Deep Local Roots with Fresh Perspectives

Frequently Asked Questions

During the various Interviews and Candidate Forums in recent years, many people have asked great questions. To get a jump start on 2006, I thought I'd answer some of those questions here so everyone can understand my views. I urge you to truly research the candidates and vote for the one who makes the most sense to you, who you feel you know the best. My goal is that you will be able to make your decision based on knowing what the candidates stand for, rather than the simple name recognition on which so many candidates rely.

• What are your views on standardized testing?
• What is the ideal drug policy for the district?
• Do you believe school board members should be entitled to benefits?
• Do you believe it is a conflict of interest for a member of the school board to have a spouse who is an employee of the district?

• What are your views on standardized testing?
  
  • Standardized testing, in general, is mandated at the state and/or federal level. This means that love them or hate them, we are stuck with them. And there are some positive attributes of these tests. I am an engineer by education and vocation and, therefore, have a problem solving mentality. You can't solve a problem unless you know it's there, have some kind of measure of its severity, and have some means to measure your improvement as you work towards a solution. Standardized testing, though not perfect by any means, allows us to get some comparative measure of how we stack up against other schools in the county, state, and country; as well as how we stack up against ourselves from year to year. These are all good things.
    
    I certainly don't think that these tests are the best judge of the capabilities of our students, nor the effectiveness of our teachers. While preparing to excel on the standardized tests is important, let's not lose sight of the fact that what we need to impart to our students is more important than test scores. There are valuable lessons learned in the classroom that cannot be tested in any cookie cutter way. These areas are where the art of teaching really comes in. The measure of this part of the educational process can only be assessed one student at a time. This is harder to measure, but is significantly more rewarding.

• What is the ideal drug policy for the district?
  
  • Please see the Drug Issue page

• Do you believe school board members should be entitled to benefits?
  
  • First, let me be clear about my personal situation: Since the lion's share of the benefit package is health insurance and I already have adequate coverage from my job at Navair, I am looking at this issue from a more general perspective that has little to do with me personally. Whether I get benefits through SSUSD or not isn't critical to me. It certainly makes no difference to candidates who are spouses of teachers, because they already have that package. This makes it easy for them to appear very "noble" in campaign statements.
    
    I've always been concerned at the heated debate that arises from time to time around this issue, primarily because I think this is the wrong question to be asking. The right question to ask is, "How can we encourage the best suited, most capable individuals to run for a seat on the School Board?" As a community, we should want the best, brightest, hardest-working people to run for a seat on the school board. This position is too important to wish for anything less. The benefit question implies that people are willing to remove an incentive to get such people to run. I believe that the cost of the benefit package for all the board members is insignificant compared to the value that would be realized if offering benefits influenced one great new board member to run and be elected who might not have otherwise considered candidacy.
    
    Furthermore, a package that has been district policy for a number of decades should not be cast aside lightly. Members of the school board are doing a job: an extremely important and weighty job. The school board manages the budget of over $20 million as well as the policies that directly impact hundreds of employees and thousands of students. The time it takes to do this job right number anywhere from 20-40 hours per week and up. The compensation that the board members receive seems to me to be a drop in the bucket compared to the importance of the job they do and the value a competent board member brings to the district.
    
    Having said all of this, I am somewhat concerned about an article published in 2004 in a local paper that indicated that the benefit package for the SSUSD board members might be out of line with other similar functions in the county. That being the case, I would welcome having the subject come up for discussion after the new board reconvenes, and would approach it with an open mind. This is usually an emotional issue used to hype campaigns, not an issue that is being examined within an atmosphere of rationality. It deserves discussion outside the confines of campaign statements, with both good and bad points being evaluated, before a sensible conclusion is reached.

• Do you believe it is a conflict of interest for a member of the school board to have a spouse who is an employee of the district?
  • This is a question I have considered quite a bit. I'll answer it here, although it has been more relevant in previous years when a number of candidates running in the election had relatives who were district employees. First, there is precedence that indicates that, from a legal perspective, it is not a conflict of interest. Also, I think it brings valuable perspectives to the discussions of the board to have close informational ties to teachers, administrators, etc. But the problems with this situation are numerous.
    
    It takes a special person to separate their thoughts and feelings about an issue involving their immediate family from the thought process required to perform their duties as a board member. These conflicts can come up in numerous ways. There are both personnel and disciplinary actions that come before the board that could involve one of these relatives. Even more ominous is the collective bargaining process that occurs at least every other year. With what level of confidence could the other board members and administration feel that the board member with a spouse involved in the negotiations would not share even a shred of information with that spouse? How effective a team would the board be in this situation? Many of the candidates who are in this situation have said they would recuse themselves from discussions and votes where a conflict may occur. This response to conflict should be standard, but having board members with relatives employed by the district ensures that these situations will arise. We need seven members involved in every possible decision, not seven sometimes, six other times, five other times...
    
    My mother in law is an employee of SSUSD, however, no one in my immediate family is employed by the district.