Candidate for
Board Member; Poway Unified School District

Welcome friends!

I'm Michelle O'Connor-Ratcliff and I'm running for a seat on the Poway Unified School Board. Our district is filled with wonderful schools, wonderful teachers, and engaged, concerned parents and community members. I've learned that when parents get involved in school decisions, good things happen.

Unfortunately, our School Board has neglected to seek this input and largely ignored it when it is given. They make decisions behind closed doors and we hear about it afterwards.

I'm running for School Board to change that--to bring accountability, communication, and transparency back to Poway Unified. It's time to harness this community's wisdom, break out of the echo chamber, and actively engage. It is time to ACT.

During this campaign and when I become a Board member, I am here to listen and learn from you. Soliciting community opinion will be an ongoing priority. There is no better way to learn how school issues affect real families than to talk with as many parents and community members as I can. Together we can make sure that Poway Unified remains as great a place for our kids as it was for me when I was a student here. Scroll down to see a lot more details about my plan.

I hope I can count on your support. Let's do this for our kids!

Michelle's Promise to A.C.T.

The ultimate goal of all the following priorities is to increase the quality of education our children receive. When we bring the community into the process, everyone wins. We're already a great district with wonderful schools, teachers, and staff, and engaged parents and community members. But we can do better. I've seen the lack of community outreach at the Board level, the rubber-stamping of complex proposals, and the results of a severe lack of open discussion and exchange of information.

Our district has big issues to deal with that could significantly impact our kids' education. The stakes are too high to continue with "business as usual." I'm running for School Board to bring positive change for our kids and our whole community. I will A.C.T. to bring more A-accountability, C-communication, and T-transparency to our district.

More ACCOUNTABILITY means the district must publicly report, explain, and be answerable for consequences of its decisions. I will call for:

• an audit of all bond and Mello-Roos expenditures+ not just 1 year and not just 1 account. The district has collected and is still collecting a lot of money from taxpayers who deserve to know how much was collected and how it was spent.
• formation of a Citizen Budget Oversight Committee.
• public bidding on all new services and a review of all existing district contracts with outside entities.
• outside independent analysis of district proposals before Board approval.

• The district's website, Twitter feed, and Facebook page are not reaching enough people.
• The district already has a ConnectEd system whereby it can reach parents with email and robo-calls. Let's use it.
• High schools have electronic signs and they're in every community. The district should use them to get important information to the community.
• I will make at least two site visits to every school in the district for morning coffee with parents at drop-off, lunch hour with staff, or classroom visits to see our students in action. There is no better way to find out what is actually happening on school campuses than to be there personally and talk to parents, staff, and students.

• I'll ask for an easy-to-understand website where taxpayers can go to see what their money paid for this year.
• Board meetings need a lot of improvements so that the public can participate meaningfully. I will ask for:
  1. more notice of agenda items (3 days is not enough),
  2. more useful background information on those agenda items,
  3. full Board meeting agenda packets available forever on the district website, not the few days currently in practice (without the full packet, the public loses information critical to understanding Board deliberations and decisions),
  4. more thorough and comprehensive meeting minutes that reflect more of what happened at the meeting,
  5. vigorous public discussion of agendized items by Board members (how can public understand your vote if you don't talk about it in public?).

I have several other important priorities that do not fit easily into one of the above categories. I believe we must also:

• Work to increase state funding of schools. California schools have loaned billions to the state, interest free, since 2007 and we are at the bottom in the nation in per student funding+ 21% below the national average! This travesty hurts our schools and our children, resulting in basic classroom supplies being paid for by teachers out of their own pockets, the largest class sizes in the nation, and losses of important school programs like student support services, sports, physical education, performing and fine arts, librarians, school nurses, counseling services, and after school programs. Even with the new focus on community input for our district's spending priorities through a Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP), we can only do so much with limited resources. But just think what we could accomplish if our average per pupil funding increased 21% to the national average. As a school board member, I will pursue increased education funding from the state at every opportunity. We can't afford not to.

• Seek solutions to our $1 billion capital appreciation bond (CAB). Although capital appreciation bond (CAB) "deals" like the one our School Board approved in 2011 are now illegal thanks to recent state legislation, PUSD taxpayers not yet born are still responsible for our district's $1 billion CAB repayment. In fact, 69% of households within our school district boundaries are on the hook. This billion dollar payback cannot stand. I will pursue solutions to this problem until we find a way to reduce our district's total borrowing costs substantially. This will involve soliciting ideas from many sources, including our own community members, some of whom may be experts in this area with ideas the district has yet to think of and solutions not previously utilized. My work as a Deputy Legislative Counsel in Sacramento writing legislation provided the expertise I need to work with our district's state representatives to pursue a legislative remedy if necessary. Whatever the avenue, I will continue to seek solutions to the CAB problem and the systemic failures that led to the CAB in the first place.

• Ensure that our teachers and support staff receive the support they need to do the best work for our kids. After parents, PUSD's excellent teachers and support staff make the single biggest positive impact on our children's education. These committed employees have lost many opportunities to increase their levels of expertise due to cutbacks in State funding. Teachers tell me that they miss the opportunities that used to exist for collaboration and collegial dialogue with their grade level and subject area colleagues across the district. They are frustrated with "reinventing the wheel"and need increased opportunities to share their expertise, curriculum, and best practices with one another. They want continued focused training around effective teaching of the Common Core standards and need more materials to support these new standards. They also feel strongly about reducing class size so that they can increase opportunities to individualize challenge and enrich instruction for their students. I plan to regularly visit schools throughout the district to assess their ongoing and ever-changing needs by talking directly to the teachers and staff and soliciting their continuing input.

• Ensure the quality of special education programs and parent support resources. As a parent of a special needs child, I am very committed to making sure his education and that of all challenged students is the best it can be. Three years ago, my son's autism diagnosis threw us for a loop. It came with a hefty dose of helplessness and uncertainty. After our first IEP meeting, I realized how much I didn't understand. There's nothing like personal experience to direct your priorities, and ensuring the high quality of our school district's special education programs, teachers, aides, and parent support resources has become very important to me--not just for me and my son, but for all families who have children affected by a disability.