Poway Unified School District · Board of Education · Trustee Area D · November 3, 2026

Jen for Poway

No child unseen.

I taught across campuses, classrooms, and communities for over twenty years, in every spot on the continuum. I have raised my family in Rancho Peñasquitos since 2007. I know how a district is built, and where it falls short for students, educators, and taxpayers.

Join the campaign See the commitments

The Case

Business as usual ends here.

What fails this district is not its people. The teachers are devoted, the families relentless, the intentions real. The shortfalls here are structural: the system builds them in, and almost no one reads it.

A board member is there to find where the district fails its students, name it, and act. This is what I intend to do.

Fault and responsibility are two different words.

Business as usual is not free. The cost lands on students first, then on the educators who cover the gaps, and finally on the taxpayers who fund the fallout. I am running to change that: to govern in plain sight, to hold this board to its own bylaws, and to open its books.

The Evidence

They didn't fall behind.

This is not new. For years, the state's report card has rated Poway red for the same students: children with disabilities, English learners, children in poverty. They didn't fall behind. They fell out of view.

The data isn't new. The forgetting is old.

Poway Unified · 2025 State Report Card

The state grades every district. This is Poway's.

Poway's 2025 rating is Red, the state's lowest. It falls on these groups:

= Poway's Red rating · the state's lowest level

Students with disabilities English learners Children in poverty Homeless children Black & Latino students

Poway's reds show up in suspensions and absences across multiple schools, the very places a district loses its most vulnerable children.

More Poway-specific data will follow as public records come back.

The Commitments

My four commitments.

Govern from knowledge, not guesswork

Bring real command of how this district works to every vote.

Act ahead, not after

Solve problems while they are small. That is better for students and wiser for taxpayers.

Back teachers, not busywork

Set fair caseloads and real staffing so no one is doing two jobs.

Spend on students, not settlements

Publish what the district spends on lawyers and lawsuits.

What Representation Means

Dialogue, not silence.

I welcome dialogue with anyone in this community about a child's education, a taxpayer, a student, a teacher, a fellow board member, the superintendent. I have reached out at every level, as a parent and on behalf of other families, and I know how it goes: you email this board, and no one answers. That is not right, and it is not representation. I will answer, and I will not let this board vote on what it does not understand.

Govern close. Distance is where accountability dies.

The open record

I keep nothing from the people I serve. Families come to me from every district, Poway among them, to make sense of a system no one ever designed for them. What I know, I give away openly, to anyone who asks. That door does not close.

I have offered this district my help at no cost, and it has not taken it. One family at a time only reaches so far, so I am running to do this at the scale of the whole district. What I keep out of Poway is my company's business, never its families. JenEd will not contract with the district I help govern. I will disclose any support I give a family here, and I will step away from any decision I hold a stake in.

The conflict worth naming is not the help I give in the open. It is the settlement a board seals in closed session and never discloses.

About Jen

First, a mother of four.

Campus
Classroom
Community

I am, first, a mother of four children in this district. One of them it placed, at its own expense, in a school beyond its own walls. I have sat on the family's side of the table this board sits across from. I have felt what it costs when the district stops seeing a child.

My qualifications are not merely the letters after my name, though I earned every one. They are also the campuses, classrooms, and communities I have worked in across the continuum, over twenty years, from the most-resourced classroom to the least. I have the letters, and I have the life behind them. Few people who run for a school board have stood in that many rooms, and I have.

“I teach the student the system is built for, and the one it is not.”

A district is not a mission statement. It runs on decisions, sequences, and dollars. Most boards govern the part they can see and miss the architecture underneath, where a signal is present and no one has the language to read it. Reading that architecture is the work of my career. It earned me Teacher of the Year twice. I am running to bring it to the seat that governs it. The classroom just got larger.

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Add your name. We'll keep you close to the work. Events, ways to help, and how to vote in Area D.