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Humans of Duke Sanford

We’re starting a new series featuring @duke_sanford alumni talking about in their work place now that they are working in the professional world. During the #COVID-19 pandemic, public policy has been changing day to day and our alumni are having to deal with the repercussions in a variety of roles. We're starting with Melanie Kadlic Meren who got her Master of Public Policy in 2002 and we’ll post a new perspective from an alum every Wednesday starting next week.
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“I am an elected member of the Fairfax County School Board. We educate nearly 188,000 students, employ 25,000 people, and serve our children in about 200 facilities. A public policy issue that is most forefront in my mind is our budget. We have a three billion dollar budget that is tied to our real estate taxes. Now, we will have to do some major adjustments. The county had been proposing to increase the real estate tax base rate and that looks like that’s not going to happen so we will right off the bat have less revenue than we thought we were just a few months ago. Our school board last week made a fast track decision to approve procuring 15 thousand laptops. We also have to make personnel decisions about how to employ our hourly employees so it’s been a lot of really real decisions about people’s lives here. Analyzing policy is something that I’ve learned at Sanford and am able to draw on that each day.”
—Melanie Kadlic Meren MPP'02

We’re starting a new series featuring @duke_sanford alumni talking about #WhyPublicPolicyMatters in their work place now that they are working in the professional world. During the #COVID-19 pandemic, public policy has been changing day to day and our alumni are having to deal with the repercussions in a variety of roles. We’re starting with Melanie Kadlic Meren who got her Master of Public Policy in 2002 and we’ll post a new perspective from an alum every Wednesday starting next week.
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“I am an elected member of the Fairfax County School Board. We educate nearly 188,000 students, employ 25,000 people, and serve our children in about 200 facilities. A public policy issue that is most forefront in my mind is our budget. We have a three billion dollar budget that is tied to our real estate taxes. Now, we will have to do some major adjustments. The county had been proposing to increase the real estate tax base rate and that looks like that’s not going to happen so we will right off the bat have less revenue than we thought we were just a few months ago. Our school board last week made a fast track decision to approve procuring 15 thousand laptops. We also have to make personnel decisions about how to employ our hourly employees so it’s been a lot of really real decisions about people’s lives here. Analyzing policy is something that I’ve learned at Sanford and am able to draw on that each day.”
—Melanie Kadlic Meren MPP’02 #MPP #Alumni #DukeAlumni #ForeverDuke #DukeSanfordAlumni