encouraging teacher requests and ideas; helped implement a teacher request for preschool; and communicated to the surrounding community that public education is strong, and matters, and increased Kindergarten enrollment year over year.
Laura has also worked at the district and state levels around balancing oversight with autonomy, educators as ideators, school safety, school grading, education funding, and served on the Healthy School Start Times task force, as well as, as citizen representative for architecture and construction manager selections. She was elected to the Pinellas County School Board in November 2020.
Laura believes that strong public education is vital to our communities, vital to our democracy, and that education can be and must be exceptional for all students.