Candidate for
Board Member; Irvine Unified School District; 2 Year Short Term

The IUSD School Board needs to make a clear and unequivocal declaration that IUSD's goal is to provide schools and educational opportunities that exceed those in all surrounding school districts in all measures of quality. Private school quality throughout IUSD ... no excuses.

When we (your family and mine) moved to Orange County, we looked around at the various towns in which we could live. We found that it would cost more (e.g., per square foot) in purchase prices and in rents to live in the IUSD, because of IUSD's reputation for the most effective and highest-achieving schools in Orange County. It would have cost us less to live in another town where our kids could get "perfectly good" educations. But we chose to buy into IUSD because we didn't want "perfectly good" for our children; we wanted the very best. We are still spending money to give our children educational and developmental advantages: instructional videos, books, tutoring, music & dance lessons, competitive sports, trips, specialty camps, and on and on.

In the last several years, IUSD has been cutting budgets, year after year, eliminating many of the very programs and services that helped build IUSD's reputation. Parents are dismayed. Teachers are discouraged. Although for many years, teachers, parents, administrators, civic leaders were all united in pride and committment to IUSD quality, more recently portions of this natural community of interest have been pitted against one another as loss and sacrifice are imposed on one interest group after another, year after year.

The School Board has insisted that it could do nothing else. We have been encouraged to blame Sacramento. We have been enecouraged to blame Washington. We have been encouraged to blame each other (-- a teacher told me that Irvine parents didn't care about education because only 64% of the voters supported the Parcel Tax).

I don't buy it. Although the School Board has voted to eliminate or scale back many desirable educational programs and services, some budget cuts were rescinded because people in the community offered gift revenues to supplement government revenues: Art & music specialist teachers, class size reducation in K-3, science specialist teachers in 4-6, etc.