Kari was born in Jamaica, New York and grew up in Smithtown, Long Island. When she was sixteen, her family moved to Pennsylvania where she graduated from Chambersburg Area Senior High School in 1969. Kari attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania where she enrolled with the intention of majoring in Spanish and becoming an interpreter at the United Nations, but in her junior year, Kari realized that, due to her younger sister who had Downs Syndrome, her heart was really in the world of Special Ed. Kari changed her major and has been a Special Education teacher for the last fifty years.
After graduating from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1973 with a bachelor’s in Special Education, Kari went on to earn a master’s in Special Education at George Mason University in 1980 and an Educational Specialist Degree from George Washington University in Special Education Transition with a concentration in Vocational Assessment in 2009.
She taught in Washington, D.C. where she had the opportunity to work with the Congressional aides in developing IDEA, the Education for All Children Act of 1975. She went on to teach in Maryland, Florida and Virginia. She started in Loudoun County in 1994, where she worked as a special education teacher, an educational diagnostician, a transition teacher and a career assessment specialist for the entire special needs population in Loudoun County. She developed a work skills training center called “The World of Work” at Loudoun Valley High School, and through a Congressional Sliver grant, created three living skills and work skills labs across the county known as PAES labs. As speaker and president of her state professional association for eight years, Kari worked to assist programs across the state in developing their own programs. Her work has been published by the Federal Education Policy Institute and she has coauthored the “Life-Centered Education Transition Curriculum.”
As she begins this new chapter in her life, Kari is looking forward to working with all our Loudoun students to find their passion in life and the path to reach it.
School Board Information
Schools Represented within Catoctin District
Academies of Loudoun
Ball's Bluff Elementary School
Banneker Elementary School
Blue Ridge Middle School
Catoctin Elementary School
Kenneth W. Culbert Elementary School
Emerick Elementary School
Evergreen Mill Elementary School
Hamilton Elementary School
Harmony Middle School
Hillsboro Charter Academy
Lincoln Elementary School
Loudoun County High School
Loudoun Valley High School
Lovettsville Elementary School
Lucketts Elementary School
Middleburg Community Charter School
Mountain View Elementary School
The North Star School
Frances Hazel Reid Elementary School
William O. Robey High School
Round Hill Elementary School
J. Lupton Simpson Middle School
Smart's Mill Middle School
Sycolin Creek Elementary School
Tuscarora High School
Virtual Loudoun
Waterford Elementary School
Woodgrove High School
