Emily Jackson
Running for school board in Talbot County District 4
Email: emnu2005@gmail.com
Website: www.emilyfortalbot.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/emilyjacksontcboe/
How old will you be on Election Day (Nov. 3)?
44
Are you currently employed? If so, where, and what is your job title?
Yes. I am the Director of Development for a local nonprofit, where I lead fundraising, donor relations and community engagement.
What is the highest level of education that you completed, and where did you get that degree?
Bachelor of Arts, Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts
Why are you running for the school board?
I am running for a third and final term because I believe experience matters, particularly at a time when public education is facing significant academic, financial and operational challenges.
For eight years, I have served on the Talbot County Board of Education, including three years as board president, unanimously chosen each time by my board colleagues. I am also the parent of four children who attend Talbot County Public Schools. I experience this school system both from the board table and from my kitchen table.
Over those eight years, we have increased teacher compensation, expanded reading intervention and tutoring, strengthened career and technical education, invested in school safety and mental health services, completed a major renovation and expansion of Chapel District Elementary School on time and within budget and made academic performance data a regular part of the board's public work.
There is also much more to do. Our academic performance is improving, but too many students are still not meeting grade-level standards. Schools need to be safe, orderly places where teachers can teach and students can learn. We must continue recruiting and retaining excellent educators while managing increasingly complicated state mandates and significant financial pressures.
I know this school system, its strengths and its challenges. I understand the proper role of a board member, and I have never been afraid to ask difficult questions or insist on measurable results. I am asking Talbot County for four more years to finish the work I began in 2018.
What makes you a good candidate for the board?
Eight years of service have taught me that being an effective board member requires much more than caring about children or having strong opinions about education. It requires understanding governance, budgets, policy, state law, personnel, data and, perhaps most importantly, the difference between the board's responsibilities and the superintendent's.
I have that experience.
As board president, I established a regular cadence of public academic data reviews because I believe the board and community should be able to see whether our investments are producing results. I have supported significant increases in teacher compensation and professional growth, reading intervention and tutoring, stronger curriculum, expanded career and technical education, mental health services, school resource officers and major facility improvements.
I also believe good governance requires independence. My responsibility is not to automatically agree with the administration, employees, parents, political organizations or even my fellow board members. It is to listen to all of them, ask hard questions, examine the evidence and make the decision I believe best serves students and the school system.
I bring another perspective that matters enormously: I am the mother of four Talbot County Public Schools students. Over the years my children have experienced different schools, teachers, programs and academic needs. The policies we adopt are not theoretical to me.
I know how to do this job, I take it seriously, and after eight years I remain deeply invested in making our public schools better.
What is the most important issue facing your school board and what would you do about it if elected?
Student achievement remains our most important responsibility.
There is encouraging progress in Talbot County. Our reading performance has improved, and math proficiency has increased every year since 2022. But acknowledging progress cannot mean pretending that our results are good enough. They are not. Too many students are still not performing at the level we expect, particularly in math.
I also don't believe a single standardized test tells us everything about a child, teacher or school. Good governance means looking at multiple measures, identifying where students are struggling, determining which interventions actually work and directing resources accordingly.
That is why I pushed to make academic data review a routine part of the board's public meetings rather than something discussed once a year when state test scores arrive. I want us continually asking: Are students learning? Where are the gaps? Which schools and grades are improving? What is working there? Where are we spending money without seeing results?
We have already invested in new curriculum, reading and math interventionists, tutoring, instructional support and professional development. The next step is measuring those investments honestly and changing course when the evidence tells us something isn't working.
There will always be another controversy competing for our attention. The board cannot lose sight of its fundamental responsibility: making sure every student who walks into a Talbot County Public Schools classroom receives an excellent education and has the opportunity to succeed.
Please name a public leader you admire and explain why.
I have always admired strong women who make meaningful impacts in their communities and inspire other women and girls to step up and serve. But my answer to this question hasn't changed since 2022: I don't believe we should focus too much on admiring individual public leaders.
They aren't celebrities. They are public servants, and they should be appreciated and held accountable as such.
The leaders I admire most are those who inspire other people to act and make their own communities better, rather than those who seek to be placed on a pedestal. Some of our strongest leaders are also the most humble, including many whose names will never be widely known.
I will always admire service for the act of service, not for the accolades that come with it.
The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, passed by the General Assembly in 2021, is a 10-year plan that includes increased funding to support early childhood education, higher teacher starting pay, college/career-readiness standards for high school graduates, and expanded services to multilingual and impoverished families, among other goals. Since the Blueprint's implementation, test scores have increased modestly in many parts of the state, but some school officials complain about the costs and administrative burdens placed on them by the Blueprint. Please tell us your views on the Blueprint and how it is affecting your school district.
