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Episode 60: Utah Representative Marsha Judkins

Sup with the Sup
Sup with the Sup
Episode 60: Utah Representative Marsha Judkins
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Welcome everyone to the next episode of Provo City School District’s What’s Up with the Sup’ podcast. I am Superintendent Wendy Dau. On this week’s episode, I sat down with Representative Marsha Judkins. Marsha is one of the members of the Utah House of Representatives from Provo as well as a former Provo City School District School Board member. We were able to discuss the work of the Utah State Legislature and the impact their work has on Provo City School District.

Before we hear from Representative Judkins, let’s go over our updates.

  • Fall break begins next week on Thursday, October 17th.
    • Students will return to class on Wednesday, October 23rd.
    • Please note that the teachers will return on Tuesday, October 22nd for Professional Development Day.
    • But our students get one extra day of fun.
  • The Board of Education has several policies for review on their website.
    • There is a cell phone policy and curriculum policies with procedures regarding supplemental materials, apps and websites, as well as novel approvals.
    • If you go to provo.edu, Click on the button that says Policies, Forms, and Documents, then click on Review Draft Policies Here under the Policies and Procedures heading. It will then allow you to see the drafts of all policies being considered and will provide an opportunity for you to submit feedback.
  • Our Board of Education and District Leadership would love to hear from you.
    • On Tuesday, October 29th, we will host a Dixon community meeting to discuss further options about the Dixon Middle School site.
    • This will be held at 6 o’clock p.m. at Dixon Middle School in the auditorium.
    • There will be a trunk or treat following the meeting for all of our littles across the district.
    • Information on the Dixon site and the financing of the district’s building projects will be discussed more specifically at this meeting. We have received lots of feedback from our constituents about what they would like to see and we would like to provide more specific details about these options and receive feedback.
  • Would you like to have your voice heard on matters of the district? We have two opportunities for you to be involved with Provo City School District.
    • One is a citizens connections committee, which will meet and provide feedback to the district on a variety of topics.
    • The second committee is a parent advisory committee for parents of current students within our schools.
    • The purpose of this committee is for district leadership to understand the challenges and concerns that our students have as they attend our schools so that we can help to make our schools welcoming spaces for all.
    • If you would like to serve on either of these committees, an application will be made available electronically prior to Fall Break.
    • More information to come, and we are excited to hear from you and work with you.
  • The next school board meeting will be a study session and business meeting on Tuesday, October 22nd.
    • Please look for more information to be posted on the district website as we get closer to the date.
  • Continue watching for my weekly videocasts in your email every Monday.
    • These videocasts provide one place for you to learn about important things happening across the district.

And now let’s get on to our conversation with Representative Judkins.

So welcome to our podcast.

Marsha Judkins: Thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Wendy Dau: So Marcia, you’ve been spending some time in our schools this week. So tell us a little bit about the experiences that you’ve had as part of this legislator in the day classroom.

Marsha Judkins: Yeah. So it’s actually been really fun. I love to teach though. I teach at UVU. And so yesterday I taught a class at Shoreline. Middle School and today Independence High School. And you know, of course the students are a little different, but I think it’s so, so important that we get younger people interested and involved in what’s going on in their government.

Wendy Dau: I agree. I just came from a student advisory council that advises the board of education, and it’s interesting to watch those students. As they are asking questions, about I had no idea that this is how this became a policy. I had no idea that this is how we make decisions or rules. It’s really important for them to be aware of that for sure.

Marsha Judkins: Yes.

Wendy Dau: Tell us how long you have been in the state legislature.

Marsha Judkins: So I was elected in a special election in 2018 in June of 2018. So it’s been a little over six years.

Wendy Dau: Okay. And what committees do you serve on in the legislature?

Marsha Judkins: So right now. For appropriations. I’m on social services and I have been in that the whole time.

Wendy Dau: Okay.

Marsha Judkins: I’m also on health and human services, which I’ve been on the whole time.

Wendy Dau: Okay.

