Jenna Alexander

This page was current at the end of the individual's last campaign covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates.

Jenna Alexander

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Nonpartisan

Elections and appointments

Last election

November 5, 2019

Contact

Campaign website

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Jenna Alexander ran for election to the Loudoun County Public Schools to represent Catoctin District in Virginia. Alexander lost in the general election on November 5, 2019.

Alexander completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2019. Click here to read the survey answers.

Biography

Alexander's professional experience includes product and strategy development in the investments and capital markets industry.

Elections

2019

See also: Loudoun County Public Schools, Virginia, elections (2019)

General election

General election for Loudoun County Public Schools, Catoctin District

John Beatty defeated Zerell Johnson-Welch and Jenna Alexander in the general election for Loudoun County Public Schools, Catoctin District on November 5, 2019.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		John Beatty (Nonpartisan)	43.1	6,635
	Submit photo	Zerell Johnson-Welch (Nonpartisan)	29.2	4,496
	Submit photo	Jenna Alexander (Nonpartisan)	27.3	4,205
		Other/Write-in votes	0.3	45

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	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 15,381
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Endorsements

To see a list of endorsements for Jenna Alexander, click here.

Campaign themes

2019

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Jenna Alexander completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2019. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Alexander's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

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Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

Jenna Alexander is the Vice President of Advocacy for Virginia PTA and has served Loudoun for the past two years as Director of the Hunt District PTA, supporting PTAs at 52 Loudoun County schools. While serving as Director of the Hunt District PTA, Jenna created new opportunities for parents to engage with LCPS and has authored resolutions that guide state and federal advocacy work on mental health, small school staffing, renovating aging schools, world language instruction and advancing equity and diversity. Jenna previously served two terms as Hamilton Elementary PTA President and one term as Hamilton Elementary PTA Treasurer and was instrumental in forming a coalition to advocate for Loudoun's rural schools. For the past five years, Jenna has been a consistent driving force in leading the effort to protect Loudoun's small schools, reinstate full time principals and address neglected building renovations. Jenna's decade of work experience in Investments and Capital Markets strategy development and long history of advocacy on issues unique to Catoctin, will bring new approaches to addressing long standing challenges, lifting up parent voices, expanding academic opportunities and creating operational efficiencies. Jenna grew up in Frederick County, Maryland and has lived in Hamilton, Virginia for the past 12 years with her husband and children who attend Hamilton Elementary School and Blue Ridge Middle School.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

• Nothing is more important than the safety of our students and staff! LCPS needs to expedite the construction of security vestibules and renovation of aging school buildings, re-evaluate bus transportation routes and continue to invest in mental health programs, reducing overcrowding and prioritizing small classes sizes.To address the safety and communication concerns, an Ad-Hoc Committee on School Safety should be formed so that all aspects of safety can be prioritized and addressed in a cohesive and strategic way.Additionally, I think it's critical that the School Board take ownership for directly communicating its work through a regular newsletter or email and find more occasions to host community roundtables.
• The arts develop critical thinking skills and unleash the fresh creative ideas that foster innovation. I support expanding academic opportunities to provide students with more access to the arts, shift our technology heavy curriculum from STEM to STEAM and bring back world languages at the elementary level so students can learn at an age when it's easier and faster to learn a language and achieve a high level of fluency.
• Preserving rural Loudoun isn't just a land use issue, it's also an education issue. Our school system needs to join the effort to protect rural Loudoun by reinvigorating agriculture education so that Loudoun's next generation of farmers and entrepreneurs have a pathway to work the land we are fighting to preserve and we I would like to see an increase in the amount of locally grown foods served in our school cafeterias.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

I have spent years advocating at every level of government to ensure that our students and teachers have access to the tools and resources that they need to be successful. It's important that we ensure our schools are equitably funded, that our oldest schools are renovated, that we increase mental health and support staffing and identify a series of strategic actions to close the achievement gaps. This should be done in concert with a multi-year operational budget forecast that can be shared with the community and the Board of Supervisors in order to support long range planning and a steady tax rate.

What characteristics or principles are most important for an elected official?

