Ahmie “the Mommy” Yeung is a candidate for Ohio’s Lakewood City Schools School Board, committed to bringing authentic Inclusion, Opportunity, and Flexibility to our communities while lifting up the experiences and talents of marginalized people.
Inclusion means all of us, including white people like me making space for our BIPOC community members to have their perspectives heard. It means mindfulness to accessibility barriers, for obvious disabilities like my wheelchair, as well as the invisible ones that keep too many of our community members shut out of full engagement. It means compassionate kindness for our LGBTQIA+ neighbors, friends, and loved ones, ensuring that they can safely be their fully authentic selves anywhere we are.
Opportunity is already flourishing in Lakewood City Schools, and I want to make it even better so we can be a shining beacon on the hill for other educational options everywhere. My children are benefiting in incredible ways from the opportunity afforded by College Credit Plus. I want that to be an option viably possible for more families like the one I grew up in, with a single struggling mother who barely made it through high school and would not have been able to facilitate my access to this fantastic opportunity. I also want to lift up the outstanding work of our vocational education options, which are preparing our young people for jobs that cannot be outsourced – and often pay better wages than their college-educated age-peers will make.
Flexibility is a major growth opportunity in Lakewood, particularly now that our hidden gem within-district virtual option serves students all the way from kindergarten through high school graduation. I had significant health problems in my middle childhood, and a virtual option like we have now would have made my life so much better. I am committed to doing all I can to enrich and strengthen the virtual option for families who need that flexibility for their family balance. My children are enrolled in the virtual program for grades 6-8 to facilitate their schedule flexibility and time management skill-building to participate in College Credit Plus in 7th grade. We initially opted for virtual with William in 6th grade following a string of three concussions in six weeks in the first marking period. We kept him in that option because he quickly caught up once his Post-Concussion Syndrome symptoms fully resolved and thrived in that context. Having flexibility and a sense of agency over their learning paths, with adult oversight and guidance, has been a major boon to my children while giving them the absolute best of the homeschool-vs-traditional school spectrum, and I want that to be a viable option for more Lakewood families who need it on a temporary or long-term basis. Franklin School of Opportunity is also an amazing community for our middle & high school children who need in-person education but struggle in our traditional public school settings. Boosting that program is also central to my efforts, and has been for several years.
Quick facts about Ahmie:
Ahmie’s educational background
What’s with Ahmie’s name?
“Ahmie” is an approximation of her German paternal grandmother’s pronunciation of Amy. It is pronounced AH-mee, and sounds a lot like “mommy” without the initial m. On Ahmie’s maternal line she is a 4th generation Clevelander, and followed the tradition of marrying a husband whose first language was not English when she married her Canadian-born, childhood U.S. immigrant, ethnically Chinese husband Garvin. Ahmie’s known male ancestors were from Central and Eastern European origins.
Parma Senior High School, class of 1999
Case Western Reserve University, BA Psychology & Sociology, 1999
Cleveland State University, MA Sociology, 2013
Cuyahoga Community College, Certificate in Conflict Resolution, 2023
Details
Other than education, what qualifications does Ahmie have?
Ahmie was a substitute teacher and a high school American Sign Language teacher in Loudoun County Public Schools before becoming a mom. She has also worked as a legal secretary. With the schedule-balancing needs of being the “sandwich generation” in a three-generation household, Ahmie has not sought traditional employment but instead uses her Sociology skills as a consultant on various projects and volunteers often. Her most relevant volunteer experience to this campaign involved doing intensive census and enrollment address data analysis during the Lakewood City Schools Phase 3 process, through which Ahmie served as District Configuration Sub-Committee co-chair. The data Ahmie was able to compile helped successfully make the case at the state level to rebuild all three remaining elementary schools instead of only two. Ahmie also consults on survey design, implementation, and analysis for various organizations that align with her values and ethics, and looks forward to bringing that skill set to the school district regularly to better shape pathways aligned with the needs of our families.
Any relation to Lakewood mayoral candidate William Yeung?
Yes, William is the 19-year-old firstborn child of Ahmie and her husband Garvin Yeung. For more information on William, see his website yeung4all.com.
