Candidate Issues: FAS awareness and prevention, education-particularly regarding middle school students and fair and consistent teacher evaluation, the beauty and natural resources of Idaho and how to best utilize and preserve "our Idaho". I ran for this office first in 2006 because I believed, and still do, that I bring, in the trenches, educational experience to the Legislature.

Common Interest: When I was teaching I worked well with my students, parents or care givers, and other educational staff and administration.
Compromise and cooperation are vitally important to being successful in most of life's endeavors, and that would apply to working with Common Cause as well.

Bio: Until December of 1960 I lived in Hagerman, my grandparents ranched and worked for Idaho Power. My Dad was a crane operator and until we moved to Lewiston my Mom was the clerk of the Hagerman School District. We moved to Lewiston because my Dad was the crane operator for Kenaston Huntley Contractors on the "new" Spalding Bridge over the Clearwater River. I have three sisters; Emily, a retired Spanish teacher-now the supervisor of foreign language teachers at Western Washington University, Debbie, a school psychologist, and Valerie, an urban geographer.

I graduated from Lewiston High School in 1965 and from Lewis Cark State College in 1970 with a degree in Elementary Education. During that time I married Jerry Chavez and we had our daughter Felicia, who is also a teacher and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I began teaching at Lincoln Middle School in Clarkston in the fall of 1970 and taught there for the next 30 years, my husband Jerry taught at Jenifer Jr. High for 32 years. We adopted our son John in 1972, not knowing that he was a Fetal Alcohol child, he passed away in 1993. Discovering that John was Fetal Alcohol mobilized our entire family and it has been our goal to raise the public awareness of FAS, that it is 100% preventable and understanding the ramifications of being born FAS.

Partisan Politics: While I believe that everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, as legislators it should be our job to preserve and move forward those issues that are of concern to those who have entrusted us with authority to make the laws under which we all must live. Putting forward a personal/party agenda that creates disharmony and imbalance benefiting the few, instead of the many, is in my opinion, counter productive.