League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
	Alameda County, CA November 4, 2014 Election
	Candidates Answer Questions on the Issues School Director; Oakland Unified School District; Trustee Area 4

The questions were prepared by the League of Women Voters of Oakland and asked of all candidates for this office.     See below for questions on Community Involvement, Student Success, Educational Equity, Staff Quality and Diversity Click on a name for candidate information.   See also more information about this contest. 1. How do you plan to get parents and the community more informed and involved in educational policy and programs? Answer from Karl Debro: We are all so busy now. We are overly informed and overly involved. People need a reason to plug in. Any plan to inform and involve must focus on providing something that people want, giving some value to those you seek to include. For that reason I'm going to discuss my plan within the context of a key goal of mine: dramatically improving the quality of our secondary schools. Our secondary schools are not as good as they should be; at the same time, there are some things going on in our secondary schools too. My top priority is to dramatically improve the quality of our secondary schools. I believe achieving this goal will significantly improve secondary enrollment and revenues while passing savings to families that would rather save the money for college tuition that they are now spending on private high school tuition. But people are busy. They will not get involved unless they see real value in getting involved. Informing the community of the quality programs that already exist in our secondary schools is a start to attracting more involvement. But we also need to expand top programs and build new programs that will fully prepare our students for competitive college admission and career pathways. Engaging the community, especially parents, in dialog about what sorts of secondary programs they would like to see in OUSD schools is crucial. Below, I offer a sketch of steps in this direction. 1. Reach out to parents that left traditional OUSD schools (charter, private, home school and those that moved out of Oakland). Develop a clear understanding of why they chose to take their kids elsewhere. What drove their decision to opt out? What did other options offer that our schools lacked? 2. Reach out to elementary school parents to understand what their concerns are about enrolling their kids in our middle schools. 3. Reach out to top charter and private schools to learn from them. What are they offering and how they are delivering value to their families? 4. Reach out locally and regionally to community, industry, colleges (both 2-year and 4-year) to better understand what opportunities lie ahead for the best prepared youth and how to help kids that attend our schools access those opportunities. 5. Create and implement a plan of action to re-vamp our secondary education programs. 6. Engage in a continuous and public cycle of data collection, analysis, reflection and refinement of the improvement plan. 7. Repeat steps 1-4 as a matter of routine institutional practice. Answer from Cheri Spigner: Perhaps the greatest disconnect comes from OUSD does not have the greatest relationship with the community at large. Frequently we see an us-versus-them dynamic at play. I will change that. I want to have quarterly forums to engage the diversity of interests in my district. I will create an Advisory Board of various community, business, and education interests in order to assist me in creating policy, and making sure that I keep abreast of the concerns of the people who have supported me. I plan to use the latest technology available (social media, OUSD website, email distribution lists) to get the word out. I firmly believe that OUSD should be working to regularly include parents in school affairs. Finally, I will regularly hold office hours, to make myself available to the community; too often the halls of the OUSD building are silent, and parents never seem to have the chance to address a Board Member one-on-one. Parents need to know that I will be working for them. Answer from Nina Senn: As a current public elementary school parent and former parent leader at Montera, the largest and most diverse middle school in Oakland, I know firsthand the importance of giving parents and the community a voice at the table. Too often it seems that policies and programs are developed without actively engaging those directly impacted by them. I've spent my career successfully building bridges of trust and collaboration between different groups with different needs as either a mediator or a negotiator of hundreds of complex agreements, and I know how to bring people together to create success. I believe we all share in the responsibility of educating our students. I also understand that often people are too busy to stay up on what's happening. To make sure your hopes and concerns are heard, I will: Provide language translation and childcare services during educational forums ++ everyone's voice, insights and suggestions are important! Hold office hours in rotating and convenient community locations such as local schools and libraries ++ I will go to you Engage parent and community leaders through regularly scheduled town hall, PTA and School Site Council meetings Distribute a monthly newsletter and provide updates via a website Answer from Saleem Shakir-Gilmore: I expect to be informed regularly by parents, students, and teachers. I will hold regular office hours in the community to be available to my constituents. I will convene a community advisory board made up of stakeholders in District 4 to help me understand the issues that come before the school board and advise me on how to vote on agenda items. 