It's critical that School Board members be relationship and coalition builders with deep understanding of legislative policy and financial management, an ability to listen and be open to different views and perspectives and have strong communication skills. County government works best when partisan politics are sat aside and elected officials work collaboratively to address the needs of every student, family and staff member.

What qualities do you possess that you believe would make you a successful officeholder?

Representing our families, staff and communities on the School Board is a direct continuation of the work I have been doing for years as a leader of the PTA both here in Loudoun and in Virginia. I am the only School Board candidate who works at the state level on non-partisan education legislation and funding and who has also worked with parents, teachers, principals and administrators on concerns unique to individual school communities. This experience has provided me with insight into the concerns of parents across Loudoun and given me a state level perspective of where Loudoun excels and where we need to improve. My professional background in finance and product development, work in the PTA, knowledge of education policies and years of leading the effort to protect our small schools enables me to be a fierce and successful advocate for Catoctin on day one.

What was the last song that got stuck in your head?

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What is the primary job of a school board member in your view?

The School Board member is an advocate, like myself, for every student and LCPS staff member in the county and importantly represents the needs and interests of their specific election district. The School Board is responsible for setting the vision and goals of the school district, holding the school district accountable for results, communicating those goals and results to the public and maintaining an efficient school budget that is fiscally conservative with high education standards. It's critical that School Board members be relationship and coalition builders with deep understanding of legislative policy and financial management and that they work closely with the Board of Supervisors to effectively plan for new schools and support workforce development. I have a successful track record of coalition building and advocating for changes to policies to better support our students and am the only candidate that has a history of advocating for the unique needs of the Catoctin District

How would you support the diverse needs of your district’s students, faculty, staff, and community?

I think it's critical that we improve communication and opportunities for parents, staff and students to be engaged in policy development through roundtables and learning workshops for parents. This means that communication and resources also need to be translated.

As the Vice President of Advocacy for the Virginia PTA one of the first things I did was write a new position statement on Advancing Equity and Diversity to guide advocacy work across the state. LCPS (and many divisions across the state and country) need to continue work that fosters an environment that addresses systemic unconscious bias, increases minority participation in gifted services, closes the achievement gap, increases hiring diversity, requires continued cultural sensitivity professional development and in general works to improve cultural awareness and sensitivity through programs and a review of the curriculum. I'd also like to see LCPS move ahead of the state requirement for data reporting and start reporting teacher diversity and professional development courses completed on each school profile. The school profiles should also be translated into other languages.

What will you do to build a better relationship with parents in the district? What plans do you have to be inclusive of parental involvement?

I currently serve as the Vice President of Advocacy for Virginia and for the past two years, I've served Loudoun as the Director of the Hunt District PTA, providing training, guidance and advocacy support to 52 PTAs in Loudoun County and our 300+ PTA officers and 10,500 PTA members. I also previously served as PTA President and PTA Treasurer at my children's elementary school. Creating opportunities for parents to be involved and engaged has been at the core of my work for many years.

While serving as Director of the Hunt District PTA, I radically changed the communication and engagement style of the district which increased participation from 5 schools to having all 52 schools participating at the county level. I also helped four of Loudoun's newer schools form PTAs to support their parent communities, developed partnerships with the business community to provide valuable discounts to Loudoun's PTA members, created a website and countless templates to support PTA work across the county, started hosting Roundtables and Community Conversations and forged new partnerships with the Special Education Advisory Committee and Minority Student Achievement Advisory Committee.

My vision, communication style and leadership revitalized the Hunt District PTA. The voice of Loudoun's parent volunteer community has never been as strong and cohesive as it is right now, and that is a direct result of my work.I will continue to foster opportunities for parents to be involved as a member of the school board.

How might you support the mental health needs of students/faculty/staff?

Removing the stigma around mental health is so important. At the state level my advocacy work has started to yield positive changes:

-- Virginia PTA Mental Health Return to Learn Resolution opened the discussion for changes to the LCPS policy.
-- State funding for school counselors was increased

There is still work to be done to improve communication and lower the student to specialist ratios for school psychologists, school social workers and school counselors. Caseloads of 1 psychologist or 1 social worker to 1,000 - 1,500 students is unacceptable. We also need to ensure staff has access to mental health resources.

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

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