Candidate for
Governing Board Member; Rohnerville School District

I had the advantage of being raised in a small town in the midwest and grew up with a family very supportive of education. I earned a BA in Science with multiple minors and immediately moved to California to escape 30 below zero winters.

My education experiences in the classroom and in many different aspects of education are varied. I have worked in schools as small as 40 students, as well as larger schools of 3000. I have taught virtually every subject and I know that almost every student can successfully learn anything, given the flexibility of time.

Medium sized schools, communities, and districts, I am convinced, offer youth the advantage of being unable to avoid adult guidance while giving them the opportunity of many different programs.

While concentrating on being an educator, I have also been involved in residential construction, worked as an electrician, stacked hay and worked in a steel foundry. There have been a score of different jobs that I have held and these experiences have shown me that all labor is honorable and worthwhile.

I believe that schools have an important social function. I also believe that students respond to expectations of high performance and acceptable behavior. My mental pictures of the elements of a successful school have always given me the ability to look at what is happening and determine if it really is in the best interest of all students. Student outcomes have been the qualifier which I use to determine if a decision or action is right.

I believe the desire of every teacher is that their students do well. I also believe that teachers are measured by impossible outcomes, driven by the expectations of society, with little consideration given to the real needs of students and how to best meet those needs. Current solutions pile on more expectations and more accountability, but the outcomes do not seem to be getting better and plans to address these needs are missing.

It seems obvious to me that we need to rethink how schools are organized, and make them into institutions of success for all students rather than a system that sorts and separates students into groups that succeed and ones that do not.