Staff Spotlight: Ken Kuhl, Regional Director, Tarrant County
Q&A with Ken
What do you do for Leadership ISD?
As Leadership ISD’s regional director for Tarrant County, I oversee our regional efforts to develop community, business, and education leaders into well-informed and equity-focused public education advocates. I also lead our get-out-the-vote efforts for school board elections. My goal is to help parents, teachers, and other advocates find their voice to speak up for all students and support educational equity.
Why are you passionate about public education in Tarrant County?
Tarrant County is where my daughter goes to school, so it's meaningful to me. I’ve cared about educational equity for a long time but having a kid in school really motivated me to be involved in significant ways. I want to do work that impacts public education and improves outcomes for all kids, not just her. And, that is most effectively done on a local level through school boards. So, we are building coalitions of public education advocates and building relationships with school board members so that we can support them and help them govern in a way that centers students and prepares them for life after graduation.
Please tell us about Leadership ISD’s recent get-out-the-vote efforts for school board elections.
Our Civic Voices Fellowship has always had an action project component centered around our mission to better school board governance. Knowing the importance of school board elections and the low turnout year after year, we decided that last year’s action project should be focused on getting out the informed vote. Our fellows collected candidate questionnaires from each trustee candidate in 17 districts across North Texas and we housed them on our website to give voters an easy way to learn about candidates and what they stood for. Our fellows also hosted GOTV events and candidate forums to further educate the public. I think our initial School Board Election Hub where we hosted the questionnaires and a variety of related information was an amazing resource but I am very excited because this year we are taking it to the next level! This year, we are developing a candidate evolution tool to help voters assess candidate’s responses against research-based criteria for effective school board leadership.
How will Leadership ISD’s new Candidate Evaluation Tool help community members make an informed vote?
We will continue to provide the resource of candidate questionnaires but in a more effective and action-oriented way. School board elections are down-ballot races and often hard to do your own research for. Few voters know much, if anything, about what school board members are supposed to do in their role or what makes them effective. So, with our new School Board Election Hub and Candidate Evaluation Tool, voters will be presented with the roles and responsibilities of school board trustees, research-based criteria for effective school board trustees, and student outcome data for their district. All of this information is really important when you are deciding who will best represent you. Voters will also be able to rate each candidate’s responses to a series of questions based on the given criteria and compare how they scored each candidate. I think this will serve to get more people to the polls because the tool gives less-engaged voters a quicker, more efficient way to do that down-ballot research, learn about school boards, and make an informed vote.
What advice would you offer to a current student?
I always encourage my daughter to hold her assignments and class work in a space of fun and curiosity rather than a space of obligation. It can be hard to find the relevance of why you're learning something until later in life, but taking advantage of every opportunity to learn when you are young pays massive dividends when you are older. I also want students to realize that their voice matters and that the more knowledge they can acquire, the more powerful and important their voice will become.
What organizations are you involved with outside of Leadership ISD?
I'm on the board of directors of the Texas PTA and involved in the Council of PTAs for Fort Worth ISD as well as the PTA at my daughter’s school. I also serve on the Community Oversight Committee for the $1.2 billion Fort Worth ISD bond passed in 2021 as well as the Superintendent's Parent Advisory and the Superintendent's Community Advisory for Fort Worth ISD.
Ken is a 2022 recipient of the SBOE’s 2022 Heroes for Children and was recently featured in NBC 5’s Something Good segment: Three volunteers honored for work in North Texas schools.
Ken with members of his family and SBOE District 11 member, Pat Hardy (right), after winning the TEA’s 2022 Heroes for Children Award.
