Election Information
Election Day is November 8, 2022
This year voters in the Mankato Area Public School District will have the opportunity to vote for three candidates to serve four-year terms on the School Board.
I hope you’ll consider voting for me.
Below you’ll find information about me and my priorities. Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions.
The Minnesota Secretary of State Website has everything you’ll need to ensure you can cast your ballot.
About me
I was born and raised in Mankato and I’m a proud product of the Mankato Area Public Schools. I’m also the proud father to two daughters ages three and one and my wife is a teacher at Mankato West High School. I received a bachelor’s degree from Concordia College in Moorhead, MN and a graduate certificate in public management from George Mason University in Virginia. In July of 2022 I was appointed to fill a vacant seat on the School Board, where I am currently serving.
I’ve been blessed with a professional career that has offered me the opportunity to work deeply in education policy at the federal, state and local levels and play a servant leadership role in the Greater Mankato area. I had the opportunity to work at the National Governors Association in Washington D.C. where I represented the views of the nation’s governors on federal education policy. From there, I returned to Mankato to serve as Greater Mankato Growth’s first Director of Government & Institutional Affairs and later served as the organization’s Vice President. In these positions I played a leading role in advancing key organizational and community priorities to help make Greater Mankato an attractive place to live, work and play. In 2020, I moved into a new role leading education and workforce policy for Western Governors University (WGU), the largest nonprofit university in the country.
I also have extensive past and present volunteer experience with the Greater Mankato Area United Way, Community Education Advisory Committee, Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, U.S. Highway 14 Partnership, and Blue Earth County Historical Society.
You can learn more about my School Board service by following my Facebook page (facebook.com/baker77).
Why should you consider voting for me?
I applied for the school board vacancy because I believe great schools make great communities. I am vested in the success of our public schools and want to ensure the next generation receives the same high-quality education at MAPS that I did. But public education and our district face significant challenges. I am running to ensure that our district embraces the opportunities that lie before us to ensure that ALL of our community’s children have access to the best possible education to prepare them to be successful in life.
Without question, COVID strained the relationship between the district and the community and has set our students back academically, socially, and mentally. As a new school board member and husband of an educator, I see the immense challenges and stress all of our school staff and children are under and I know how crucial ensuring their wellbeing and success will be to the future of our community.
Our schools deserve to be – and need to be – great. But it’s easy to say that. To get there, we will need competent, experienced leaders on our school board that know how to get it done.
Having been involved in education and workforce policy and community leadership for 15 years, I bring a balanced perspective and demeanor to the board. My entire career has focused on working with public governing bodies to effectuate changes that benefited people and created pathways to opportunity. My experience will allow me to effectively work with the public, parents, school staff, business community, the school board, and superintendent to restore our district’s tradition of excellence. I’m ready to take my depth of experience and deploy it as a public servant myself to the schools and community that gave so much to me.
What are my priorities?
School culture: As a new board member, one thing I hear almost universally from parents and teachers is concern with student behavior. This is a big factor in driving challenges we face with enrollment, teacher retention/recruitment, and, ultimately, academic success as learning cannot occur in a disruptive environment. Our educators deserve consistent and effective disciplinary polices backed up by administrative support to ensure their classrooms are safe places and conducive to learning. We have amazing professional educators in our schools. It’s incumbent on the school board to ensure they have the policies and tools they need to set and deliver on the high-standards and accountability we hold for ALL students.
Safety: As recent events have shown us, we must keep the safety of our schools top of mind. This will mean ensuring we’re focusing on mental health, keeping school resource officers in our schools, ensuring systems are in place to proactively identify threats, and constructing secure single points of entry on all our schools that currently don’t have them.
Excellence through innovation: The pandemic took a terrible toll on the academic progress of our students. But it also drove schools to think differently about how to best deliver education in the 21st century. I am worried that continuing along with the status quo in our schools will drive extreme teacher burnout, student disengagement, and academic stagnation. Our district should capitalize on new models of education that will promote the sustainability of the teaching profession, reengage students in the joy of learning, close opportunity gaps, and create pathways to opportunity aligned with community needs. There is no reason our school district shouldn’t be the most innovative in the state in finding new and better ways to serve our students as well as the most professionally satisfying for teachers to work.
How can our district contribute to the overall economic success of our community?
We often hear about workforce shortages, but our community doesn’t have a talent or workforce shortage issue. We have a retention issue. Each year thousands of individuals graduate from our secondary and postsecondary institutions in the region. Unfortunately, not enough of them stay. Our schools are the leading producer of our future workforce and we need to do a better job of connecting students with our business community early and often so that we can increase their chances of staying (or coming back) and contributing to greater Mankato. About 13% of student in MAPS today participate in some form of work-based learning. Should I be elected, one of my goals will be to work to get that number much closer to 100%. A career academy model at our high-schools is also worthy of consideration. Whether a student is college bound or looking to enter the workforce directly, there is tremendous value in giving students more hands-on experience in a business setting aligned to their interests.
In addition, the perception of our schools as high-quality is a significant factor in our community’s ability to attract new business opportunities and talent to the region. The school board has a significant responsibility to manage our district’s historic reputation for excellence or we will do serious damage to the ability of our community to continue the economic growth we’ve enjoyed.
How can I be sure you’ll spend my tax dollars wisely?
My experience with budgets begins at home and extends to 15 years of professional experience working with public and non-profit budgets. While Vice President at Greater Mankato Growth, I played a leading role in managing our annual $3.4 million budget. Through my various government affairs roles I’ve worked deeply with federal, state and local budgets that require me to be familiar with fiscal polices, guidelines and procedures. A budget is a reflection of our priorities. When reviewing a public budget, I seek to ensure that there is first a solid strategic plan in place that focuses on the right things and that we are aligning resources necessary to deliver on that plan. Just as importantly, the school board must be diligent in evaluating the ROI of those investments and in holding ourselves accountable to the outcomes we say we want. Transparency with the public is paramount throughout the process.
Fortunately, our MAPS levy is one of the lowest per student when compared with peer districts. Unfortunately, our district faces a challenging financial future driven by enrollment declines. As a school board member, I will be laser focused on ensuring that our district is competing to return to positive enrollment growth. It’s also important that the school board be forthright and honest with the public about the needs of our school district and that we advocate for the investments necessary to keep fundamentals like class size etc. in check.
How will you work with other board members?
I’ve spent my entire professional career working at and leading non-partisan organizations. I bring to the board a deeply honed ability to treat everyone with respect, ensure all voices are heard, and the recognition that collaboration, collegiality, compromise, and consensus is the heart of our democratic system. With all of the disfunction in today’s politics, our school board can and should be an example to our community – particularly our students – about how adults can work together in the best interest of a common cause, not personal agenda and division.
“I believe great schools make great communities. Our schools deserve to be - and need to be - great. But it’s easy to say that. To get there, we will need competent, experienced leaders on our school board that know how to get it done. I’m ready to take my depth of experience and deploy it as a public servant to the schools and community that gave so much to me. I’d be honored to earn your vote.”
— Patrick