Marsha Judkins: And revenue and taxation, which this is my second time on that committee. I’ve been on transportation and also law enforcement and criminal justice and a couple of others. But…

Wendy Dau: What do you feel like are some of the most pressing issues that you’ve had the opportunity to work on?

And you’re like, wow, this was awesome. We were really able to make a difference by working together.

Marsha Judkins: Such a good question. You know, it’s kind of like, it’s been six years and sometimes it’s hard to go back and remember, but I for sure have a few. I have been working in the housing and like rental space for a bit, and we are the first state to have passed a pathway for expungements for evictions.

And that was some work that I did with the housing advocates. And then also we had to get on board landlords and the lawyers who do the evictions. And so it was quite a process, but at the end, it was great. I’m very proud of that. And I hope that we can continue to work on that and make it better. Also there, we did a bill so that domestic violence survivors can get out of leases in a way that’s fair to both the landlord and to the survivor, and that hopefully, and it already has, decreased the evictions for those domestic violence survivors.

Wendy Dau: Those are incredible things to work on. Tell me more about some of the barriers that people face. Maybe individuals who are unfamiliar with us don’t understand like why an eviction becomes such a barrier to an individual and why getting rid of that on their record becomes so important in terms of housing stability?

Marsha Judkins: So especially right now where the housing market is so tight, if you have an eviction on your record, a lot of times, most places toss you right at the beginning. So you don’t even get an opportunity to find another place to rent. And then once you become homeless, it’s just this self perpetuating thing.

It’s really hard to find a place to live. And many of these evictions, you know, I’m not saying that there’s no bad renters. There are definitely renters who need to be evicted, but thousands of these evictions are dismissed. They’re not even ever taken to court. They’re not even completed evictions, but they are still on their records.

Wendy Dau: Really important, I think, for people to understand that and how that does become a barrier. Tell us a little bit more about domestic violence situations. One of the things I’ve heard from legislators is they really do want to figure out ways to make sure that families are safe. Children are safe. Women are safe.

How does that piece about being able to get out of a lease, how is that going to protect them and help them?

Marsha Judkins: So a lot of times someone who is being abused in their home will stay because they don’t know what else to do. Like, it’s a very scary situation in the first place. And to have that hanging over their head, it’s scary enough just to have to leave this situation.

But then to think financially, how am I going to handle this? And how is this going to be taken care of? And a lot of times they will just flee and go to a shelter, which is really important. We want everyone to be able to flee and go to a shelter, but then they don’t know what to do because they can’t pay that rent, and they don’t know if their abuser is going to pay the rent.

And a lot of times there’s been issues in the past where maybe there’s been complaints like police have come to the home or things like that. And those kinds of things are often written into the contract that say, well, if this happens, then you can’t leave the contract. You know what I mean?

Wendy Dau: That’s right.

Marsha Judkins: The cards were stacked against that survivor being able to get out of their situation and also get out of their lease. And so this will make it so that they can even go back retroactively and say, even though I fled two weeks ago, I didn’t let my landlord know because they didn’t know what to do.

There’s still a way for them to get out of that lease. And it’s not going to leave the landlord hanging. There’s, you know, anything that is damaged or whatever will have to be paid, but they won’t have that eviction. They can get out of that lease.

Wendy Dau: That’s, that’s a fantastic kind of fresh start that we can provide to people because it’s such a hard situation.

I’ve been in education for almost 30 years and just watching, I feel like our legislature really is responding well to trying to get better resources and things for our schools and prioritize that. Talk about some of the challenges of that because people have lots of different views about public education.

And how do we work with all of these different viewpoints so that we can all feel like that this investment is really worth it?

Marsha Judkins: I’m biased too. So-

Wendy Dau: We got two biased people.

Marsha Judkins: Yes. And you know, the reason that I actually ran for the legislature in the first place is because of the dysfunctional relationship that I felt was you know, when I was on the board, the Provo School Board and the legislature, and I still feel like it’s a fairly dysfunctional relationship and it’s not because anyone wants it to be dysfunctional.

