CONTRIBUTE

PRESS RELEASES

PRESS REPORTS

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1. Why are you running for School Board?
   
   I’ve always been very interested in education. It has played a crucial role in my own life and I believe it represents the best hope for people to achieve their potential as productive and socially conscious citizens. I am also a strong believer in public education as one of the most important and valuable institutions in our society; if done right, it can be a great equalizer. The Board of Education provides an opportunity to participate in shaping the present and future of public education in our school district. I consider the opportunity to serve on the Board a tremendous privilege and responsibility.
   
   
2. What has been your personal involvement with education in our community?
   
   I’ve been a School Board member since 2000. I was School Board Vice-President in 2002-03 and I am currently School Board President. I have been a member of Community for Excellent Public Schools (CEPS) since shortly after it was founded. I have three children in our public schools, one each in elementary, middle, and high school.
   
   
3. What makes you stand out among the other candidates? What special attributes, talents, and abilities will you bring to our district?
   
   I have brought to our district leadership, open-mindedness, intelligence, thoughtfulness, compassion, ability to build consensus, and honesty and integrity. These are coupled with a genuine devotion to liberal education in its traditional sense—i.e., an education that develops and fosters students’ appreciation and understanding of the history and legacy of humankind, with its failures and triumphs, and encourages reflection as a prelude to action. I believe I’ve shown these qualities during my first term on the Board, and that I’ve contributed greatly to improving the culture of the Board and the quality of its deliberations.
   
   
4. What do you feel is the number one challenge facing our schools today?
   
   Our schools, like many others throughout the nation, face numerous challenges, from budgetary pressures, to putting a top principal in every school and an excellent teacher in every classroom, to helping every student fulfill her academic potential and develop her character, to providing a well-rounded education that includes the arts, to maintaining strong community support. In the big picture, however, the number one challenge facing our schools is that of fostering the engagement in learning, intellectual development, and academic achievement of all our students, irrespective of the advantages or disadvantages with which they may come to us. This is very difficult to accomplish under the best of circumstances. It is especially hard under the financial constraints California imposes on its public schools, constraints that require constant, painful trade-offs. Adequate funding is not sufficient to achieve success—unflagging conviction, talent, and effort are essential as well—but adequate funding is certainly necessary.
   
   
5. Do you fully support the agreement negotiated for the City of Santa Monica to provide funding to the School District?
   
   Yes.
   
   
6. If the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District faced a budget crisis brought on by circumstances outside the District's control, such as by funding cuts from the State of California, would you be willing to support crisis funding to the District even beyond the City-School District funding agreement?
   
   Yes, assuming such crisis funding had widespread support from the citizens of Santa Monica.
   
   
7. Despite the agreement with the City of Santa Monica, SMMUSD continues to face financial uncertainty. If the District’s financial situation continues to deteriorate, what measures would you suggest in response?
   
   There is no satisfactory answer to this question. The district has three sources of revenues—federal, state, and local—with the state providing the lion’s share of our funding. Federal and state revenues are beyond our control, except for participating in lobbying efforts. Local revenues sources include parcel taxes, leases, and city contributions. The citizens of Santa Monica and Malibu have been remarkably wise, foresighted, and generous in passing Proposition Y and Measure S, our current parcel taxes. I very much anticipate continued support for public education from our citizens, but raising additional revenue from a third parcel tax is likely to be difficult. We don’t have much more property to lease out, and most of our leases are locked in for a long while. Although I am very grateful to the City for its contributions to our schools and for its role in developing the recent agreement, I strongly believe the City should and could contribute much more to our schools. It is simply good government, and other arguments are even more compelling. However, higher City contributions would require political will on the part of the City Council. The School Board and the citizens of our community can try to generate such will, but in the end it’s up to the Council. Our district delivers most of its programs and services very efficiently, and it ran out of fat to trim some time ago. We continue to work hard on improving efficiency and financial accountability. Nonetheless, I believe that continued deterioration in our financial situation will inevitably lead to reductions in programs.
   
