Candidate Profile: District Should Invest in Technology, Sutton Says

Thanks to the digital age, the entire way the students have learned in the classroom for the last century is no longer relevant, Inver Grove Heights School Board member Bridget Sutton said.

Why is why Sutton, who is running for a third consecutive term on the board this fall, believes the district must focus on bring an increasing amount of digital technology into classrooms at every level.

“For anybody 35 and older who uses the Internet, it’s a tool like a reference book,” Sutton said. "For anybody 35 and under—and especially under 30—the Internet is part of you. Every kid, every classroom, needs to have a tablet, or iPad Touch or something like that.”

Sutton, wife of Minnesota Republican Party Chair Tony Sutton and former co-owner of the Baja Sol restaurant chain, has eight years on the board under her belt. A Kimball native, Sutton was frustrated by the how the St. Paul school district handled her autistic son’s needs. She moved to Inver Grove Heights shortly after her second child was born in 2003, and decided to become involved in the local school board.

Like fellow school board veterans Keri Myran and Mickey Difronzo—who are also running for re-election—she has overseen the closure of a local elementary school, assisted in the search for a new superintendent and helped usher in a wave of other significant changes across the district.

The Inver Grove Heights School District has already developed a reputation for embracing and employing new technology to assist with education. The district won a statewide technology leadership award in 2010, and this summer earned another award for its , which heavily employs digital technology in its curriculum.

But those successes are just a precursor to the type of full-scale digital curriculum that Sutton, 43, hopes the district can implement in its schools. The prevalent use of computers and software in classes across the district is not only more applicable to contemporary students, Sutton said, it would also allow teachers to further differentiate their curriculum on an individual basis within each classroom to meet the varying levels of need with each student.

In order to accomplish such a significant change, the district would also have to retrain its own staff and ensure that it uses taxpayers’ dollars wisely as it institutes more and more technology, Sutton said.

If elected, Sutton would also like to restructure the district’s pre-kindergarten programs to beef up the district’s early childhood education programming and align the pre-kindergarten teachings to the district’s kindergarten through 12th grade curriculum.

To read Patch's profiles on the other candidates running for spots on the Inver Grove Heights School Board this year, click on the links below.

• Monday, Oct. 3:
• Tuesday, Oct. 4:
• Wednesday, Oct. 5: