Candidate Statement

By Sherman Lee Campbell

Many district students needs aren't being met. I have the interest, experience, & courage to sove the problems.

The district is continuing to fail to provide an appropriate education for large numbers of students resulting in too many wasted lives (>15% drop out rates, no improvement in test results, ineffective special education & 5 schools failing to meet state minimum goals). It's also continuing to be terribly slow in responding to parental and community desires for improvement (phonics still not implemented, still setting goals rather than action, reconstructing administrative staff). As a Piner Olivet board member I have had success in improving education as measured by a 15-20% gain in test results from over the last 6 years. I don't see any other candidate that can make the contributions in several areas that I can nor that has been successful as a catalyst for change.

2) What are your top three priority issues, how will you contribute to their resolution?

Given the multitude & severity of problems, this question perfectly reflects public lack of willingness to spend sufficient time to understand and remedy problems. It also tends to elevate inexperienced candidates with few proposals to offer and attract politicians desirning a stepping stone for higher office. None the less, I will try to be brief:

• Increase responsiveness. As a trustee I will advocate action rather then endless procrastination, giving student needs & parent requests higher priority than employees, and increasing parent participation by starting to reduce rather than continue increasing district and school sizes.
• Implement positive rather than negative motivation. Students learn better when enthusiastic and interested rather than being afraid of failure implicit in the authoritarian approach. Students do better with increased parent involvement, higher participation in extra curricular activities, & engaging & interesting course work. Smaller schools promote all of the above. In particular, freshman sports should be re-instated as soon as possible.
• Meet district responsibility to increase all students achievment as measured by test scores, most importantly, every year, year after year. Not once 4 years from now. Provide magnet classes for the 5-10% or so gifted students, real remediation of learning disabilities for the 15-30% of students instead of repeating teaching that didn't work, and activiety based learning for students who absolutely rebel against authority. Establish monitoring of drop out rates, analyze the causes, and provided remedies rather than ignore them.

If as I had advocated two year ago, the district had immediately acted to increase all standads and courses, we would already being seeing higher test scores. We aren't. Every standard actually should be raised every year, so that present goals should turn out unduly pessimistic. Additionally, something would be very wrong if end of course exams were materially different than district standards. Assuming they're identical, it's redundant and a waste of time.

Two years has passed, students are growing up, and meanwhile we are still debating what some standards will be and what the graduation requirement will be four years from now.

The handwriting is on the wall that these test requirements will be watered down. My opinion is that the whole exercise is wasting time, amounting to endless procrastination, with tragic consequences for students whose needs are not being addressed.

4) The district currently has an interim chief executive Mel Solie. Would you support making him superintendent at this time? If not, what process would you use to select a new superintendent?

Given the turnover, if not collapse, in the district administration structure, there is little choice but to appoint an senior and effective leader temporarily. However, one can not long do two jobs. We need to immediately start grooming new blood, with an emphasis on strength in academics. Much more also needs to be done to support principals to prevent the rapid burn associated with huge 1,200 student campuses. Large campuses. It's still another problem that would be better solved with smaller districts.

5) Where do you see your support coming from and what do you see as your strengths and weaknesses when comes to getting elected.

I hope for support from parents and community members more interested in improving education than protecting jobs and raises.

My strength is my single minded focus on improving education. To some degree this also is a weakness when it requires addressing subjects that are upsetting to the establishement. I have too many rough edges to be a politician, but will get the job done if elected.