Candidate for
Board of Education Member; City of Piedmont

Dear Piedmont Voters:

I am running for Piedmont School Board because I feel that I can add value and complement the School Board's needs in the following ways:

Sound Financial Planning

The current board member who acts as the board's financial planner is being termed out of office. Working as a "Big Data Scientist" in the financial and IT areas for over 15 years, I have focused on forecasting and risk management. I have written extensively in the Piedmont Post about the school bonds used and considered by the school district. I built a bond comparison tool on HariTitan.com to demonstrate the real impact of these financing products and protect us from costly and inappropriate financing. I can fill the board's need for sound financial planning and analysis.

Educational Diversity

The board's only engineer is being termed out of office leaving a need for a board member with a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) background. My academic background is in Computer Science (PhD 1993 from University of Waterloo) which crosses all STEM core competencies. The appropriate use of technology is an extremely important issue facing the school district currently as we implement the Common Core curriculum. I can provide the expertise and skills to enhance the board's ability to address these issues.

Increase Participation in School Board Decisions

My campaign conducted a survey suggesting 65% of parents are "not very aware" or "totally not aware" of School Board decisions and 85% never read the minutes or watched any part of the 3-hour meetings. Over 30% would use an electronic town hall and 75% suggest that improved communication is needed.

For us to remain one of the best public school districts, we should strive to find intelligent ways to make our dollars go further. Piedmont has many experts with the knowledge that could help the school district if given the opportunity.

If elected I promise to maintain an electronic town hall that would allow greater participation in the school board by:

A) allowing community members to easily find out the latest of what the Board is considering organized by topic threads, B) providing a forum for parents to discuss and participate in polls on school board topics, C) helping build a consensus between parents and the school district on prioritization of ideas for funding and implementation

Modernizing the communication platform between parents and school board members ideally requires a dedicated board member to champion this website: updating decisions and next steps of the board, starting new topics and polls, and encouraging people writing to the Board to also share their views within the electronic town hall.