Responses to Orinda News

By Rebecca "Bekki" VanVoorhis-Gilbert

The Orinda News asked the five candidates to answer the following questions.

Q1. Budget woes continue to plague California's schools. If elected, you'll be asked to deal with the state's continuing fiscal crisis as Orinda's schools struggle to make ends meet. Given this scenario, what do you see as the top priorities for the school district?

In response to the fiscal crisis, if elected I would support a full and open examination of all aspects of the budget to determine where tax dollars might be saved, combined with a commitment to cost-containment, increased public involvement and the promotion of academic excellence.

Specifically this would involve: · An evaluation of administrative overhead, salaries and bonuses compared to those in comparable districts · Support for creative revenue generating ideas that include alternative uses of school resources · A conservative approach to discretionary spending (see discussion regarding the Demographic study below) · Revising and updating the Strategic Plan to promote efficiency, intra-district collaboration within a long-range vision that replaces ad-hoc annual decision making in response the vagaries of the state budget · Making line-item budget data readily available to public scrutiny on the District website as in other districts · Moving the time of board meetings to evenings to allow working parents and teachers to attend and actively participate in the process as in other districts · Making board packets available on the District website · Publishing board minutes that clearly express all the comments from the public; and · Increasing the in-put of parents, community members and teachers as partners in the educational enterprise through the use of district-wide surveys

Finally, it is important to recognize that smart academic investments still pay educational dividends even in hard times. The District Technology Plan is obsolete and needs to be revised in-house utilizing community expertise and incorporating project-based learning.

Q2. School districts across the Bay Area, including Orinda, are seeing declining enrollments. This decline often has a disproportionately adverse effect on school districts struggling to keep programs whole. How would you propose dealing with this situation?

To begin with, it is not at all clear that enrollment in the OUSD is declining. While there have been slight fluctuations during the past 5 years (plus or minus 20 students) the district student population has remained relatively constant at approximately 2,400 students. Orinda is a "destination" community. People move here because of the family-orientated environment, the schools and the safety of the community. As long as these conditions continue, it seems likely that enrollment will stay fairly constant. That being said, there have been peaks and valleys in the OUSD student population since the 1950s, which have resulted in the opening and closing of Wagner Ranch, Pine Grove, the conversion of Ivy School to OIS and the like. As an OUSD Board member, I would pay careful attention to enrollment data and be on the look out for statistically significant enrollment trends.

In the Spring of 2008 the OUSD commissioned a Demographic Study to help guide the District and the Board in future planning. The data provided by this study are of questionable veracity, and the cost of any future studies of this type should be measured against the five figure savings to the district.

At the moment nothing in the current data demonstrate declining enrollment is a major concern. The best protection against declining enrollment is to keep our schools strong by maintaining academic excellence, ensuring fiscal integrity, promoting responsiveness to parents, teachers and community and initiating a climate of transparency, which encourages participation and voluntary contributions.

Q3. The current fiscal crisis has caused many school districts across the state to abandon their commitment to smaller class sizes. Orinda has been able to maintain class sizes, but raising class sizes could bring cost savings. Would you support such a move?

Class-size reduction in California was introduced in 1996 as an effort to improve reading and math performance among students in K-2nd grade. This change was predicated on empirical evidence gathered in other states which shows that smaller class size is correlated with better academic performance (across all grade levels K-8) . To encourage smaller classes, the State of California introduced financial incentives that linked class size to state education subsidies. Because of the subsidy, the actual cost savings associated with larger (n=25+) class-size are less than might be expected. Consequently, it seems highly unlikely that Orinda will abandon the tradition of keeping class-sizes low, absent a significant change in the state law or a decrease in voluntary giving.

In these difficult fiscal times, Orinda has been able to sustain smaller sized classes size because of the state subsidy supplemented by contributions made by parents to their individual school site Parents' Club, combined with donations of parent and community members to EFO. I believe that any effort to increase class size would amount to a false economy under which limited savings would be offset by reduced parental and community support. The three-way partnership between Parents' Cubs, EFO and the OUSD is an important one that needs to be reinforced by increasing the Board's responsiveness to parents, teachers and the community.

Q4. What are your qualifications that would make you an effective school board member?

I have lived in Orinda for eight years with my husband Neil Gilbert (a UC Berkeley professor). We have a son at OIS and a daughter at Wagner Ranch.

I have been an active volunteer in school and civic affairs including:

Room Parent, since 2004 Think First Instructor, since 2005 Monster Mash, Chair, 2005 Friendship Day Chair, 2006-2008 Legislative Representative, 2006 Parent Education Chair, since 2009 Technology Committee Member, since 2010 Founder and Chair of Save Environmental Education (SEE) in Orinda Measure A, B & E Volunteer Advisory Board Member, Seneca Center for Children and Families Advisory Board Member, Camp Galileo (For my complete CV please visit http://www.bekkigilbert.com)

My educational background includes a J.D. from the University of San Francisco and an MSW and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. In addition to my volunteer experiences, I have worked as a tenured professor at CSU Hayward teaching courses on Social Policy, Parenting, Research and Human Behavior and as a litigation lawyer in San Francisco. I've authored several books and articles on social policy, and have experience in survey research and data analysis.

To learn about the OUSD, I have attended Board meetings for over 18+ months and visited all the Orinda schools + talking with parents, teachers and citizens about what is and what is not working in the district. I've also studied how other local school boards operate.

I believe that my educational experiences, civic leadership, legal training and analytic skills make me well qualified to serve on the OUSD Board.