Candidate for
Board Member; Monterey Peninsula Unified School District; Trustee Area 3

I realize that this section is typically where a candidate lists all their friends and all the important people that have said they will vote for them. I have lots of friends and lots of important people that support me; however I believe that voting is a very personal thing and I respect their privacy too much to list them here.

I appreciate the Herald's endorsement. They interviewed both of us, asked hard questions and made their choice. The Coast Weekly and MBTA made their endorsements on hearsay. You can draw your own conclusions.

The Monterey County Herald
Posted on Sun, Oct. 09, 2005
Excerpts from "Three who can help MPUSD reach potential The Herald endorses"

"If good parents, good teachers and good students added up to good schools, the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District would be just fine. But a good district also needs good administrators, good facilities and a good school board. MPUSD doesn't measure up in at least two of those areas.

Good administrators? It's too early to grade many of them because they're new, replacements for administrators who fled during tough times, the divisive and counterproductive years of budget deficits and school closures.

Good facilities? Not MPUSD's. The plan to replace the leaky roofs and grimy restrooms, to fix the rotted wiring, fell through the abundant cracks when the old administrators were interviewing for other jobs and their replacements were searching for keys to the file cabinets. Renovation money already allocated by the state evaporated because the district couldn't keep track of the paperwork.

Good school board? Give the current one a B-plus for sincerity but a D-minus for results. Some district schools have slipped below the minimum progress standards set by the federal government. Rather than compete for top scores with other Peninsula districts such as Carmel and Pacific Grove, parts of MPUSD have dipped into the remedial realm.

It's time for some change on the board. We've tried dysfunctionality. It's time to take a different tack.

Hard as it is to close schools, it's even harder to build new ones to accommodate anticipated growth. Hard as it is to fire a superintendent, it's harder yet to build a management team equipped for the rigors of public education in California. To get that work done, the board needs two new members in the form of Richard Grahlman and Debra Gramespacher and should hang on to the one incumbent who has shown real ability to work with those who don't agree with her, Shanda LeBoeuf.

The choice is clear in Trustee Area 3, the Monterey district, where Grahlman hopes to unseat Regena Lauterbach. Grahlman is a no-nonsense businessman and Naval Postgraduate School instructor. He's been involved with education at all levels. He has the respect of parents and the business community. He can read a spreadsheet and cut through bureaucratic doublespeak. His assessment of the district is typically straightforward: "MPUSD is an embarrassment."

Grahlman is a listener and an analyst. Through his work with the district's non-profit foundation, he understands the district and its needs. It's too bad he didn't run years ago.

For most of this decade and much of the last, MPUSD has been under siege, caught in a crossfire of budget cuts, declining enrollment and shaky management. The community deserves better. If they can work together, Grahlman, Gramespacher and LeBoeuf could become the core of a board able to lead the district out of the bunker."