Candidate for
Governing Board Member; Alameda Unified School District

I believe that our educational system has become so convoluted with year-to-year reforms, in response to the ever-changing world of accountability, that our true problems stem from our inability to grasp and manage the increasingly complex systems. With this said, I believe that we can stop putting test scores at the forefront of our minds, and replace those thoughts by thinking about building quality into our efforts. Each and every employee in a school district should be a part of this "building quality" into our efforts, to achieve our commitment to educational excellence. We need to break down the barriers between departments. People in maintenance, math, the district office, and the custodians need to have a common goal in mind, which drives the quality of their efforts. The realignment to a system of reigniting the passion and love for teaching and learning must be every employee's will. We need to focus on teaching and learning for all students, by using moral persuasion, data analysis, professional learning communities to foster on-going learning for teachers, and to actively collaborate about the needs of specific students. In places such as Japan, where careful instructional practices, strategic curriculum design, and guided teacher collaboration have taken place, there has been great success (just look at their electronics industry). Aside from this, we need to ensure that we have equal participation from students, through motivational methods, community involvement, and family support. Basically, we need a strong dose of "capacity building," where we foster environments of on-going professional development through collaboration, planning, modeling, practice, feedback, inquiry and problem solving (not three full days of professional development activities at the beginning of each school year, as is given to most school districts by state mandate).