Candidate: Laurie Greenstein Kandel

MEET  LAURIE

An attorney and educator, Laurie will fight for safe and effective schools!

Family is Foremost

Laurie's family has deep roots in South Florida.  She and her husband raised their family here!

Laurie's great-grandparents moved to Fort Lauderdale in the 1920's.  While her father was a student at Miami Beach High School, he represented the region on the East Team in the 1945 Esquire's All American Boy's Baseball Game, coached by Babe Ruth.  Laurie met her husband, David, at the University of Florida.  They enjoy laughing together, doting on their sweet rescue dogs Max and Mollie, and riding their side-by-side tandem trike.  They raised their children, Burt and Avi, in a multi-generational home, with Laurie's mom providing wisdom, care, and delicious cooking, which she continues to do still today!  Burt, a software project manager, and his wife Sharon, a medical resident, live in Arizona.  Avi is a medical resident at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York.  Laurie and David are proud that all three are products of Broward Public Schools!

Laurie's Law Background

As both an attorney and educator, Laurie has a unique perspective to bring to the school board.  If elected, Laurie will be the only Broward School Board Member who is also a Florida Bar Member.  As a trained mediator, she will be a calm voice to steady the current dysfunction plaguing the school board.

After attending Brandeis University for her first two years of college, Laurie completed both her Bachelor's degree with high honors and her law degree at the University of Florida.  Shortly after graduation, she had a scholarly article published in an international journal of Medicine and Law on issues related to handicapped newborns.  She is a member of the Florida Bar and began her practicing of law at a firm in Gainesville.  She also passed the Bar Exam on the Laws of Israel and served as a legal apprentice there.  Upon returning to South Florida, Laurie taught Constitutional and International Law at Florida International University as an adjunct professor in the Political Science Department.  She became a Florida Supreme Court Certified Family Mediator and opened a Family Mediation practice in Miami, prior to moving to Southwest Ranches in Broward County. 

Caring for Kids

Laurie will put all her heart into ensuring the best for the children of Broward County Public Schools!

Since moving to Broward, Laurie has worked at area synagogues, teaching children religious values and Hebrew in the classroom and tutoring them in preparation for their Bar/Bat Mitzvah rite of passage ceremony.  She volunteered at Hawkes Bluff Elementary and Everglades Elementary, where she taught children that had been struggling to read.  As a college student, she volunteered for six months, caring for preschool children on an Israeli Kibbutz and tutoring English at a nearby underserved community.  Laurie now wants the opportunity to serve all the children of Browand Public Schools.  Her goal is to make sure our children are safe and reach their maximum potential!

LAURIE'S TOP PRIORITIES

• Secure schools
• Improved mental health services and identification of children at risk to themselves and others
• Hate Prevention Program following recommendations in the Department of Justice's Manual for Schools and Communities **
• Universal Screening for Dyslexia (Reading Disability), which affects 1 in 10**
• Fair compensation for teachers
• Effective oversight of finances

** LAURIE'S SIGNATURE ISSUES

Hate Prevention Program

Mass shootings are often perpetrated by disaffected youth that have self-radicalized, joining extremist hate groups online.  Children do not innately hate those who are different from them.  They are taught to do so.  Schools can and must turn this tide through education.  Some schools and districts have already created anti-hate programs that are working.  The Department of Justice has published a manual for schools and communities, Preventing Youth Hate Crime, which outlines recommendations for instituting a comprehensive anti-hate program.  Elements include:

• training students and staff
• partnering with families, community organizations, and law enforcement agencies
• developing and distributing a hate prevention policy to every student, family, and employee of the school district
• taking corrective actions against those who violate hate-prevention policies
• collecting and using data of school-based hate incidents to focus hate prevention policies and programs
• providing structured opportunities for multi-ethnic integration among students

While school security is top priority, it is not enough to defend against a shooter at the door.  We must also do everything possible to prevent any Broward Public County Student from ever becoming that shooter.  At the very least, we must equip our students to resist the influence of hate groups. 

Universal Screening for Dyslexia (Reading Disability)

An estimated 10% of the population has dyslexia.  Yet, the term is widely misunderstood.  Dyslexia is not the inversion of letters.  Often parents don't recognize the possibility that their child has dyslexia, because of the false belief that only children that invert letters have dyslexia. 

Dyslexia actually is a difficulty reading that is neurologically based.  The determination that the difficulty stems from dyslexia is made by an evaluation that finds that the difficulty is significant and rules out other possible causes.  Because the determination is often based on the fact that the child's IQ level is significantly higher than their reading level, those diagnosed with dyslexia on average have higher IQ scores than the average IQ scores of the general population.

Dyslexia is a specific type of Learning Disability.  The number of the population with dyslexia far exceeds the number with any other Specific Learning Disability.  The term Learning Disability is mistakenly believed by many to be synonymous with an IQ deficit, leading some parents to avoid evaluating their child out of fear of the label.  However, the term dyslexia is not "loaded" with this stigma and so parents may feel less deterred in seeking an evaluation when the suspected issue is termed as "dyslexia" rather than a "Specific Learning Disability".  Also, experts agree that dyslexia, because it is a subset of Learning Disabilities, is a more precise and better term to use.  

Against the advice of experts, many school districts including Broward, avoid the term dyslexia.  Instead, they use the more general term of Learning Disability, or Specific Learning Disability (SLD) since dyslexia is a specific type of Learning Disability.  This leads to confusion and difficulty for parents in finding resources to learn about and seek help for their child's needs.  The Broward School system should change to using the term "dyslexia" in accordance with the advice of experts in the field.

Another area that requires change in our school district is the lack of universal screening for dyslexia.  While the Broward School system deserves praise for universal screening of students for the Gifted Program - is not universal screening for dyslexia even more important?  Dyslexia, undiagnosed, can rob children of a chance to excel in life.  Screening, of all students early on, will change the lives of many!