Hi, I’m Kelly Farley. I’ve got three kids, 2 in elementary school and a 2 year old. I moved here in 2019 and my oldest didn’t start school until after COVID. To be honest, I wasn’t really aware of the happenings at the school district until 2024. I joined the Structural Deficit Reduction Plan Finance Committee in 2025 after seeing an email about it. I thought my background, which includes about 20 years of nonprofit finance, operations, HR and board leadership, would be helpful in trying to address this structural deficit in a sustainable way. I’ve seen my fair share of cash crunches, leadership challenges, and been in roles supporting boards and leading boards in difficult times for my organizations.

I’ve chatted with folks at the playground, kids’ sports, birthday parties, the usual parent social activities. Quite a few of us shared similar priorities which have become the pillars listed on this site. From these chats I’ve learned many if not most people are scared or angry about our situation, for varying reasons. The biggest commonality was a lack of clarity on the situation. I saw people’s eyes glaze over if I got into the weeds on budget numbers or consumer price index, and realized I should try to make a summary of this information firehose I’ve been drinking from, which is where this website comes in.

This site is the result of too many hours I should have been sleeping, and getting my husband to do the technology part of making it. The Thrive65 coalition of folks stands behind our pillars and the desire to make sure anyone in the community has info to help them advocate for what is important to them.

Thrive65’s goal is to provide resources to help everyone in our community be advocates for what they want to see in D65. We’ve created a guide to board advocacy, a timeline and 20 minute explainer of relevant parts of our District’s history around structural deficits, facilities, staffing, equity and more. We also lay out our own thoughts, but try to keep opinion separate from the facts. We don’t need to agree on everything; each of us brings our own unique lived experiences to our advocacy and our priorities may be slightly different based on our own circumstances. Even still, if we’re all rowing in the same direction towards these pillars, we believe we can Thrive in D65.

Join the hundreds of people already engaged! We’ll share more history, information, and analysis as we’re able.