Candidate for
City; City of Santa Rosa High School District

Why I Am Running

As a teacher for over twenty-eight years I have seen support for education ebb and flow with the general trend being downward. I have seen California public schools go from a model not just for the nation, but for the world as well, to the bottom or near bottom of all states in most measurable categories. Our class sizes are the highest in the nation. Our adult to student ratio is lowest. Our expenditure per pupil is near the bottom.

I attended all of the Santa Rosa City School Board and town hall meetings last year where the focus was on cutting over $5 million dollars from the current budget. Although I feel the school board handled this very difficult process in a very professional manner, I found myself becoming more outraged by what was happening to our schools. Instead of reducing class size or increasing the amount of instructional time and learning opportunities, we were heading in the opposite direction. This year's $14 million shortfall from the state is putting us at the brink. The doors of opportunity for our children our being slammed shut in their faces. I can not just stand by and watch this happen.

I want to help lead our community to come together for the short term survival of our schools. The entire community needs to be a part of the discussion regarding what we can do with our diminishing resources to give our children the best education we can over the next few years. We are all going to need to get involved in some capacity and I would like to be a part of broadening and strengthening Santa Rosa's educational community. I have the passion to do this.

I believe that as an educational community we all need to be involved in answering the questions as to what our students should know and what they should be able to do when they finish their schooling in Santa Rosa. There very well may be more than one answer to each of these questions. The "one size fits all" answer from the state and federal governments works well for them politically, but unfunded federal and state mandates are hurting education and undermining local control of our schools. As part of the solution for saving our schools I will work to change policies that hurt local schools.

I want to promote the idea that we should have confidence in ourselves when it comes to deciding what it best for our children. I would like to work toward creating more trust among all of the education stakeholders. The expansion of community participation in our schools and the return to more local control will foster the development of local assessments that will enable us to gage the success of our schools. We must hold our schools accountable, but allowing bubble tests to drive curriculum and make us feel confident that we have prepared our children for life is naïve.

The focus of the next few years will be doing whatever we can to help our schools survive and to give our children the most we can with our depleted resources. What is needed for the long term survival of our schools and for the rebuilding of our schools is:

• A steady and adequate source of funding.
• Attracting and retaining quality teachers and administrators.
• The development of powerful and engaging curriculum.
• The development of methods to recognize and model successful teaching.
• The development of community based assessment of our schools.