There’s just competing interests. And then we have a group of legislators. We talk about like who makes up the legislature, right? Well, there’s not a whole lot of renters, so that’s why we haven’t had laws about, you know, protecting renters. But we also don’t have a lot of educators or people who have been on boards of education. And so we have so many bills that are sponsored each year and they’re not all heard, but dozens are passed every year and then the expectation is that education will have everything in place to follow these bills, you know, within a few months and a lot of times there’s no funding attached and it’s almost an impossible situation that we put our educational boards and our LEAs into.

And so everybody that I speak to even my all my legislative friends want public education and educators to succeed and to be healthy and happy and all of that and yet we keep passing bills as if education is sick and broken and we need to be fixing it, but legislators don’t know the fix. That’s the problem, right?

So we keep fixing it in ways that just make the education community run around in circles trying to keep up. I feel like there are some good laws that are passed for sure.

Wendy Dau: No question.

Marsha Judkins: And those are the ones where there are, is a lot of collaboration and input and where people are listened to.

But in education, when we’re talking about education legislation, so many times, the groups that are listened to are not the education groups. So instead of listening to the PTA, we’ll listen to other parent groups that maybe have a different viewpoint and haven’t been in the classroom and involved in the education as much as the PTA that has tens of thousands of members, right?

Or something will happen in a school and a parent will complain to a legislator and then the legislator will want to make a law that affects the entire state instead of saying, well, let’s talk to that teacher or let’s talk to the principal or the district and see what we can do, right?

Wendy Dau: That’s right.

Marsha Judkins: It’s just super unfortunate and then layer that on top of, and here’s where my bias is really going to come out, layer that on top of vouchers where we are spending millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars on private schools. I don’t think that that’s an appropriate use of education money. I think that if we want vouchers, fine, but let’s fully fund education.

Let’s see every classroom have less than 30 students in it.

Wendy Dau: It’d be amazing. I was in a kindergarten class today with 28 kids and I just about died. Yeah, that’s too many kindergartners.

Marsha Judkins: My grandkids are, I have a fourth grade granddaughter that’s in a classroom that has 32 and a sixth grade that has 34 in a portable.

Like, they can’t even move. They’re not allowed to take their backpacks in there. They can’t have a parent in there. Like we want our kids to be mentally healthy and emotionally safe. Well, what about our teachers? We need them to be emotionally and mentally healthy, but we just keep putting more pressure on them to take care of more and more children with more and more needs.

And the classroom environment is only going to be as healthy and happy as that teacher. My constituents sometimes will ask me questions or comment about how our districts are just wasting money or something, or, you know, let’s lower the superintendent’s salary and then we can do everything, right? Okay, if we lowered your salary, What could we do with that money? Nothing. It’s not like you’re getting paid enough to lower your salary and do anything, you know?

Wendy Dau: Right.

Marsha Judkins: Our administrations here in our districts here in Utah are the lowest. We spend less on administration in Utah in our districts than anywhere else in the United States.

Wendy Dau: Well, and we have bigger districts traditionally, like sometimes in other states, one high school will be a district and you’re, you know, wasting money on all of those administrative costs.

We don’t do that here. We really try to be I think as economical as we can be. But you also have to give the support to the schools and that has to come from somewhere.

Marsha Judkins: And we want good administrators.

Wendy Dau: Yes.

Marsha Judkins: I personally don’t feel like administrators are being paid too much at all right because we need good people with good backgrounds good experience. Good education, good ideas. And you’ve got to pay for that.

Wendy Dau: Yeah, and they’re, they’re definitely the problem solvers. They have to be the ones that are helping make sure the teachers are happy so that the instruction is going to be the best possible. The two key people in a child’s education of making sure that they learn are, well, the parent, obviously, but also the teacher and then the principal, because they’re creating the culture of that school.

Marsha Judkins: Yes.

Wendy Dau: And I think we forget about that piece of it becomes really important too. How would you advise a teacher to communicate to a legislator about what is taking place in their classroom and the supports that they need to be able to be effective?

Marsha Judkins: I think, you know, inviting legislators into the classroom is very important.

