Roy has raised four kids through Oregon's public schools. He loves learning and the gift and power of inspiring curiosity and learning in young minds. A guiding principle of Roy’s – as a father, public servant, and Oregonian – is that the goal of raising a child is to guide them from Dependent to Independent. To build up their strength and skills so that they’re capable of flying with their own wings.

Our public schools are falling short, and we need our teachers, parents, and administrators to do better, for our kids and the future of Oregon. We will need big ideas and better cooperation, flexibility and goals. 

Roy also believes we need to look at how our pre-K-12 system is set up. We're running a 19th century system in a 21st century reality. Kids need more than content — they need to know how to think. How to question. How to navigate a financial system that will hand them a credit card before it teaches them what interest means. Every kid should come out of school in Oregon financially literate enough to keep them from making the same bad choices that see young people entering adulthood drowning in debt. And every kid deserves to graduate knowing how to think for themselves.

Trump and his Republican allies, nationally and here in Oregon, are defunding public education, rewriting history, banning books, attacking critical thinking, gutting higher education funding, and funneling public money into private schools — not because it helps kids learn, but because it rewards the billionaires and right-wing interest groups who put them in office. 

Roy will fight for Oregon’s students and teachers, because we can do better.