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

I am a mechanical engineer with Teledyne Reynolds, an electronic firm, located in the city of Santa Maria.

I have been active in many local organizations and school groups. My involvement with our local schools began with El Camino Junior High School.

In 1993, I worked with a group of parents who requested the school administration to adopt the Accelerated School Program. This was an academic program created by the University of Stanford. The program held the philosophy that a student that is challenged, is a student that can learn. After the program had been implemented, student GPA went up.

A few years later, I worked with another group of parents from El Camino, who requested a strict uniform dress code for the junior high students. El Camino became the first school on the central coast to impose a uniform dress code. That success was followed with several other schools in the district implementing their own school uniform dress code.

We were then requested by the parents of students from the city of Guadalupe to help them establish a uniform dress code as well. With our help, their two schools went to uniforms.

I was credited with helping El Camino become the district's first school to be recognized as a California Distinguished School. In 1995, the Santa Maria-Bonita School District named me Parent of the Year.

Because of my ability to work with the parents, the Police Chief asked me to participate as a memenber of the Police Advisory Council, where I still am a member.

I have been president of the El Camino School Site since 1993. I still am president of the Site Council, although I have no children there. I had accomplished all this prior to becoming a board member.

I was appointed to the School Board in 1998, after one of the board members moved from the area. I was only finishing what was left of the term. In November of 1998, I ran for election for the same post and won the election. On my first year as a newly elected member, I was selected by the other members as the board's newest president. My first goal was to bring all the school boards together, in one large meeting. In April of 2000, four local boards gathered together, to hold a joint board meeting. No other board member had accomplished this feat.

The four districts that gathered together were Guadalupe Union School District, Orcutt Union School District, Santa Maria-Bonita School District, and Santa Maria Joint Union High School District.

From our meetings, the administration began working closer with the feeder schools, to help make the academic transition simpler.

I am the only sitting board member that has students in the district schools. I am the only sitting member that resides in Santa Maria. I am the only sitting member that works in the electronic industry.

I am a graduate of the School Of Journalism, at Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indianapolis, Indiana. I am a former United States Marine, having served my country for five years.