Candidate for
Governing Board Member; Bellflower Unified School District

After visiting the schools, talking to parents, employees,teachers and students over the last 4 years, I see areas we need to concentrate on. Some old, some new. These are my 'Top Priorities':

1. Continue to Maintain a Balanced Budget:

In these uncertain times with Sacramento's contunued educational cut-backs, maintaining the high quality of our schools is formost in my mind. We must continue to maintain a balanced budget and keep our reserves up without implementing any new taxes.

2. Preserving Programs and Jobs:

We must do all we can to preserve our programs, our teachers and our employees jobs. If cuts become necessary they should be as far from the classroom as possible.

3. Over crowding in our classrooms:

Test scores and overall performance are known to be higher with smaller numbers of students per class. So far we have implemented class size reductions in grades K-3. I would like to see this extended through ALL of our elementary and secondary classrooms as well.

4. Program Enhancements:

We need to work with staff to continue improving our students test scores while adding more vocational and arts programs. I believe this plan will produce more award winning schools within our district. To do this we MUST INCREASE PARENT INVOLVEMENT!

5. Improved Learning Environment:

We got rid of the diesel buses (the new ones are natural gas) and the junk food from our schools. We must continue to improve the environment, the food and the general safety and well being of our students, producing a better learning environment.