Candidate for
Trustee; Lodi Unified School District; Trustee Area 4

PUTTING OUR CHILDREN FIRST

Children receive only one opportunity at an education, an opportunity if taken advantage of, will serve them for the rest of their lives. In our public schools, we need to improve our efforts to offer an education to all our students that will help them succeed in an increasingly competitive and complex global economy.

We are facing an economy that has not performed as well as it should. Our schools exemplify this problem by suffering drastic budget cuts due to state funding that relies on unsteady and unpredictable tax sources.

My belief is that the school board, in undertaking its responsibility, must put children first, making cuts furthest from the classroom and mitigating the effect of the economy on our students. Teachers, textbooks, counselors and classroom should be fully funded.

TEACHERS and PRINCIPALS: Our district must be in a position to respect our teachers and principals and be in a financial position to attract and retain the best staff for our children. Our salaries and benefits should be competitive, our professional environment should respect their work and we should encourage a strong partnership between our professionals and our parents. Working together, we will find that our schools will be among the best.

LEARNING INFRASTRUCTURE: We must find resources to support textbooks--both electronic and paper based, learning materials, use of technology as part of curriculum delivery and principal and teacher staff development that represents the needs of our students and staff. Student achievement should guide curriculum development, giving teachers opportunity to work together to make improvements in our schools.

UNIVERSITY PREPARATION: Lodi students wishing to attend higher education after their graduation should be able to rely on our school district to help them through the process of taking the necessary competitive coursework for university preparation such as advance placement offerings and counseling help in the university application process. This process starts before our children even reach high school and we cannot afford subpar offerings if we want them to attend the best colleges and universities.

CAREER AND TECHNICAL EDUCATION: Business partnerships and special funding can help in offering opportunity to high school students wanting to take advantage of career preparation. The school district should actively work toward an exemplary program for our older students.

ACCOUNTABILITY: Voters and parents should expect our schools to deliver high quality instruction for all grades and subject areas. The School Board must ensure that our students not only receive the best resources, but also the best teachers who are accountable for educating our children.

TRUST AND FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY

Our community needs to have complete trust and confidence in our schools to do the best by our children. There is no excuse for our schools to have their key learning programs and activities cut. Trustees need to actively work with lawmakers to fully fund our schools and enact sound school supports on a state level. Legislators should spend time with teachers, principals and in our classrooms so they have a meaningful idea of their responsibilities to our schools.

Meetings of the school board need to be conducted in complete conformance with the state's open meeting laws, where parents and voters can view and understand the issues before our public schools and can have an opportunity to voice their opinions before decisions are made by the school board. The Board serves the residents of LUSD, not the other way around.

LONG TERM PLANNING

Lodi Unified School District must undergo a long-term planning effort for its fiscal and education programs. Where do we want to be in two years? Five years? Ten years? This is fundamental to the success of our community and is a process that rightfully belongs to our community, assisted by the district's professional staff. This will involve community understanding and involvement, but is a vital and must be done as quickly as possible without sacrificing quality. We should consider a series of town hall meetings to review where we are and where we want to go with our schools. Our business and community environment is changing and our schools need to prepare our children to be active participants in the global marketplace. Fiscal planning must also be part of this effort so that our voters and parents have confidence in the work that schools are doing and support the improvements that we will have to make.

STRONG PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT AND TEACHER COOPERATION

Parents, teachers, principals and school staff are core to school success. I support working on ways that parents and schools can work together for our students. Development of strong parent support systems is essential for school success and I propose that the district explore strengthening a variety of mechanism to achieve this goal.