About Alana
A parent who did the homework.
A business owner who understands systems.
A candidate who will not accept managed decline for Kansas Kids and District 7.
I've been sitting down with parents, teachers, school board members, advocates, even other candidates who were thinking about running for this seat.
And every single conversation came back to the same place. We all want to move literacy forward in Kansas. Every one of us.
But... you're just a mom.
Moms are the ones who notice when the system isn't working, ask why, and refuse to accept "that's all we can offer" as a final answer. I've been studying the problem for years. Now I'm taking the urgency that only a parent feels to get education right to the State Board.
Founder & Author
As a co-founder of Designed to Learn, I helped advocate for structured literacy instruction for students with dyslexia using evidence-based practices, the same practices HB 2485 now requires Kansas schools to use.
I was the lead author of The Sentence Breakthrough to put principles directly in the hands of parents and teachers who don't have time to wait for the system to catch up.
I know what works for students, personally and professionally.
Purposeful Leadership
I spent six years publishing leadership content, developing graduate-level coursework, writing books, and building platforms that moved ideas into action.
In this role, I also saw reading failure up close. As a board member of the Spiritual Life Center at Hutchinson Correctional Facility, I witnessed its end result: approximately 80% of incarcerated individuals have reading-based learning differences. The children we fail to teach to read don't disappear. The results show up somewhere else, at far greater cost to the students and their communities.
I understand how to communicate across audiences: from policy experts to parents who just want to know if their child is on track.
Accountability for Public Education
Co-founder of a homeschool cooperative, annual supporter of faith-based education, and consistent advocate for quality in public schools, Alana's commitment to education doesn't start and stop at the schoolhouse door.
That perspective shapes how she thinks about the State Board's role. Public education has to work for rural Kansas families. For many communities in District 7, it's not one option among many. It's the ONLY option. When public schools underperform, rural families bear the cost in ways suburban families don't.
Advocating for public school accountability isn't a contradiction with supporting educational choice. It's the same conviction: every child deserves a public education system that takes their education seriously.
Background
I graduated from Newman University with a B.A. in History and Political Science, served as a White House intern, earned membership in three national honor societies, and led my student government as Senator.
I've been thinking about how institutions work, and how to make them work better, for a long time. I was recently honored to receive the St. Maria De Mattias Award for service and leadership for work as an advocate.
