Candidate for
County Board of Education; County of San Mateo; Trustee Area 7

As an educational nonprofit leader I work every day to put middle school students on a path to high school graduation, college or career opportunity. But I know from years of full-time effort that even if we achieve complete success with middle school students, their futures still depend on the quality of their high school preparation. Moreover, the impact of their early childhood experiences persist throughout their school years. Improving education requires a systemic approach.

We confront a tale of two counties. We have some of the best schools in the state as well as some of the worst academic outcomes. While the most recent 2012 STAR tests showed our county schools collectively outperforming the state as a whole, as few as 35% of students from East Palo Alto graduate from high school, according to widely cited estimates, and from the Coastside to the Bay parents worry about whether their kids are learning what they need to succeed in the 21st Century. Countywide, as few as a 40 percent of graduating high school seniors complete the required classes needed for application to the CSU or UC systems.

This is not just a problem of the poor. Squeezed between high-poverty schools that receive federal and state financial assistance, on one hand, and high-wealth schools that benefit from high property values, on the other, the vast majority of our county schools + in places like Redwood City, San Carlos, San Mateo, Burlingame, Belmont, Pacifica and Half Moon Bay +experience the same "Catch 22" that many middle class families experience: not enough poverty to attract the government support they need, but not enough wealth to afford the quality of life or education they deserve.

I'm running because the County Board of Education can and should play a leading role in addressing these issues. We can maximize financial resources for our 23 districts by consolidating more back-end services at the county level. We can improve the training and induction of new teachers, maximizing job-embedded training opportunities (i.e. more student teachers supporting master teachers in classrooms). We can align high school graduation requirements more closely with college entrance requirements. And we can continue to invest deeply in early childhood literacy, because reading is the gateway to academic achievement + students need to learn to read before they can read to learn.

I am running for this office because I bring a unique combination of experience and a record of leadership in education policy. Improving schools requires engaging multiple constituencies to strengthen and support our public schools. I will engage military veterans because I'm one of them. I will engage the Silicon Valley business sector because it's where I came from. I will engage parents because for 12 awesome years I've been one. I will engage working families because I was born in a union household, and because I'm committed to the opportunities all hard-working parents and children deserve. And I will engage educators because supporting and developing teachers, and working to improve schools, is not my hobby; it's my life's work.