Who is Laura Gannon?
I am a Centennial parent with one child in Middle School (Jillian - 12) and one child who will be in Elementary School in a couple of years (Emma - 3). I live in Circle Pines with my husband (Mike) and my children. We moved to this area four years ago, when my job took us on a journey far from my home state of California. I love living in Minnesota and I am always awed by the beauty I can find just stepping out my front door. I don't mind Winters much, we have a ongoing joke in my family that I just keep moving to colder climates...and there aren't many colder than Minnesota!
By day, I am a Systems Software Engineer, which means that I make a lot of decisions about how a user is going to interact with a System using its Software. I've designed Systems Software for Radars, Military vehicles and Cardiac device systems. I have always worked amongst a diverse team of engineers and have lead design teams.
By night, weekends and any spare time I have, I build, redesign, and recover hacked websites for small businesses. I am also a very active volunteer for Take Action Minnesota! If you have ever taken a phone call from them, you might have spoken to me or one of my friendly team members.
You may be wondering with all that I do, if I will even have time for all of this. I make time for things that are important to me. Our children's education is of top importance to me and we are in a critical time to make changes that will help our kids succeed in a new and ever changing landscape of obstacles.
Why I am running
I want to support and guide our students, teachers, and staff in building a community culture where every child learning and every adult working in our school district feels safe, included, supported, and impassioned to learn and grow with brave curiosity no matter their cultural or racial background, gender, sexuality, economic class, physical ability, or mental ability. Along with this vision, I want to lead with transparency and collaboration with the parents of Centennial School District in a way that we have not experienced in years. The School Board needs to rebuild trust with the community by having hard conversations and making positive change. I'm not afraid to roll my sleeves up and do the work of building better relationships with the parents of our community.
My Experience
I was an active officer of the PTA at Jillian's Elementary School in California. Our last year at the school, I served as the PTA President. I have done community organizing work with Take Action Minnesota, that has taught me how to have relationship building dialog with people of different perspectives, cultures, and backgrounds. Being an Engineer also has taught me to think out of the box and come up with creative solutions to complicated problems. I think all of this experience will be rich with value to bring our School District up to pace with our rapidly changing community and build bridges within the community.