2. What will you do to raise the incentives and motivation for students to study, stay in school, and choose a skilled trade or a college career? Answer from Karl Debro: I learned long ago that students do not need incentives. Students that are successful are motivated. Students that are not successful appear unmotivated, but after 25 years in the classroom I realize this is not true. If you think about it, it's obvious. No student enjoys failing. Some stop caring, but not because they are unmotivated. They stop caring because they don't know how to succeed. Success feels out of their reach. What such students really need is to be taught how to succeed. Schools, especially secondary schools, teach math, English, science, history, and so on . They do not teach students how to succeed in school. I led an AVID (http://www.avid.org/) program that was among the best in the country. In AVID, you teach students how to succeed in school. Once students see that they are fully capable of success, they don't need to be motivated. They want success. The other big consideration here is access to real job/career opportunities and a broad, clear career pathway to those opportunities. While I believe that all students should be college ready, I know that many kids prefer a trade to university. (Being college ready serves such students well in that they can avoid taking remedial college classes, and many of the college readiness skills are required in career training as well.) They prefer working with their hands to sitting in classrooms. Further, I have seen how the knowledge that a good job awaits anyone that completes a career pathway automatically makes, otherwise (for them) pointless academic coursework much more meaningful. Answer from Nina Senn: First, students need to know that others believe in them. They need to feel liked, seen, heard and respected by teachers, administrators and peers. With that as a foundation, anything's possible. So the question is, how do we create school climates in which all kids flourish? I strongly believe that much of the answer lies in the transformative power of positive behavioral practices such as Restorative Justice, which I helped bring to Montera. As the former President of SEEDS Community Resolution Center, I have witnessed the tremendous impact these types of programs have on kids and their school communities ++ they motivate students to stay engaged and to stay in school. Knowing that people care about them is the best incentive there is for students who might otherwise check out or drop out. In addition, I fully support the District's College and Career pathways initiative for high schools. Between positive behavioral practices and smart pathways, our students will be well positioned for a college and/or a skilled trade. Answer from Cheri Spigner: Create a uniform dual degree program so that students can attend local colleges and universities to obtain AA degrees while still in high school. Develop a series of programs that do not exist to placate students, but to challenge them. We need to invest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (ST.E.M.) and Gifted and Talented (G.A.T.E.) programs, to make sure that parents realize we have not given up on high achievement in Oakland, and students need to know that the brightest have a place in our schools, and we will ensure that their experience will be a challenging one to prepare them for the world of tomorrow. Additionally, I want to financially enhance new programs, such as the trade academies at the high schools, to focus on 21st century, job ready skills in construction, technology, and manufacturing. In addition, robust sports programs need to be a part of the fabric of our schools as well as a focus on art and music programs. Answer from Saleem Shakir-Gilmore: I will work to make the professional development for teachers more relevant to better equip teachers to work with the whole child and the family. I will introduce a program that provides scholarships to college for Oakland graduates that are in most need. This program will require regular parent/ guardian participation to receive the award. Through the linked learning model, I will work with local businesses to partner them with students who show an interest in specific career paths. 3. What is educational equity? Using your definition, how will you address the most critical issues of inequity facing Oakland public schools, and how will you attempt to resolve this issue as a school board member? Answer from Cheri Spigner: As a Board Member, I will support policies that create Quality Schools for every child in Oakland. In an educational neutral environment, it would not matter which middle or high school our children attend in Oakland; in an equitable space, all students would have access to the same level of on-site materials and technology; the sports facilities would be the same, and each campus would have the basic quality of life things we attribute to the necessities of school; clean bathrooms, ample space, safety. Meanwhile, the level of instruction and the caliber of the instructors would have no real variances. In Oakland, we must address these issues Answer from Karl Debro: Ultimately, educational equity is about interrupting historical patterns of marginalization such that being African American, or Latino, or first generation to college, or low income, or an English learner does not make you less likely to succeed in school. In education, we speak of equity in terms of the strategic uses of resources to improve access, and outcomes; usually in terms of student demographic data such as race, ethnicity, gender, family income, first generation to college, and so on. The idea is to notice when our schools are perpetuating historical outcomes that have repeatedly marginalized the same communities; and to interrupt that perpetuation. For example, consider the Engineering Academy at Oakland Tech. By all accounts, an excellent program, the student body within the Engineering Academy (last I checked) was not reflective of the student body at large at Tech. Educational equity is about examining demographic data and looking for patterns of disproportionate