Meet Kristin
For over 10 years, Kristin Bailey taught college writing, reading, and research courses to undergraduates from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds in community colleges and private and public universities. She knows first-hand how underprepared so many students are for college-level thinking and writing. And she knows how complex, multifaceted, and demanding teachers’ jobs are — and how incredibly hard it is to keep all students motivated while challenging them to meet rigid, standardized academic expectations. Teachers need resources not only to help students who are struggling to keep up, but also to challenge students who are exceeding expectations.
Kristin has a master's degree in English from Northern Illinois University and a PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Throughout her graduate programs, Kristin was actively involved in the writing program administration at both universities, helping to define course outcomes, create program-wide assessment methods and metrics, develop teacher-training programs and professional development opportunities, and integrate first-year writing and research with university-wide initiatives. Since her graduation in 2023, she's worked full time as a Marketing and Communications Specialist for an international agricultural company. And throughout all this, she owned and operated a freelance communications and marketing business she built in the early 2000s.
Kristin moved to DeKalb for graduate school in 2012. She met her husband, a lifelong Rochelle resident, and the two settled down in Cortland. After having their first child, Kristin and her family moved to DeKalb — because they deeply value diversity and wanted to be part of a diverse community. Having been born and raised in Kankakee, IL, Kristin grew up in and graduated from Kankakee public schools, which were and are a lot like DeKalb’s. Like Kristin experienced, she and her husband wanted their child to be part of a “village” that includes people whose lives and histories aren’t identical to their own. They dreamed of walking their child to their neighborhood public elementary school.
Ultimately, they had to make the hard decision to enroll their child in a private Catholic school in DeKalb. They did this solely because of concerns about student violence and behavior management in the classrooms at their public school, in addition to high administrative turnover. They are not Catholic, and they are not wealthy. And they would so much rather be part of the public school system.
This is Kristin's foremost reason for running for school board: as a mother, she yearns for schools where all kids feel safe, where the classroom and school environment are optimally conducive to learning, and where kids are excited to learn — invested in it. As an educator, she yearns for learning environments that encourage experimentation, for continuing teacher education, and for resources to help kids learn the ways they learn best. But teachers can’t do that if they don’t have sufficient resources. And we don't know what resources they lack if we don't ask them.
What sets Kristin apart from other candidates is the breadth of perspectives and the professional qualifications she will bring to the board if elected. Not only is she a parent and educator with experience in educational administration, she also is passionately committed to equity and justice. She has deeply studied the impacts of systemic racism and marginalization on students' academic identities and success. Her dissertation research centered on local experiences of Black American students in a historically white educational institution and the pivotal role of a culture center in their education. She has published a peer-reviewed, co-edited collection of essays about equitable assessment methods with leading teacher-scholars in the field of college writing studies. And she has published a peer-reviewed textbook chapter (with teacher resources) about voice in academic writing, which she co-wrote with former students.
All in all, Kristin is an advocate for data-driven, socially informed, and locally guided education and governance rooted in community engagement. As a taxpayer and homeowner, she advocates for fiscal responsibility, transparency in decision making, and a consistent tax rate. She loves this community. She moved here by choice, having no family in the area — and she remains here by choice, because it has become her home.