Kristen French

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Kristen French

Nonpartisan

Prior offices

Charleston County School District North Area (Historical)

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Education

Bachelor's

Birmingham-Southern College, 1986

Ph.D

Medical University of South Carolina, 2006

Personal

Birthplace

Fort Payne, Ala.

Profession

Scientist

Kristen French was a member of the Charleston County School District school board in South Carolina, representing North Area District. She assumed office on November 16, 2020. She left office on November 18, 2022.

French ran for re-election to the Charleston County School District school board to represent District 3 in South Carolina. She did not appear on the ballot for the general election on November 8, 2022.

Biography

Kristen French was born in Fort Payne, Alabama. She earned a bachelor's degree from Birmingham-Southern College in 1986 and a Ph.D. from Medical University of South Carolina in 2006. Her professional experience includes working as a scientist.

Elections

2022

See also: Charleston County School District, South Carolina, elections (2022)

General election

General election for Charleston County School District school board, District 3

Pam McKinney defeated Ashley Peele, Chris Collins, and Thomas Ravenell in the general election for Charleston County School District school board, District 3 on November 8, 2022.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔	Submit photo	Pam McKinney (Nonpartisan)	42.9	4,523
		Ashley Peele (Nonpartisan)	31.2	3,289
		Chris Collins (Nonpartisan)	17.3	1,824
	Submit photo	Thomas Ravenell (Nonpartisan)	8.2	865
		Other/Write-in votes	0.3	34

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	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 10,535
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

• Kristen French (Nonpartisan)

2020

See also: Charleston County School District, South Carolina, elections (2020)

General election

General election for Charleston County School District North Area (Historical) (2 seats)

Courtney Waters and Kristen French defeated incumbent Chris Collins, Charles Monteith, and incumbent Kevin Hollinshead in the general election for Charleston County School District North Area (Historical) on November 3, 2020.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Courtney Waters (Nonpartisan)	27.6	63,872
✔		Kristen French (Nonpartisan)	24.0	55,666
		Chris Collins (Nonpartisan)	19.2	44,401
	Submit photo	Charles Monteith (Nonpartisan)	15.9	36,869
		Kevin Hollinshead (Nonpartisan)	12.8	29,705
		Other/Write-in votes	0.6	1,322

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	Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 231,835
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Campaign themes

2022

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Kristen French did not complete Ballotpedia's 2022 Candidate Connection survey.

2020

Kristen French completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2020. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by French's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

Kristen French is a scientist, beekeeper, mom, wife, and community advocate. She is interested in quality education in every school, environmental justice and protection, and addressing racial disparities. She enjoys knitting, jigsaw puzzles, and playing video games with her family.

Dr. French has lived in North Charleston, SC, for over 20 years. She has been involved in a variety of advocacy projects with local community organizations. She has enjoyed applying her interests to extracurricular education, such as after school programs for students about pollinators, chemistry, and the environment. She has also served as a volunteer on PTAs at her children's schools.

Kristen has worked with local organizations, received candidate training, and works to bring equity to her community. Her PhD training in Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology and Toxicology and post-doctoral training in Community Based Research has honed her analytical skills and taught her the value of listening to people in the community before deciding what is needed.

As a Charleston County School Board member, she will advocate for Community School approaches to improving our schools, by listening to teachers, students, parents, school staff, and community members. Working together, we can provide quality education in each school in our district.

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?

• It is the responsibility of our district to provide quality education in each school. I believe the best model for this is Community Schools, where leadership within the school (represented by admin, teachers, staff, and families) provides the framework for improvement, and the district supports their initiatives.
• We must keep public schools public.
• We must treat our teachers and education support staff like professionals and provide them the resources and supports necessary to do their jobs effectively.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

I'm running for Consolidated School Board as a long-time North Area resident, community member, and parent. Schools ARE communities and the best schools take care to meet the needs of all the people in their community: students, teachers, staff, parents. When our communities are struggling-economically, socially, or emotionally-our schools reflect those same struggles. Healthy communities and learning environments are a product of treating all stakeholders with respect and dignity.

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

I have been involved in my community for almost 25 years, and I have learned that the best approach to success is to listen to others. While I have strong analytical skills, my best insights come from information I have received from a variety of people when I was able to listen fully. In addition, my training in graduate school taught me to think critically and accept critical thought from others. In order to reach solutions that work for specific school communities and for the district overall, I will work to apply these skills daily.

What do you believe are the core responsibilities for someone elected to this office?

The school board should continually be reviewing the capacity, climate, community, and cohesion of the district and its policies. Schools across the district have very different resource needs in order to achieve the goal of meeting emotional, social, economic, civil, and academic needs of students. As a result, the district needs to have the capacity to listen, allocate resources equitably (as needed, not by formulas), and to respond quickly to changes in communities. Our district needs a vision which will create positive teaching and learning environments regardless of socioeconomic differences. In addition, as a school board member, I will work to hold district staff accountable to coordinate and negotiate usage of resources between schools and community partners in order to provide the best solutions for each school, without abdicating that responsibility to a third party operator.

What is the first historical event that happened in your lifetime that you remember? How old were you at the time?

The Apollo moon landing in 1969. I was four years old.

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

The Community School model is the best fit for a district as diverse as ours. We have rural, suburban, and urban schools, and our students live in a wide range of socioeconomic situations. The Community School model values the knowledge of the people closest to the school community: the teachers, admin, support staff, and families in the school community. By listening to them and encouraging strong School Improvement Councils, the school board and the district as a whole can provide the resources that they need to create a thriving educational environment for children, their families, and the community.

How will you build relationships with members of the broader community? Which groups, organizations, stakeholders will you specifically target?

Many of our schools which are struggling need a variety of community partnerships for wrap around services and opportunities for student growth. I would work with our area hospitals, dental, and mental health services to provide telehealth and other onsite clinics in schools that identify that need. In addition, I would seek out partnerships with local apprenticeship programs in order to provide a variety of skills for students. Many of the needs are based on the disparities between communities in our county, and Community Schools can provide a hub for those services. There are a lot of opportunities that have been sidelined for too long.

Do you believe it is important to intentionally recruit with the aim of diversifying the district’s faculty, staff, and administration? If so, what would be your policy to achieve this?

It is important to consider that our teaching staff is not as diverse as the student population, and this can be a contributing problem to whether a school environment is inclusive to the student population and the community. I believe that our teacher recruitment efforts need to be examined to make sure we are advertising in a variety of schools, including HBCs. We also need to work with our state legislature to create teacher credential agreements with other states in order to more easily recruit teachers certified in other states.

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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