I founded Santa Fe South, an Oklahoma City charter school, after working as a music teacher and then as an assistant principal at two different traditional public schools. I decided to start SFS after experiencing a personal crisis: I realized that our traditional schooling system was incredibly inefficient at educating children and incredibly efficient at crippling the ability of teachers to do their jobs. I also witnessed a disturbing amount of inequity. Schools on one side of the city, with 98% free and reduced-price lunch, were failing and setting their kids up to fail. A few miles North, the opposite was true. Zip codes were literally determining these kids’ futures, their happiness, and even their life expectancy.

I have four children, from first grade to junior high school. Like any parent, I want them to get the best education possible. My mother is from Panama, and Spanish is her first language. That has always made me value language education. As a society, I think it’s essential we educate American kids to speak at least one language besides English. Proficiency in foreign languages is getting increasingly important as technology makes the world smaller and smaller (you can only Zoom with someone if you can speak their language!). Individually, I also think exposure to foreign languages at a young age can unlock different parts of your brain and help you grow and develop. There are plenty of studies to back that up.

We are a law enforcement family, and one of the things my husband and I have always been passionate about, even before we got married, is raising money for Special Olympics Oklahoma. We believe deeply in supporting those with physical and cognitive differences, so we enrolled our daughter Maevyn in Special Care at a very young age.

I became an educator after leaving the Air Force. I taught AP classes at a public school before becoming the Academic Dean at Crossings Christian School and then moving to the SNU Lab School in Bethany, where I currently serve as superintendent.

I had always planned to attend the same public high school that my sister did, but when I learned about the corporate work study program at Cristo Rey and the opportunities it would give me, I knew that was the right path for me. I’ve never heard of another school having anything like Cristo Rey’s Corporate Work Study Program. It was an option that was new and different. All my expectations for my high school experience were changed when I thought about the possibilities that could be open to me.

We moved to Oklahoma two years ago after leaving active duty in the Marine Corps. My husband and I are both veterans. Our son, Gabe, had just turned four, and we were more than a little concerned about the quality of education he would receive in the public school system. Oklahoma currently ranks 48th in education. There are plenty of private schools in the area and churches that run preschools, but those were far out of reach with our budget.

I was born in Phoenix, but when I was three years old, we moved to Mexico and I lived there for seven years. I grew up there in a very small town, and then we moved to Oklahoma when I was about 12.

The reason I became an educator was because I was a struggling student with ADHD. Later during my adult life, I discovered I have a learning disability in reading. It was then I realized I must have had some incredible parents and teachers who supported me through my struggles. I share all the time that I would have thrived in a virtual school where I could have worked more on my pace without the social pressures of the class to “get it” so the teacher could move on.

As a mom raising two daughters alone, ages twelve and thirteen, my income and family circumstances would never have allowed me the chance to put my girls in a Private School. When trying to decide on the best education for my children, I faced tremendous stress and concern as to how their future would be affected.

Money. It drives the world. It can buy education, status, relationships, lifestyles. If you get the right job, you can get the perfect house, the perfect car, the perfect girl or guy, the perfect life. At least, this is what modern society teaches us. However, society does not equip us with the tools needed to achieve the so-called perfect life nor does it define a satisfactory one.

I am forever grateful for the Opportunity Scholarship Fund (OSF) Scholarship for my son, Cooper. I struggled with my son being in the local public schools for four years and desperately wanted to get him out. Between the treatment from fellow students, large classroom sizes and the things he was exposed to, I was more than concerned. However, being a single mother, a full-time nursing student, and only being able to work part time hours, the numbers just didn’t add up for me to be able to send him anywhere but a public school.

We could not attend the Wright Christian without the scholarship given to help us with tuition costs. We chose this school for our daughter because we knew the time that would be spent with her would be dramatically increased in choosing a private school such as Wright. Sydney has attended one full year and is now working on her second year with Wright as a first grader.

I was born in Oklahoma, but both my parents were born in Mexico. My mom never finished high school and my three older sisters started college but none of them have finished. My dad has always told us that when you start something you need to finish it. My sisters tried, but they eventually gave up. Seeing that happen really made an impression on me and made me more focused on my education.

I became a single parent to my grandson, Kurt, when he was just a few months old. I worked extremely hard, juggling multiple jobs and going back to college when he was three years old.