Frankly Speaking

By Frank Pugh

Another "Frankly Speaking" article.

Welcome to the first edition of my monthly e-newsletter, "Frankly Speaking." Those of you who know me, and those of you who heard me speak at our Delegate Assembly meeting and Annual Education Conference in December, know that I am a person who likes to speak his mind. During my speech to the CSBA Delegates, I made reference to the old saying, "it is better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission." That is going to be the approach of my presidency. 2010 is a year that we will have robust conversations+some unpleasant+with the leadership of California. My goal, one that I hope you share, is to make our state leaders understand that they represent us, and the children of this state+and when it comes to their handling of public education, they must feel the sting of their failures.

My newsletter will arrive in your e-mail box on a monthly basis, usually around this time of the month. It will have three sections. In the first section, I'll be sharing with you some first-hand experiences of being CSBA's president. In the second section, I'll be highlighting a piece on leadership that will be written by our outstanding staff in the Leadership Development department. And in the final section, I'll shine a light on CSBA activities and programs that don't always get the attention they deserve.

Another goal of my year as president will be to communicate with as many CSBA members as possible. While this newsletter is a key component of my communication strategy, I also want to make sure that this becomes a two-way communication. So, if any of you have questions of me, please do not hesitate to send me an e-mail. In addition, at the bottom of this page you will find links to CSBA's Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages+another way that members can keep up with the very latest on what is happening at CSBA and the world of public education in California.

This will, no doubt, be another challenging year for school districts, county offices of education and governance teams. By working together, I hope that we can turn many of those challenges into opportunities.

Mr. Pugh Goes To Sacramento

As some of you may know, CSBA's president spends a lot of time in Sacramento. Meetings of the Board of Directors are held in downtown Sacramento, and when the officers meet as a group, we meet at CSBA's headquarters in West Sacramento, which is just across the Sacramento River. In addition, on many occasions the president is called upon to participate in meetings or other media events being held at or near the state Capitol.

As you enter downtown Sacramento from the Bay Area, you cross the Sacramento River on the Tower Bridge, and have a direct line of sight to the Capitol building. It really is an inspiring sight, one that gives you an idea of the power of institutions in our lives. Until, of course, the moment that you step inside, and get to see first-hand how dysfunctional things have become.

My first official duty as president in 2010 came on January 6, the day that Governor Schwarzenegger delivered his final State of the State address. As originally scheduled, my role was to listen to the governor's speech with CSBA staff at our Governmental Relations office (which is right across the street from the Capitol), make myself available to the media in case there were any questions from reporters as to how we felt about the speech, and then deliver the hundreds of "State of our Schools" letters that we received to the governor's doorstep.

As it turned out, this was to be my first lesson on "expecting the unexpected."

Before the ink was dry on the schedule, our staff received a call from the Governor's Office inviting me to attend the State of the State. Well, it seemed rude to turn down such a gracious invitation, and since the speech was to be delivered at 10 a.m., I would still have time to make it back to the office, gather up the letters, and deliver them a little later in the day. Well, no sooner had the ink dried on that schedule, I was invited to join the governor and 80 or so of his closest friends and colleagues for lunch at The Sutter Club, which is just a block from the Capitol.

Needless to say, this really threw a monkey-wrench into the schedule. But the great thing about our staff is that they are ready to turn on a dime no matter what happens, and so it turned out to be a great day. I was able to attend the speech and the lunch, and our Executive Director Scott Plotkin ably filled in for me delivering the letters to the Governor's Office. In his comments to the media, Scott was nearly as grumpy as I would have been!

As you no doubt have read by now, in his speech the governor pledged to protect education funding, which was great. Unfortunately, his words were not really backed up by the numbers that are in the proposed budget that he submitted to the Legislature last Friday (CSBA's analysis of the budget and its impacts on K-12 schools can be found here). The main message of the governor's speech was "jobs, jobs, jobs."

Through a stroke of luck, at lunch I happened to be seated at one of the first tables that the governor talked to+where I was joined by California Community Colleges Chancellor Jack Scott, California State PTA President Jo Loss and Sacramento County Superintendent of Education Dave Gordon. Shy guy that I am, I took the opportunity to thank the governor for his invitation, but I also told him that without support for education, it was going to be a little hard for him to achieve his agenda of creating "jobs, jobs and more jobs." I also urged him to include governance teams in any conversation that his administration has this year with the Legislature about the future of California schools. After all, we're the people on the front lines+the ones who really know what is happening in our schools and our local communities. During the lunch, I also tried to shake the hand of every legislator who was in attendance, including Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, and put in a good word for school funding.

All in all, it was a long, tiring, but very exciting day. I can't wait to see what comes next!