Candidate for
Governing Board Member; Culver City Unified School District

We have good schools, good teachers and an experienced, highly motivated new superintendent. The board needs to lead by providing direction, setting goals with specific timelines, securing and responsibly managing necessary finances and fostering a culture of excellence and collaboration.

As leaders, the members of the board must work to adhere to their own timelines and strive to make financial decisions in a timely manner that allow us to take advantage of opportunities to reduce costs and maximize the benefits of dollars spent. Such leadership principles will be critical in preparing a proposal for a bond measure which will be approved by the Culver City community in June of 2014.

Common Core Curriculum is here and we need to ensure that it is effectively implemented through high quality professional development, creation and implementation of Professional Learning Communities at all of our schools and providing the time and opportunity for our teachers to develop the lessons and best practices such that Common core will be a success in CCUSD.

My experience with the business community in Culver City is that they are highly motivated to participate in and support our schools; they just need to know how. The AVID speakers bureau and 8th grade exit interviews were a great start to connecting the business community with the academic community. We need to develop those relationships further by creating mentoring and internship opportunities.

Closer relationships with local higher education partners should also be developed in order to create clear pathways to the workforce for all of our students, whether matriculating to a four year university, a community college, trade or trade-tech school or directly into the workforce.