These are in the Q&A format
I believe that the school board should represent the broad spectrum of our community demographic. For me, there is a huge part of our base that is unrepresented. I am a conservative candidate with no affiliation to the business of education. I am an untrained option by choice. Apathy is one of the biggest enemies to public education. I am frustrated by the desire to interest public participation and the refusal of those involved to make it as easy as possible. My goal is to give busy families doing the best they can and opportunity to be heard.
- Should Sonoma County's 40 school districts consolidate? Please explain your reason
From a purely financial point of view consolidation is a no-brainer. The reduction in salaries, resources, maintenance and utilities alone would be huge. The actuality of a consolidation is much more complicated. To combine all districts creates a behemoth of a management staff that may or may not be effective. I am inclined to think it would create an epic political battle over zoning and jurisdiction that would drone on for years. I certainly feel that multiple districts in single city limits should look at the possibility. WUSD has consolidated several aspects of its budgetary responsibilities and had significant savings in those areas.
- Should open transfer policies be tightened? Please explain your reason
I have lived through policy that forced parents to lie about their address to qualify their children for a particular school. I have lived through open transfer policy. Of the two I prefer the open policy with preference offered for Windsor residents, to a capped limit for student population. Additionally, there would be the issue of school preference based on performance of the individual site. This is much more complicated as the natural result is not usually a leveling force but acceleration of the division. It is a subject for a lot of discussion.
- Is class size reduction worth the expense? Please explain your reason
Class size reduction allows more individual student/teacher interaction at a critical introduction to public education. In a perfect world this would not even be a question. In our reality it is an essential tool that is simply unfunded and not likely to be funded for some time. Where the decision is whether each student has access to materials and a space to use them or reduced class sizes in entry level grades the needs of the many must outweigh the needs of the few. It is bad solution to a horrible question.
- Should teacher pay be linked to test scores? Please explain your reason
I do believe a standard must be applied to allow for reasonable standard of excellence and a basis for success. I do not, however, feel that teaching to test is in any way a reasonable standard of anything. We have lost so much to the end goal of adequate yearly progress and API rankings. No Child Left Behind has left behind music and creative pursuits as well as elective enhancements for students in a race for test based funding.
- Should completion of A-G courses be required to graduate from high school? Please explain your reason
Yes. The object of public education is to introduce well rounded productive members to society at large. These courses are general education curriculum and should be mastered before exiting high school.
- How can the structure of how education is funded in California be improved
This is a topic that has been chasing its tail for as long as I have been voting (36 years for those of you counting). To be brutally honest I think we need to start over. The structure under which we operate is so broken that to apply a fix would only exacerbate a weakness in another place, and we would still be forever dysfunctional.
- Sonoma County school districts have seen a drop of approximately 20 percent in funding from the state over three years. Looking back over those three years, where would you cut that 20 percent
Dr. Herrington introduced a tool to the district allowing each site to manage their discretionary budgets. This is a fabulous way to encourage cooperation at the global level while empowering each site to determine the impact to the environment they know best. At the top of the district vision is the determination that our students not feel the cut and I couldn't agree more.
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