Candidate for
State Senator; District 15

Working as a teacher and superintendent for over 35 years, I learned firsthand how crucial a strong, quality education is to creating a competitive workforce. Today it seems that education and our children have taken a backseat. I believe it is time for education to become a top priority once again. As someone who has achieved the American Dream, I think everyone should be able to achieve this goal. I am committed to ensuring that each individual has access to a quality job, the ability to buy a home, and the opportunity to succeed in life. I strongly believe that a quality education is the key to helping everyone achieve these goals and providing a better future for our children.

Part of ensuring a better future for our children is finding ways to protect the environment they live in. We are encouraged to buy environmentally friendly products, carpool to work, ride a bike to work, and take public transportation. However, there is one fundamental problem that impedes our progress in reducing greenhouse emissions: the structure of our cities. Our cities are not designed to encourage alternative means of transportation. Our communities are spread out, making it difficult to walk to the grocery store, bike to work, or use public transportation to get to and from work. In San Jose, over 336,000 people drive to work alone every day while only 17,000 use public transportation. I believe that we need to focus our development efforts on "smart growth"; I believe in creating sustainable communities. The development of our communities needs to be focused on creating walk-able neighborhoods where people can walk to work, school, parks, and stores from their homes. These communities need to provide better access to quality public transportation such as the light rail. This will help us to reduce our daily usage of cars, trucks, and vans and provide our communities with cleaner air and a healthier environment to live in.

An integral part of creating a better community is ensuring that everyone has access to a quality job. Part of the American Dream has always been receiving a good education and going on to secure a quality job. As we have seen in recent years, this is not the case. Job seekers are facing more competition and challenges than ever as they fight for the small number of jobs that are available. I want to work with businesses to not only create jobs in Silicon Valley but to also help provide training to those looking for jobs. We must work together to create greater opportunities for those trying to achieve the American Dream. A large aspect of creating greater opportunities is providing the training and education necessary for workers to meet the challenges of globalization and the IT economy. As a superintendent and a board member of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, I worked closely with tech companies to provide job training for students to create a strong, competitive workforce. I am a firm believer in the idea that innovative classrooms will create innovative leaders for our future.