Get to know the Winooski School Board candidates | Kamal Dahal
Four candidates are running for seats on the Winooski School Board. Allison Burlock is running to serve the remainder of a 3-year term while Tori Cleiland is running for a two-year term, both are uncontested. Kamal Dahal and David Wallace are in a race to serve a 3-year term.
These interviews have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Kamal Dahal
Q: What’s your age, profession, work, and education background?
I am 29 years old, going to be 30 soon. I currently come from a technology background. I’m working as a business analyst in one company in South Burlington. I’ve been in the industry for the last five years. I moved to Winooski back in 2019 from Essex. I moved to Vermont in 2015 from New York, and I moved to New York in 2008 from Nepal. Since moving to the United States, I always wanted to be a part of a community and do my best serving the community that I lived in. But I never got the opportunity as there were always other things in the way, preventing that from happening. When last year, there was that opportunity, I wanted to be on the board to see what I could contribute to the community and learn along the way.
Q: What made you want to run for school board?
It is not necessarily because I came from a very long educational background. My intention to be on the board here is that Winooski has got a lot of minority students. The town of Winooski is one of the most diverse towns in Vermont, and the school kind of reflects the demographic composition of the town itself. However, there had never been any representation from a minority community, and their voice was not brought to the table. Before I decided to run last year, I found so many other people who wanted representation of their voice. There are so many different aspects, especially when you are in a leadership position of a school or a city, where that representation matters. So those are the kind of things that I wanted to bring to the board and then bring a different set of perspectives. To make substantial changes to these schools and make a big contribution, one year is not enough.
Q: What has the board been doing to foster anti-racism in school in response to student protests last year?
This has become a very contested issue, you know, a point of discussion when I joined the board right after I joined the board. There were demands and requests from the student side and the board was trying to get as much community input as possible to resolve this. The issue with race and inequality takes a very long time to resolve and it exists everywhere in the United States in general. Take the school students’ demands about the school resource officer for instance. I think the board still has a lot to learn and to listen to but I think the board is making very positive changes and I can give you the list. There was a meeting to decide whether to have a school resource officer or not have a school resource officer. So, when we talked to the students, obviously, there were a lot of very passionate students, especially from callers who had brought their perspective about what it feels like to have a police officer in the school as a black student. And there were a lot of parents who were concerned about not having security in school because they have concerns for their children. Those concerns were not coming from just one demographic that was black, white, immigrants, etc., it was a mixed group of people, mostly parents who had concerns about not having a security person in the school. So in the midst of that we were supposed to make a decision. It led to the creation of a separate committee that I was part of. The conclusion of that committee was a recommendation to have a school resource officer outside the school perimeter, having an office in the city hall, but also available to the school.
Q: Are you in favor of keeping the mask mandate in Winooski schools?
I mentioned to you that there's a learning curve, right. When we think about the school board, different school boards have different styles of governance. But in Winooski, school boards are more about setting the long term vision of the school. We don't include the nitty gritty, so we're not tying superintendents hands, and you know, we still need to give him some flexibility on how to operationalize. So we make that balance. When it comes to any of the decisions about the healthcare policy, or what's best for the students, about mask mandates, all of those policies fall under the operational aspect of the school and not necessarily the policy aspect, because those things keep changing. But how he does that and whether there’s a mask mandate is a decision that the superintendent should be able to make. That's the approach that we've been taking, and it's been working out pretty good. There are parents that are frustrated when cases go up and students have to stay at home but so do teachers when there's an increase in cases and I think our superintendent and his entire admin team has been pretty good at communicating that and explaining that to all parties. So far, we have not had any big heated debate about that and everybody seems to be okay with the way things are going and how it's being handled.
Q: The board is proposing a budget of about $21 million for the school district—meaning a massive increase in spending per pupil. What do you look forward to in the next term with this budget increase and what should students expect to see?
One of the things we are investing in for the upcoming school year is providing year-round transportation and expanding PreK programming. The proposed 2022-2023 budget reflects our commitment to putting children first. We know this will increase our projected equalized pupil spending by 24.5% compared to the current year. However, we felt these are necessary investments that will serve our students and community best. Overall the proposed FY 2023 budget will be $21,287,921, an increase of about $1.77 million, or 9% from the current year. The increased expense will be beneficial to all students, especially students without private transportation to and from school.