resources, access and/or success. And then asking questions. For instance, "Engineering is an excellent program, but as we look at the data, it is clear that it is underrepresented in terms of African American, low income and female students. Why?" It is critical at this moment NOT to leap to solutions. Instead, careful inquiry is needed. The idea is to strengthen the program by increasing representation of those currently under-represented, thus interrupting the perpetuation of marginalization. In an earlier response, I spoke about AVID (http://www.avid.org/). AVID is a key strategy in addressing educational equity. AVID's national data show that roughly 90% of AVID graduates complete the college entrance requirements. (The OUSD rate for the class of 2013 was 39.4%, according to the CDE, http://data1.cde.ca.gov/dataquest/) More importantly, AVID gets these results without watering down standards. In fact, AVID pushes its students toward more rigor as a means of eliminating the achievement gap. On the other end of this question is the high dropout rate in Oakland. I currently direct a program for dropouts at Contra Costa College, called Gateway to College (http://www.gatewaytocollege.org/). We recruit dropouts to the college, provide them with wrap-around support, and enroll them in college classes. They earn their high school diplomas while taking college classes. Thus, they enter as dropouts; but they leave as college students with high school diplomas! I will use the many lessons I have learned as AVID Coordinator and Director of Gateway to College to address the most critical issues of inequity facing Oakland public schools. Part of my approach will be to improve and broaden the AVID and Gateway to College programs that already exist in OUSD. Another part will be to apply the hard lessons gleaned from the combined 15 years I have lead these two outstanding programs to inform my work on the board. Answer from Nina Senn: Education equity to me means equitable access to educational resources. I believe in the CARE of all students: Community Access to Resources and Education. Inequality in Oakland public schools is evident in many places, but perhaps no more so than in District 4. As a parent leader here for more than a decade, I've experienced firsthand the amazing ways families enrich the educational opportunities for the students in their schools. They pay for PE teachers, computers classes, music programs. They make field trips and art classes possible. But there are a significant number of Oakland students that are not so fortunate, including many in our district. I've had in-depth conversations with nearly all District 4 principals. There are those who enjoy the support of active PTAs and those who have no PTAs at all. Parent engagement is extremely important to the success of students, however, creating schools that educate the whole child requires the involvement of parents, teachers, staff, community members and the school district. My job as a School Board member will be to evaluate what resources are needed at our schools and to determine how to make them available. For example, some schools do not have school libraries. The Oakland Public Library has offered to create a closer partnership with the School District and I, for one, will leap at that opportunity to give our students more access to library services and books. I will also actively work with the school district and other elected officials to increase access to resources and pursue partnerships with community members and businesses that wish to make a positive impact in the lives of our students and in the future of our city. Answer from Saleem Shakir-Gilmore: Equity means providing the needed resources so that all students have an equal chance at success. The new budgeting requirements from the state require a base level of funding for schools based on enrollment and additional funding based on the needs of the students. Some schools will receive increased funding to address English proficiency, achievement gaps, and the needs of special needs students. As a board member, I will insure the implementation and direct staff to provide support in school site budget development. 4. What can the School Board do to hire and retain high quality teachers and encourage diversity among staff? Answer from Karl Debro: First, we have to pay much higher wages for teachers, school administrators, and school support staff. We have to improve the working conditions for those that serve our kids directly every day. You cannot hire and retain high quality teachers otherwise. Second, we must provide the highest quality support and professional development for our teachers and site administrators. At the Montclair farmers' market about a week ago, I met a teacher from Edna Brewer. She talked about how little support she received in her first year. I met another Oakland teacher, while walking precincts, who told me that she quit the profession because there was so little support. I believe that society does not fully understand the complexity of the work successful teachers do. A good teacher engages, and keeps engaged, an entire classroom of kids while leading them on a 180-day academic journey. Every minute of every day of every year. I recently substituted in one of the classes for my Gateway to College students at Contra Costa College. I taught high school and middle school for 25 years. I loved it. And I was good at it. But my most recent teaching experience was in grad school. I was rusty. The experience made me appreciate, perhaps more than when I was actually teaching every day, just how complex a job teaching is. As for diversity, this will continue to be an issue for some time. I do believe there are already efforts afoot to grow our own. Supporting and growing those efforts could greatly improve diversity. For me, however, this question is a kind of paradox. I've spent about ten years in positions responsible for hiring staff. I believe that if you create