Hey! I am Sonja Payne Szubski and I would like your vote for the District 4 School Board seat for the DeKalb County School District.
I have lived in DeKalb County the majority of my life and have settled in Tucker with my two children. They attended Livsey Elementary School, Tucker Middle School and are now both at Tucker High School, with my oldest graduating this spring!
As your DCSD Board Member, I will work to put our students and teachers at the forefront of my decision making and policy creation. My experience and focus center on transparency, collaboration, fiscal responsibility.
As a communications professional for a local municipality, it is my job to ensure transparency to our residents. I take this on with the highest integrity and recognize the importance for transparency in all that a government does. The school board and district are no different. I have served the community of Tucker in the communications department for almost 10 years and I pride myself on my ability to take on complex governmental information and streamlining for easy consumption and understanding.
Serving as a government employee, I have witnessed first hand that collaboration across government entities is often the strongest approach to providing the best services. For over a decade I have worked with the DeKalb Delegation under the Gold Dome, the DeKalb County Board of Commissioners and the DeKalb County School Board. I believe bringing these three entities into alignment and including incorporated cities for the support of our most precious community, our children, is the key to a stronger and better DeKalb.
Having created the nonprofits, Tucker 2014 and Tucker 2015, as well as serving on the boards of several organizations, I fully understand and embrace fiscal responsibility. In my day to day as the Communications Director for the City of Tucker, I and the rest of the staff strive to make every taxpayer dollar count the most. This will not change once I am elected.
I am familiar with the process of creating scope of work and negotiating contracts for capital projects in the millions down to the smallest of services. I plan to take a deep dive into the annual budget of the school district, and find ways to streamline the central office while increasing support for teachers.
