District 8 School Board
I have thrown my hat in the ring to represent District 8 on the WCPSS school board. Please see my letter to the board below:
November 9, 2025
Chair Mr. Chris Heagarty and Board
Wake County Board of Education
Dear Mr. Heagarty,
It is my distinct pleasure to submit my application for the position of District 8 representative for the Wake County Public School System Board of Education. I come to the position having been a North Carolina resident for forty years, a graduate of public schools, and a parent of a WCPSS 3rd-grader, and I look forward to bringing my education and public advocacy background to the role.
My background in education includes both public school teaching in the Chapel Hill public system, experience teaching in the Middle East, and twelve years' experience in higher education as a professor for current and future teachers. My PhD is in curriculum studies, for which I focused on how political and controversial topics are taught at the high school level. I have been published in numerous peer-reviewed education journals on teacher education, data-driven decision making, and the emotional lives of students. Toward the end of my teaching career, I focused on 21st century digital skills and media literacy, which has become central to the lives of students in the current times. While Assistant Professor of Curriculum Studies at Oklahoma State University, I led the development of a teacher-education-to-school-district data pipeline due to the desire for teacher educator programs to see how their graduates were doing in a concrete way and make data-driven changes to address weaknesses and improve ongoing teacher support. The creation of the pipeline involved coordinating 23 teacher education programs with the Oklahoma Department of Instruction to share data in both directions. I also launched a data governance committee to protect student privacy and to ensure that the data was not used in the future to shut down or defund university teacher education programs.
Between 2017 and 2020, I transitioned to working as a communications strategist with public advocacy organizations, helping national groups to encourage civic engagement with the issues they care about, especially equity and justice. I regularly communicate with hundreds of thousands of organization members daily through email, SMS, and social media and have become well known for building relationships and commitment to the programs. Most recently in my volunteer life, I have been the Communications Chair for the Apex Public Schools Foundation, which provides teacher innovation grants to the 19 Apex WCPSS schools, the Farmington Woods Elementary School DEI Chair, and the Regional Vice Chair for the Wake County Democratic Party (a role I would resign from if chosen for school board), coordinating Apex's get out the vote effort that this month increased the turnout in the municipal elections 70% over the 2023 turnout.
As a representative of District 8, I would be working for one of the fastest-growing areas in the nation in a time of great upheaval in education. That is why I would focus on the following initiatives:
Rapid Growth Parent Advisory Group
Since 2020, Wake County's population has grown 9.1%, the third fastest in the nation. Much of that growth is in Apex, Holly Springs, and Fuquay Varina, in District 8. WCPSS has done an exceptional job of attempting to address this growth with new schools (four just last year!) and year-round school tracks, but there have been understandable growing pains and parent upset. Parents have regularly complained about siblings on different calendars, children switched to new schools multiple times in their elementary school years, and long distances to new schools.
While WCPSS has tried to adjust policies, including grandfathering siblings into schools even when the older sibling has already moved on to the next level, there is still a lot of angst in this constituency. I believe that this upset stems from two causes – lack of understanding of the bigger picture of student assignment policy, and parents feeling unheard in the process despite public comment periods and hearings. To address these needs and to fit with the WCPSS Strategic Plan Aim 12, I would like to create a Rapid Growth Parent Advisory Group made up of parents and guardians in the fastest growing areas of WCPSS. These parents would receive a deep-dive education on the student placement needs of WCPSS and how assignments are made, and they would have regular meetings with board members solely about the assignment plan in order to provide feedback and help think of innovative ways to address reassignment. This group would also be asked to present their work to their communities as part of an education plan to help our students' families at large understand why reassignment is happening in their neighborhoods.
Students of Color Early Identification and Support for Advanced Curriculum
The WCPSS Strategic Plan aims to "eliminate over-representation in Special
Education and under-representation in advanced coursework by race, ethnicity, and gender" (Aim 4). This is an issue near to my heart, as I am the co-author of the Sciences & Nonfiction Connections curriculum of the U-STARS~Plus program, a framework for elementary schools that uses science as a platform to help teachers identify and nurture the potential in young children, particularly those from disadvantaged, culturally diverse, or disabled backgrounds. The data base for this curriculum deeply explores why BIPOC children are underrepresented in gifted and advanced coursework. WCPSS has done an excellent job in removing racially-biased barriers and encouraging involvement in advanced courses, especially AP classes (Policy 1150). However, BIPOC children in NC are still 30-60% less likely to score a 3 or above on an AP test.
We need to be doing more to support BIPOC students so they not only take advantage of advanced courses, but are prepared to do the best of their abilities in them. WCPSS has taken steps with AVID programs in several schools, but we can go further by beginning in the elementary grades with programs like U-STARS that assume gifts and talents in all students, beginning specialized study skills programs by 4th grade instead of in middle school, and building mentorships for BIPOC kids with students from the area's historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and other area higher education programs.
21st Century Literacies and Modalities Curriculum
My last initiative is perhaps the farthest reaching, based in the WCPSS 4 Cs of Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Creativity. The advent of widely-available Artificial Intelligence (AI) has literally transformed education faster than perhaps any innovation since the Internet. Students can use tools at their fingertips to create what was unimaginable just a year ago, but they can also use AI to write papers, do their homework for them, and undermine the classroom experience. AI has also made it exponentially more difficult to differentiate between fact and fiction, trustworthy media and propaganda.
The board is working on AI policies for both classroom work and for analyzing student data, and I want to use my media literacy and teacher education background to help identify an appropriate framework for teachers to use inquiry-based, student-led learning in teaching students how to use AI as a tool rather than a crutch. The K-12 framework would help teachers shift their assessments to more in class and observational formats and identify how to tease standards out so they know when AI is appropriate and when it is not. This framework would include a strong media literacy component and emphasize cross-curricular education in order to prepare students to succeed in a 21st century world.
It is an integral time to have not just education experts in office on the WCPSS board, but strong public advocates. Just this year, it took significant negotiation and strategy to increase the budget from Wake County by $40.3 million, which was still $20 million less than was originally devised by the board. The NC General Assembly is not fulfilling its responsibilities to North Carolina's children to fund a free and appropriate public education (which is not just my opinion, but the ruling in the Leandro case), and every school board member must be able to simultaneously keep that fact front and center while still doing everything possible to provide the best possible education to every child no matter what race, gender, or economic status.
I have been preparing for most of my adult life for such a challenge, and I very much look forward to working with the entire board on equity, inclusion, and justice in preparing the next generation of Wake County residents.
Sincerely,
Jennifer Job, Ph.D.