a work environment that truly values diversity, you will attract and retain a diverse workforce. I also believe that you cannot create that kind of environment without having a certain kind of consciousness (described below) to begin with. In terms of the classroom, I believe the race of the teacher is less important than the consciousness of the teacher. That is, I'd rather have a high quality staff that is less diverse than a more diverse staff that is not high quality. A huge part of being high quality is the consciousness of the teacher, the capacity to truly care about all students, hold all students to high standards, and support all students throughout their struggles to live up to those standards, especially those students that our institutions have not served well---African Americans, Latinos, low income, first generation to college, English Learners, immigrants, boys. We also need to attract more men to the profession. Answer from Cheri Spigner: Some challenges are clear, such as the lack of competitive salaries as compared to local districts, coupled with the high cost of living for educators in Oakland. Other issues are not so revealing, such as the lack of success in achieving diversity among new teachers in Oakland that looks like the population of Oakland; yet both go hand in hand. If we continue to recruit teachers from outside our community and are not representative of our natural cultural affiliations, then we are bringing in many instructors who simply use our system to get work experience with the opportunity to come to California. OUSD should not be a way station or entry point for East Coasters to enter the market for greener pastures. At the same time, we should be thinking in a fundamentally new direction to create a culture in Oakland, which supports an intellectual base and sets achievement as its priority, with our educators serving as the cornerstone. We must find new resources within our budget and redirect wasteful spending on consultants, contractors, and administrators to teacher salaries. I will look to any and all cost saving measures to bring money back to the classrooms, such as full utilization of our closed campuses, curbing renting office locations in areas across the city. I want to create educational villages, where working educators and their families are able to obtain affordable housing in Oakland, and help create creative communities where we can have a repository of these gifted people in the same manner that Silicon Valley has a concentration of tech workers. Not all things will come from money; I wish to work with our teachers to get ideas on better practices that can be incorporated into OUSD, and from what I have been able to gather over these many months, our teachers are eager to be a part of the process, and they are waiting for someone to call upon them. I want to target recruitment of new teachers from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) along with California colleges and universities, so that we don't overlook the passion, experience and perspective, which come from the inclusion of talented African American, Hispanic, and Native American educators. Build upon local educational partnerships, such as those developed at Mills College and Stanford University. My work experience allows me to leverage relationships with our corporate community to raise funds in order to offer special enrichment grants for high achieving educators to use as they wish, for research, personal development, classroom enhancement. We can have such a dynamic environment for learning when educators know they can be rewarded for their inspiration and motivation of our students. Answer from Saleem Shakir-Gilmore: The board needs to identify funds that can be dedicated to increasing teacher salaries. The board can learn from educators the most impactful professional development that addresses the specific issues and needs in Oakland. The board can develop policies that provide incentives to attract and retain teachers such as housing subsidies and first time home buyers programs Answer from Nina Senn: The District has established strong partnerships with the Mills College teaching program, and I want that to continue. I would also pursue teaming with other institutions focused on diversity to attract a more diverse pool of teachers, which I believe is extremely important given that over fifty languages are represented in our city. In any event, I believe that having passionate, inspiring and skilled teachers in the classroom should be our #1 priority. A great teacher is a great teacher to everyone. I also believe that we need to do everything possible to stop the turnover of our talented teachers. Our students and schools deserve a teacher community that is given professional development that they need to succeed, understands both our challenges and opportunities, believes in our mission to educate the whole child, knows how to engage students where they are, and is committed to staying. I have marveled at the extraordinary OUSD educators who have taught my children. I want that for all Oakland students. But it won't happen unless the District takes steps to make it happen. As your School Board member, I will work with my colleagues and the Superintendent and his staff to: Demonstrate our respect for teachers through restorative practices, meaningful support and regular two-way communications Deliver a competitive compensation package Offer relevant and continuous training and professional development Create opportunities for promotion and growth Share best practices among teacher leaders Provide regular mentoring/support via principals and teacher leaders especially for new teachers Responses to questions asked of each candidate are reproduced as submitted to the League.  Candidates' statements are presented as submitted. References to opponents are not permitted. The order of the candidates is random and changes daily. Candidates who did not respond are not listed on this page.