   
8. Although standardized test scores show increasing improvement in our schools, significant differences among economic and cultural groups still exist. What can the District do to continue the overall success in academic achievement while significantly closing the achievement gap?
   
   First, getting more young children ready for kindergarten would help immensely. It’s a tragedy and a travesty that our nation and state do not fund public preschool for all children. Second, we need to improve and expand our intervention programs. The ongoing evaluation of these programs should provide a useful road map for improving them and targeting our resources. Third, we need to afford disadvantaged students greater opportunity, encouragement and support to tackle our most challenging curricula. Our recent efforts to make our most challenging courses—like honors and Advanced Placement courses—accessible to more students appear to be meeting with great success. Fourth, we need to strengthen our outreach to families that are currently uninvolved in their children’s education. Again, I’m hoping that the ongoing evaluation of intervention programs will guide our efforts on this dimension.
   
   
9. What is your view of the redesign of Samohi? What do you think should be the priorities in moving forward?
   
   I supported it when it came before the Board and still do. While redesign is a work in progress, and the outcome won’t be known for a few years, in my view it holds considerable promise for improving the experience of many students on the huge campus. At the same time, I’m not convinced that many of the most disengaged students will be substantially helped, but only time will tell and we need to track this closely. In the meantime, we need to pursue other, alternative approaches for helping the most disengaged and at-risk students.
   
   
10. What are your views on the district Gift Policy/Equity Fund? What is the value of using a student-weighted formula in the distribution of funds?
    
    I supported the Gift Policy and Equity Fund. If used wisely, the money from the Equity Fund will help us to expand opportunities for our disadvantaged and underperforming students. I favor a student-weighted formula to distribute the portion of the Fund allocated to individual school sites. However, I’m an avid proponent of allocating a considerable portion of the Equity Fund to district-wide intervention and support programs. District-wide programs will be more target-efficient and will reach the targeted students on all our campuses.
    
    
11. The Special Education Strategic Plan calls for a re-tooling, or re-engineering of the system and the move to a prevention model. What is your position on the Special Ed Strategic plan and how would you fund it?
    
    I support the Special Ed strategic plan. In fact, the district has little choice but to develop a strategy for implementing the plan. Currently our special education costs are rising quickly anyway. A smart and thoughtful strategy for implementing the strategic plan will improve the quality of our Special Ed program and curb cost growth in the intermediate term even if expenditures are required in the short term. I also believe that the Superintendent and the Board are poised to provide strong leadership on improving Special Ed.
    
    
12. What is your assessment of the early childhood education programs presently offered by the District? Would you support increased funding for them so that expanded services like a full-day early childhood program could be offered to parents?
    
    The early childhood education program has numerous strengths including the Head Start component, the inclusion programs, and the growing focus on professional development for staff. The lack of funding for a full-day program is a problem, as is the extremely low income threshold for Head Start, which effectively excludes many needy children who would benefit from the program. I would support aggressive efforts to look for additional sources of funding to expand services, including a full day program.
    
    
13. How do you view the current proposal to separate the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District?
    
    I fully support self-determination for the citizens of Malibu. Therefore, I will support moving forward with the process to determine whether Malibu should separate if that is what the citizens of Malibu want. Ultimately, separation would have to be approved by the Los Angeles County Office of Education, the California Department of Education, and most important, the voters of Malibu.
    
    
14. What are your thoughts about how the district and school sites can encourage involvement and participation from families who have felt disenfranchised from their local school communities?
    
    I have no doubt that we could strengthen our outreach to disenfranchised families. The ongoing evaluation of the district’s intervention programs includes the Community Liaison program, which is one of our main approaches for engaging these families. I am hopeful that the evaluation will point toward ways to improve the program. One idea we should consider is creating formal teams of parents at each school who can serve as “extenders” for the Community Liaisons.
    
    
15. What is a priority concern you might have regarding the district that has not been raised?
    
    Strengthening and broadening community support for our schools is crucial for the future of our students and our school district, especially as the makeup of Santa Monica changes due to rising rents and real estate prices and the loss of rental units. The district and all its constituents must continually convey the message that great schools are essential to successful, livable communities and that they improve the quality of life for all residents.