Candidate's Statement

By Kate Smith

Decentralize the district to create child-centered, teacher-directed and parent-involved schools.

My experience as a teacher, parent advocate, community activist, and non-profit agency administrator qualifies me to serve on the Santa Barbara School District Governing Board. The Board must guide each school through the complexities of organizational change.

I believe in cooperation, collaboration, and coordination. We must form community within each classroom, grade level, and school. We must dismantle the present autocratic bureaucracy and replace it with democratic principles and procedures. We must work together to develop a modern curriculum, successful instructional techniques, and a comprehensive student assessment system.

I support a grass-roots movement calling for teacher support, administrative restructuring, and local autonomy so that parents and teachers are considered partners as opposed to enemies or slaves. I promise to create a grievance procedure so that concerns and opinions of parents, teachers, and students are heard, and to establish meaningful changes in the learning process.