Lake County Gazette

Lake Bluff resident David Burns is running for the Lake Forest High School District 115 school board because he says education has had a huge impact on his life.

Burns said he's lived in the community for more than 20 years.

"In the corporate world, I've held leadership positions in engineering, marketing, operations and finally led a business unit while we lived in Germany for two years," Burns said during the League of Women Voters forum. "That's when we had our first daugther and we, as a family, decided that it would be good that I become a part-time stay-at-home dad."

Burns said he has since become a part-time consultant, co-founded a brewing company and was an adjunct professor at Northwestern University.

"I really feel it's important to serve the community," Burns said. 

Burns said getting students back to in-person full-time school is his number one priority. He also said he wants to focus on transparency and and looking at the master facilities plan.

"I'm actually very OK with how we're spending our money right now," Burns said. "This is something none of us have seen in terms of COVID and it is necessary that we spend whatever is necessary to get our kids back in school."

Burns said students need to have a voice.

"We need to listen to the students, but really what we need to do, I think, on top of that is treating each student as an individual," Burns said. "We can't put everybody in one bucket. Academically, socially, emotionally they are all different and by listening to them and understanding their unique needs we can help them better."

Burns said he wants to make sure the district has all the resources and tools available to address individual students.

"We have to not only acknowledge (diversity) but also embrace it," Burns said. "Diversity makes everything better. We all have different perspectives, we all have different skills and I think the high school has done a nice job so far, although there's always room for improvement."

Burns said the election is important.

"This election is important because the results here could shape our school and the experience for our kids," Burns said.

Burns believes the school is doing very well, but some things can be improved.

"We have priorities, we have things that we can improve and we need to continue to get our kids back in school," Burns said. "We need to do a better job with transparency and we need to come up with a master facilities plan and plan that out."