The goals behind the Blueprint are difficult to argue with: excellent teachers, strong early-childhood education, meaningful college and career pathways and additional resources for students who need them most.
In Talbot County, the Blueprint has helped accelerate work we believe in. We have expanded early childhood opportunities, increased teacher compensation, supported National Board Certification, expanded dual enrollment and career pathways and developed additional supports for students. The Blueprint's $60,000 minimum teacher salary requirement also took effect this year, which represented a meaningful pay increase for our educators.
But after years of implementation, I also believe the Blueprint is too prescriptive in places and creates a substantial administrative burden for local school systems. Requirements designed in Annapolis do not always reflect the needs, staffing realities or financial circumstances of an individual district. Compliance cannot become the objective at the expense of outcomes for students.
That distinction matters to me. I support accountability, but accountability should ask whether students are learning and whether public dollars are producing results, not simply whether a school system completed another report.
Talbot County also has to consider long-term affordability. Education represents a substantial portion of our county's operating expenditures, and Blueprint requirements affect both state and local funding obligations. We have a responsibility to implement the law while also advocating for changes when requirements are unnecessarily rigid, administratively burdensome or financially unsustainable.
The Blueprint should be a means of improving education, not an end in and of itself.
Chronic absenteeism has been a problem in many schools since the Covid-19 pandemic. How big of a problem is absenteeism in your school district, and what if anything can the Board of Education do about it?
Chronic absenteeism is a concern because we cannot educate students who are not consistently in school. But the data also need to be accurate and useful.
Talbot County Public Schools changed its attendance regulation this year, including eliminating the practice of converting six tardies into an unexcused absence, which had inflated absenteeism figures and treated very different situations the same way.
The board's role is to monitor attendance data, establish clear expectations and ensure the administration has effective intervention systems in place. That includes identifying patterns early and understanding why an individual student is missing school. Transportation, chronic illness, mental health, family circumstances, disengagement and simple truancy require different responses.
Accountability matters, but so does solving the underlying problem. Our objective should not simply be improving an attendance statistic. It should be getting students into school consistently, engaged in their education and connected to adults who notice when they aren't there.
Are you satisfied with your school district's policy on AI use by students? If so, why? If not, what would you suggest to improve the AI policy?
I supported our district's new AI policy as an important first step, particularly because students and teachers need clear expectations about academic integrity and when AI use is and is not permitted. But I do not believe our work is finished.
I would like Talbot County Public Schools to adopt stronger age-based limits on generative AI. I see no educational need for elementary students to use generative AI, when they should be building foundational knowledge, learning to read, write, solve problems and think independently. As students, particularly those pursuing technology-related fields, get older, learning to use AI responsibly will increasingly be an important part of preparing them for college and careers.
The challenge is making sure AI enhances learning rather than replacing it. Our policy should evolve as the technology and evidence evolve, with teacher input, clear academic integrity standards and developmentally appropriate limits on student use.
Youth mental health has been a growing concern for years now. Do you think your school district has the resources and personnel in place to deal with this issue adequately? If not, what would you suggest to improve the situation?
We are much better equipped than we were eight years ago, but I don't think any school system can say this work is finished.
Talbot County Public Schools has significantly expanded school-based mental health supports, including counselors, social workers, a mental health coordinator and community partnerships. Schools need to identify students who are struggling, provide appropriate support, respond effectively in a crisis and connect families with outside treatment when necessary. But schools cannot replace the larger mental healthcare system.
I also believe prevention matters. Our recent move toward limiting screen time during the school day is important. Students need opportunities to talk to one another, build relationships, move, focus and simply be present at school without a device constantly competing for their attention.
Going forward, I want us to evaluate access, caseloads and outcomes, not simply count positions. The measure of success is whether a child who needs help can actually get the right help when they need it.
Do you think there are circumstances when books should be removed from school libraries? If so, what kind of books should be removed, and who should make those decisions?
My fundamental position has not changed since 2022: professional librarians should curate school libraries, and individual families should make reading decisions for their own children.
That does not mean every book belongs in every school library. Age and developmental-appropriateness matter, which is precisely why elementary, middle and high school collections are different. We should have a clear, viewpoint-neutral reconsideration process when a parent believes material has been placed in an inappropriate collection, with decisions based on established educational criteria rather than political pressure.
What I oppose is allowing one family's objection to determine what every other family's child is permitted to read. Parents should absolutely be able to establish boundaries for their own children. They should not automatically be able to establish those boundaries for everyone else's.
The board's responsibility is to establish a fair policy and process, not to become a seven-member book review committee.
