This site was founded by Lisa Nuss. There are many people whose thoughts inform this site and soon I hope to post their names and contributing posts.

Lisa Nuss is a lawyer and a writer. Her political opinions have been published in the London Guardian, the Huffington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the San Francisco Chronicle. Her work has been used as curriculum in university courses, and at the Southern Poverty Law Center. She was named the Gerlinger Cup winner at the University of Oregon as an undergrad, and earned a J.D. from the University of Washington School of Law and a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from the University of Washington Graduate School of Public Affairs.

Her work in government has included drafting statutes in the Oregon Legislative Counsel Office, serving as Judiciary Counsel in the Oregon Legislature, and working as a Securities Licensing & Enforcement Officer and Manager in the Oregon Department of Business & Consumer Services. She has worked for both Republicans and Democrats — in college she interned for US Senator Bob Packwood in Washington DC and worked as paid staff on his 1986 re-election campaign. She also worked for former Oregon Treasurer Jim Hill, when he was in the Oregon Senate.

In the 2000s, she relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area where she worked as a compliance officer for the Mill Valley political law firm Nielsen, Merksamer. Nuss handled the reporting of campaign contributions from clients including Apple Computer, Oracle, Cisco, and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals. She later worked for a premier banking consultancy, the Promontory Financial Group. At PFG, she advised major banks on governance and audit regulations and best practices. Clients included Wells Fargo, American Express, the National Australian Bank in Melbourne and the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, USA-NYC headquarters.

When Nuss had her first child in 2008, she moved back to her hometown of Salem, Oregon. In 2012-13 she spent more than a year researching best practices in K-5 education, and created online curriculum and teaching guides for a private company. She enrolled her son in a private pre-school for ages 3 and 4, which brilliantly incorporated all of the best practices of active teaching and plenty of movement and free play. She was then shocked to enroll her son in a public grade school for Kindergarten and First Grade where none of the best practices were used, or even aspired to.  She has always supported public schools, so it broke her heart to have to take her child out of public school.  To see that her old grade school had turned into a Kafka-esque place where teachers yell at kids, shame kids, bully kids, hit kids, withhold recess from kids almost daily, mock kids, force them to stand in line silently five minutes before lunch without talking to or looking at anyone, was more than she could bear. She quickly realized than endless public fighting over school testing was like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. The principal and the teachers and the school district just flat out did not know what they were doing – the teachers, principals and administrators have no control over themselves let alone the children. This is a daunting realization for a new parent. But as someone who has always worked within the system for change, she is determined to save our children from Oregon schools.