Hi! My name is Jason Swails and I am running to represent Region 2 on the Nazareth Area School Board as a director.

I am a product of public schools, attending a school district in upstate New York very similar to Nazareth School District in both size and quality. I chose to pursue my undergraduate and graduate degrees in chemistry at public universities in New York and Florida. The quality education I received through the public education system prepared me to excel in a challenging career actively developing new treatments for cancer.

I know first-hand the benefit that a quality education can deliver, and I want to ensure that Nazareth continues its educational excellence. With two young children coming up through the Nazareth Schools, I want to ensure each generation emerges stronger than the last, preparing them to handle modern challenges in a fast-paced and complex world.

Raising children requires a community. At the center of that community are the parents and close family that provide a supportive, loving home. Our responsibility, and privilege, as parents is to nurture and ready them to enter the adult world prepared to thrive. But we can't do it alone.

While my parents guided me toward the person I am today, it was an outstanding high school teacher that hooked me on chemistry and started me on my path working to cure cancer. I had many excellent teachers with deep experience and expertise in how to educate.

Nazareth's academic success depends deeply on not only the quality of our teachers, but their passion and drive to educate. I recognize that our teachers (often parents themselves) form the backbone of our school district and as professionals perform their best when they are supported. The Board should lean on teachers' expertise when it comes to enacting educational policies. The Board should continually take steps to attract and retain the very best teachers available for our students. School District tax revenue must be managed efficiently and responsibly.

In today's polarized political environment, our county is wonderfully diverse. When our students graduate, their exposure to a rich diversity of political viewpoints will be to the benefit of both our community and our country. I firmly believe that the school board should focus on its true task of providing a top-notch education, and that politics and culture wars have no role to play in how the school board should advance the Nazareth School District's mission of education. I will act for everybody in our community—our parents, teachers, and especially students—to preserve that rich diversity because our kids are worth it.