Something that I think does happen though is that people think, well, my kids’ teacher is great, but all the rest, the teachers… aren’t or something you know. Or my school is good, but all the rest aren’t. So they need to have a wide variety, I think, of experiences, not just going to one classroom, one school, but seeing what’s going on in a variety.

But the hard thing is, is that legislators are also really busy, right? We don’t even get paid for this stuff we do outside the session. Most of us have jobs.

Wendy Dau: Yeah.

Marsha Judkins: You know, just trying to keep up.

Wendy Dau: And families. And all of the things. Yes.

Marsha Judkins: And all the things. So, it’s hard. But I would say, don’t give up. Really, the most important thing is to develop a relationship with that legislator.

Sending an email is great, but if they know you, if you’ve taken the time to maybe give them a call or go up during the session, we are all more likely to listen to someone that we have formed a relationship with. And we’re more likely to trust someone that we’ve formed a relationship with. I can think of a constituent, I just love this man.

And he took the time to come to my house and bring me a book that he thought I would like, just drop it off. He didn’t spend a ton of time, you know, you know. I’ve only met him face to face one time, but we have this great rapport and I make sure he knows what’s happening.

Wendy Dau: Well, and I think what it does as well as even if you’re still disagreeing with this person, you are developing a sense of trust, so you trust that perspective and you can say, okay, well this person is not clearly just a single entity that thinks this way. There are others that also think this way. And so if their worldview is that way, how do we create a solution that might-

Marsha Judkins: Incorporate that-

Wendy Dau: Incorporate that in some way and, and I think it makes a big difference when that happens. So I think it’s very powerful. I get teachers all the time that ask me, well, I don’t even know how to approach a legislator. Like, what would be some ways in which I could do that so that I could start that dialogue with my legislator?

Marsha Judkins: Every legislator is different, but I never mind if someone comes up to me and says, hey, you’re my legislator, right? And then always introduce yourself and say your full name and how you know them from, or if you don’t know them, because we do meet so many people and it’s really hard to keep everyone straight and just don’t take a ton of time. I would say that too, as you communicate with your legislator, bullet points are great, um, short and sweet is great.

And also being kind.

Wendy Dau: Yes.

Marsha Judkins: You know and being respectful of that legislator and being curious asking them, hey, I saw that you voted this particular way and I was just curious about this instead of sometimes you get, “you’re so stupid!”

Wendy Dau: “How dare you do this?”

Marsha Judkins: You know, yeah.

Wendy Dau: That doesn’t go very far.

Marsha Judkins: Yeah, just being kind being curious and if they don’t respond, you can send a follow up and just said, hey, you know, I thought maybe you didn’t see because sometimes we don’t see.

And I would always hope someone would follow up with me rather than just assume I wasn’t interested because we, I mean-

Wendy Dau: You get so many emails and-

Marsha Judkins: I have 375 unread emails in my inbox.

Wendy Dau: Right, right.

Marsha Judkins: And I spend hours and hours and hours every week trying to keep up.

Wendy Dau: You can’t. It’s very, very hard. I think also I’ve tried to advise people figure out what the most important thing is you want to communicate about the issue and just drive that home short and sweet because your 20 different points don’t necessarily add to the argument if the email is forever long. It really just helps to say this is my greatest concern and why.

Marsha Judkins: Yeah, I think that that’s great, especially during the session. If you’re writing during the session, we get so many form emails. Not that they’re not people with views, but it’s hard to read the same email 4,000 times.

Wendy Dau: Right.

Marsha Judkins: Right. And so adding a little bit as to why it’s important to you, just like you said, is great.

Also, finding common ground. Because honestly, we, most of us, want the same end result, right? We want good quality of life. We want educated kids. We want happy people. We, we all want the same. We want safety. We want our families to prosper. And so finding that common ground and remembering that that legislator isn’t an enemy.

They’re not someone to be hated. They’re not someone who is trying to make everyone miserable. They’re really not. When I went to the legislature, I thought I was not going to like everyone, right? I thought, oh, how could I like these people? I like every single one of them.

Wendy Dau: They all are bringing something different to the table and different perspectives.

