League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
Santa Clara County, CA November 4, 2008 Election
	Susan Sweeley Answers Questions Candidate for Board Member; Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District; 4 Year Term

The questions were prepared by the League of Women Voters of Los Altos/Mtn. View Area and asked of all candidates for this office.
Read the answers from all candidates (who have responded).

Questions & Answers

1. What would you recommend to better address parking at both high schools and the neighborhoods around them?

The long term solution is to get fewer students and employees to drive one-passenger vehicles to school. We would like to encourage as many students as possible who drive to school to park on or next to campus and not park in the neighborhoods. This year the school board worked successfully with the City of Mountain View to deal with traffic and parking around MVHS. This summer we added 68 new parking spaces by re-striping and reconfiguring our staff and student parking areas. The city of MV allowed parking on the school side of Bryant and Truman that created 60 additional parking spaces. As of now, the addition of 128 spaces seems to make a big difference in parking at MVHS. But the test will come in the spring when more students turn 16 and are able to drive to school. Over the past several years, we have been able to add some parking slots at LAHS as a result of some reconfiguring of the parking lots. However, we are reluctant to take green space and turn it to blacktop for parking. We have encouraged the city to allow us to park in front of LAHS and to allow diagonal parking on Jardin. Our Green Teams at each school have programs to encourage student biking to school. Overall, we have almost doubled our number of student bikers over the past two years and credit goes to our Carbon Free Environment parent group at MVHS and the Green Team students at both high schools. Actions we have recently taken:
1. Running a pilot at LAHS for carpool parking.
2. Added more bike racks and encouraging and incenting biking.
3. Lots of advertising and messaging about alternatives to driving.
4. Providing bus tokens to students to encourage taking VTA.
5. Selling more permits than spaces to ensure that all spaces are utilized.
6. Continuing neighborhood meetings to hear concerns of our neighbors.

2. What would you do to improve the passing rate for the high school exit exam and the high school graduation rate?

We have very high graduation and high school exit exam passing rates (90-92 % on the first time and by the time they are seniors, 99% of our students pass the exam). We can always do better and we are always refining our programs. We have a major emphasis on "college and beyond" with our counselors and student support programs. I have been involved with the JustREAD literacy non-profit. I am a founding Board member and our organization provides volunteer tutors in our schools to help the kids struggling in the mechanics of the English language. We have a low drop-out rate in our district, 1-2% per year vs the state average of 21% . We work with every single student to ensure their success in high school and beyond.

3. How will you cope with the state budget cuts?

We believe that a strong public education system is the backbone of our democracy. The state cannot hope to maintain a strong economy without a well educated workforce. We must invest more in public education at all levels. We have been fortunate that we have not had to cut programs recently as a result of budget cuts. In my position on the executive board of the Santa Clara County School Boards Association, I work closely with our state and federal legislators in Sacramento to advocate for better funding for our students. However, in the past, when we have had to make budget reductions, we were able to cut as far away from the classroom as possible with minimal impact on student achievement. We engaged the help of our parents and community to help fund an education that our students deserve. That is why I began as a board member of the MVLA High School Foundation. The foundation helps fill the gaps that we cannot fund within our current budget. Our foundation has stepped up this year and has set its goal at a record $700,000, or a suggested donation of $700 per student. We have also been successful in working with corporations and securing outside grants to fund our programs. Much of the funding for our new Freestyle Academy comes from outside funding sources and partnerships with companies such as Apple, Adobe, Synopsis, Microsoft, etc. Our schools belong to our community. Many people move to our district because of the public education system. We have been fortunate to have passed a general obligation bond that has modernized our classrooms and given our schools state of the art science labs, libraries and theaters. We work closely with our partner elementary districts to help them pass parcel taxes to help fund their schools.

4. What steps would you take in the near-term to prepare for the foreseeable future challenge of a teacher shortage resulting from so many baby-boomer teachers retiring en masse, especially in math and science?

Although this is a state and national problem, after checking our employment records for upcoming retirements, this has not and doesn't appear to be a major issue for us in the future. We are fortunate that we have a very high retention rate for our employees whom we offer tenure and permanent status. We have an average of 200 applicants for every position in our district. We are known as a great district and teacher want to teach here. We are very careful and strict in our hiring and we only grant tenure to the very best teachers. We have great training programs for our new teachers and we invest specifically in math and science training. Each year I speak with our new teachers and they continually say they "died and came to heaven" when they get to our district. These comments are because we have such extensive training programs and it is a district where the kids always come first!

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Responses to questions asked of each candidate are reproduced as submitted to the League.  Candidates' responses are not edited or corrected by the League.

Read the answers from all candidates (who have responded).

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Created from information supplied by the candidate: October 27, 2008 14:42
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