Ahmie’s children
Ahmie has five children (all male-at-birth but embodying that in different ways, including non-binary); the younger four all enrolled in Lakewood City Schools (grades 2, 5, 8, and 11 in the 2023-24 school year), and the eldest graduated from Lakewood High School in 2022. Ahmie’s eldest child, William, earned his high school diploma two weeks after finishing his B.A. in Organizational Leadership from Cleveland State University, completely covered by College Credit Plus. Second child, Delano, is on track to have his B.S. in Forensic Accounting completed as a LHS junior. Third child, Lincoln, is utilizing CCP to work towards becoming a licensed grades 4-9 teacher. All of Ahmie’s children are named after U.S. Presidents as a tribute to one of the mentoring of Dr. Grover Cleveland “Cleve” Gilmore, who was Ahmie’s undergraduate statistics & research methods professor.
About the family’s College Credit Plus journey
So far, all of Ahmie’s children have started college coursework in their 7th-grade year through the College Credit Plus program. This started when William needed to switch to virtual education due to three concussions in the first marking period of 6th grade. The transfer to Treca Digital Academy happened right as the Letter of Intent window for College Credit Plus was opening. Once the Post-Concussion Syndrome symptoms resolved, William thrived in that environment and returned to being a Lakewood City Schools student at the start of 9th grade at LHS with a substantial number of college credits already earned. Based on that success, and learning that Lakewood had an in-district all virtual option serving students as young as 6th grade at the time (now fully K-12 since the pandemic), the family opted proactively for the in-district virtual option for grades 6-8 for all of the children. Ahmie’s second child, Delano, earned his Associate of Applied Business Accounting from Tri-C in August 2022, just before starting 10th grade, and is on track to have his B.S. in Forensic Accounting from Franklin University conferred in May 2024 before his 17th birthday. Her third child, Lincoln, is working towards licensure as a grades 4-9 teacher and earned 12 college credits before turning 13. The whole family is committed to making this opportunity more realistically possible for as many other Ohio families as they can help, and Ahmie’s candidacy is aligned with that. We are trying to establish a non-profit to support more families in this adventure, but please do not wait for that to be established before asking for our advice and guidance in this easily-confusing process!
About Ahmie’s household
Ahmie has been married to her college sweetheart Garvin (a mid-career Cleveland Metro School District high school sciences & engineering teacher) since 1999. After a five-year adventure in Northern Virginia after graduating college, where Garvin started his teaching career and firstborn William was born, the family moved back to the Cleveland area and settled in Lakewood before William’s 1st birthday. The younger four children were all born in Lakewood, in our three-generation household with their paternal Chinese immigrant grandparents ever-present in their lives. Ahmie’s mother- and father-in-law moved to Lakewood from NYC when their garment factory jobs were outsourced in 2006.
Is it okay to ask about the nature of Ahmie’s disabilities?
Yes, Ahmie is very open about this topic. Ahmie has Hypermobility Syndrome, which results in her using a wheelchair outside the house as much as possible to reduce the risk of falls as well as extend her stamina. She is able to stand and walk for short periods of time, but always with pain and a significant risk of her knees or pelvis slipping out of place, potentially triggering a fall. It is okay to ask her questions about her disability issues, so long as they come from a place of curiosity and respect – she will answer so long as she has time. Ahmie is also Dyslexic and mildly Hard-of-Hearing (Audio Processing Disorder) and enjoys comparing adaptive strategies as well as sharing techniques she has used to enable her to live her best life. Please be aware that she may need you to repeat things in challenging sound environments and rarely takes phone calls due to the logistical challenges involved. She strongly prefers text-based communication when not communicating in a shared physical space.
What does Ahmie do for fun?
Ahmie is also a yarn artist (primarily in crochet, which she tends to do whenever she is sitting still for more than a few minutes), photographer, LEGO nerd, writer of multiple genres, lay community minister in the Unitarian Universalist denomination, and voracious consumer of audiobooks primarily developmental non-fiction and middle grades/young adult urban fantasy (Rick Riordan/Rick Riordan Presents, Rachel Aaron, and Drew Hayes are her favorites). Ahmie also currently serves as the Northern Ohio Youth & Families Coordinator (aka “North Oaken Minister of Youth”) in the Society for Creative Anachronism, Midrealm under the SCA name Lady Zofia der Kinder. Ahmie is also a practicing Stoic and working on creating opportunities to engage with concepts of Stoicism that don’t require a college reading level through a project called Stoic Family. She also enjoys riding roller coasters and people-watching at Cedar Point.