Marsha Judkins: Yes, and one-on-one, they’re great. Do I always agree with how they vote? No. Am I ever really, really, really angry? And do we get in real intense debates? Yes.

Wendy Dau: Yeah.

Marsha Judkins: But they’re doing what their life experience and their beliefs think is the right thing.

Wendy Dau: I think that’s something that you just learn, I guess, as you get older, that it is about your life experience has shaped you.

It isn’t because this person is purposefully trying to create this somehow. No, it really is about different things have shaped them in a different way, and that’s okay. And so, I love what you’re saying about finding that common ground, because I think too often we zero in on the difference that’s driving a wedge between us instead of saying, “what can we come together on?

“What are just some basic things that we can agree upon? And now let’s evaluate and see if this piece of legislation or this policy is actually going to really truly help us accomplish that.”

Marsha Judkins: One more thing is that compromise is not a dirty word at all. It’s the way the Constitution is.

Wendy Dau: It’s the only way it happened.

Marsha Judkins: Yes, and sometimes we are not going to get everything we want. I have very rarely gotten everything I wanted in some legislation, but I’ve gotten something, and that’s better than nothing. And when we alienate people, we get nothing.

Wendy Dau: I had another superintendent that was talking with all of us as a group and talked about, it isn’t about trying to change the legislation or change the mind of a legislator or a particular committee.

It’s about helping them understand education’s perspective. Cause sometimes it’s just a language change.

Marsha Judkins: Right.

Wendy Dau: Sometimes it’s just a, well, would it be okay if we took this part out or if we added this component, would that ease your stress about this? Absolutely. Yes, it would. And then all of a sudden now we have the common ground.

So instead of going after the person or saying, this is a terrible piece of legislation saying, I really appreciate where you’re coming from. This is how this could really help us if it went more in this direction.

Marsha Judkins: Perfectly said. Yes.

Wendy Dau: I think that’s the mindset that we need to come from a little bit more. What are next projects? What things are you working on right now? What are you excited about in the next few years?

Marsha Judkins: Probably the next big project is that I am running for Provo mayor.

Wendy Dau: That is a very, that’s a very big project for sure.

Marsha Judkins: And it stems from my perspective that I’ve gotten on the board and then at the state level, I have just learned so much about so many, like I said, all these committees I’ve been on, all the bills that we’ve passed and all the research that I’ve done, I see ways that Provo can just take off, do so much better.

And we’re doing well. I’m not going to say, you know-

Wendy Dau: It’s a great community.

Marsha Judkins: I just think that we can do better and do better. And that’s probably what I’ll miss most about not being in the legislature is I get so many emails that are so informative. And I go to so many meetings that are so informative, I can go to a meeting on childcare and I can go to a meeting on housing and I go to a meeting on transportation and I go to all of these things that I can choose to go do because people send me invitations because they think legislators are important.

Wendy Dau: Right.

Marsha Judkins: And I try to go to as many as I can and it’s so fascinating and interesting and I want to put all that information to use it.

Wendy Dau: And I think you have a unique perspective too as you’ve worked at the state level and also at a local level and how important it is to have good relationships just across the board to make things better for everyone.

Marsha Judkins: And that community is really where it’s at.

Wendy Dau: Yeah.

Marsha Judkins: The state shouldn’t be making laws as much as we do, seriously. And we cannot fix community.

Wendy Dau: Yeah.

Marsha Judkins: As the communities are, as the cities are, that’s how the state will be.

Wendy Dau: Yeah.

Marsha Judkins: So.

Wendy Dau: Well, I just want to thank you so much for spending time in our schools, for serving our state and our legislature.

This has been incredible. And thank you for being on our podcast.

Marsha Judkins: And thank you. It’s been an incredible experience. So thank you.

Wendy Dau: Thank you, everyone, for joining me for this week’s episode of What’s Up with the Sup’. As always, all episodes will be posted on the district website, YouTube and anywhere you get your podcasts.

If you have any topics or questions you would like us to discuss, please email us at podcast@provo.edu.

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