Getting to know MUSD’s newest board member

On Wednesday, AnnaMarie Knorr took an oath of office to become the newest member of the Maricopa Unified School District governing board. She was selected Sept. 4 to fill the vacancy left by Veronica Gay, who resigned in July. Knorr sat down with InMaricopa.com to discuss her goals for the school year, go over issues facing the district and share what she likes to do for fun (Hint: she’s ready for some football!).

Q: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

A: I was in born and raised in Arizona in Buckeye and I attended public schools there through high school. Then I attended Arizona State University and received my Bachelor of Science degree in business management and also took their program on nonprofit organization management. During that time I interned at the state legislature and then after that, started my career. I moved to Maricopa eight years ago – gosh, it’s almost nine actually. I’ve been here ever since.

Q: What do you do, and what about your family?

A: I am the manager of government affairs at Western Growers Association, so I advocate for produce growers at the state capital. My husband and I have three children. Our oldest is a first-grader at Pima Butte Elementary and our other two are not yet of school age, but they will be attending MUSD as well. My husband farms south of town. We love Maricopa.

Q: What prompted you to move to Maricopa?

A: My husband actually lived here before we were married, so I moved here when we got married. He and his family came here from North Dakota about 15 years ago.

Q: As a board member, what is your goal for the school year? What do you hope to accomplish?

A: In terms of goals, my primary goal is to help the school district in any way that I can. I believe this year I’m obviously going to be learning a lot about how the district works, the internal workings of the district as well as the budget details. I think the school district has made a lot of progress over the last year and I think Dr. Chestnut is doing a great job. I just look forward to building on those progresses and further improving the state grade for the district and the individual schools, as well as teacher retention.

Q: What are your thoughts on retaining student enrollment at different schools?

A: Obviously student enrollment is one of our biggest issues in Maricopa. We’ve got competition with Kyrene (school district) and the charter schools around us, and it’s made it difficult for MUSD in the past several years. I definitely think not only retaining but recruiting our local students to stay in the district is one of the most important things we can do. I think we do that by showing them what MUSD has to offer, continuing to improve our schools as we have done in the last year, and recruiting and training the best teachers so that it’s a district they want to stay at (and) want to come back to.

Q: What is your stance on charter schools?

A: I believe in school choice. I think parents have their children’s best interests in mind and I think that when you empower parents with choices in their children’s education they’re going to be more involved and they’re going to take more of an interest. I absolutely believe in school choice. Like I said though, I’ve attended public schools my entire K-12 (education), and my kids are in public schools, so I do believe in the public school system. I do not think choice is negative. I think it’s positive for everybody. I think it makes public schools strive to do better, and that’s never a problem.

Q: What are some ways we can retain teachers and staff in Maricopa Unified School District?

A: Obviously for teachers, our ability to compensate them for the work that they do and just compete with teacher pay in other districts is important. Our teachers haven’t seen much in terms of a raise in the past several years, so I appreciate those ones who have stuck it out. I would like to see us work on compensating our teachers, especially those who are excelling. I think that would help us retain our good teachers and hopefully recruit new good teachers. I think the district just took some measures to try to retain staff. … When they couldn’t give them a good pay raise, they actually gave them a couple additional vacation days, which I thought was a creative way to try to incentivize folks. We have to be creative. Money’s tight, but we can be creative and find ways.

Q: This year, four schools raised their letter grades that are based on the result of the AIMS testing. One school, Maricopa Elementary School, dropped a letter grade. What can be done to raise that school’s grade and to maintain the others?

A: I think teachers – good teachers – are the cornerstone to children learning and their ability to test and their ability to excel and get us the scores we need to receive good labels from the state. It starts with teacher, teacher retention and teacher training. But I do think there’s always going to be a situation where sometimes you have school thrive and sometimes you have a school falling. You really have to look at the average. I think the fact that we’ve gone to a B for our district is impressive, and in one year having four schools raise their letter grades – even though we had one drop a letter grade – I think focusing on the fact that we had four improve is a really successful year for us. If we can have four improve in one year, we can look at MES and see what they need and figure out a way to help them as well.

***ADVERTISEMENT***Q: There have been some changes recently affecting elementary schools, most notably the previously K-fifth grade schools are now K-sixth grade. How should the elementary schools be structured? Would you support a change to K-eighth grade?

A: I can’t say I wouldn’t ever support (changing schools to K-eighth grade) because every situation has to be considered in its full context and with the overall interests of all students in mind. I can say I would have concerns about moving to a K-eight system and the effects of having such a diverse age range in one setting. I think there’s such a difference between a kindergartner and an eighth-grader, and to have them on the same campus, I just don’t think it’s beneficial for either child. Their needs are so much different, their behaviors are so much different, I think having a separate elementary and middle school system is definitely a better fit for the children in the schools. In term of K-six (versus) sixth, seventh, eighth, that was a decision the board made last year to put sixth grade back in the schools, I can tell you it makes a difference. … At my son’s elementary school, they’ve had a couple of fights and a couple situations that we’ve never seen before. That’s just what happens when you have that older group of children around.

Q: What do you like to do for fun?

A: As a mom with three children, most of my time is spent working or running around with my kids to their activities – soccer, football and those types of functions. There’s not a lot of free time, but my husband and I are big Cardinals’ fans and we have season tickets. We do enjoy going to those games. I am very active in some nonprofits that I work with.

Q: What nonprofits are they?

A: I work with the Dodie Londen Excellence in Leadership Program for Women. I am also involved in the Parent Teacher Organization for Pima Butte (Elementary School) and I currently serve on the board as treasurer.

Q: Is there anything else you want readers to know about yourself?

A: The reason I ran for the board is because I’m a parent and I have kids in the public schools. I believe in the public schools, and I want to make MUSD a district that parents want to send their kids to and let students excel in. I don’t have any specific agenda. I don’t have any political aspirations. I am truly just a concerned parent who wants to help improve our schools.