Candidate for
Board Member; Santa Maria Joint Union High School District

• I am running for Santa Maria Joint Union High School District School Board to help bring solutions to the problems that have been expressed to me by community members, parents, teachers and students: problems such as teacher and student concerns that fall on deaf ears; widespread under-funding for the classrooms, and small business owners whose offered products and services have been disregarded.

• High School classrooms are currently allocated $200 per year per classroom. I believe that increased funding for each classroom could be accomplished through re-prioritizing the spending at the District level.

• Some high school classes are currently being conducted with as many as 38 students. Some Administrators choose to disguise this fact by informing parents and the public that the number of students per 'average' class size is 30. Not taking into consideration 'average' class sizes in a calculation, I would work to reduce the number of students per class not to exceed 29 students

• Owning and working in a large employment agency every day provides me the vision of knowing today's as well as tomorrow's job market. Over the past few years, we have experienced a drastic decrease of available skilled labor. Today, the job market is demanding plumbers, carpenters, masons, electricians, dental- hygienists, mechanics, welders, and more trades, all of which pay a substantial wage. If the number of college graduates is 40% of the High School students, then that means we are not catering to 60% of the students. I would like to see a student graduate from high school with more options than deciding which minimum-wage job they should take because vocational classes were not offered.