1. What qualifications are you bringing to the board that will help bring new vision and positive academic achievements for all students?

Above and beyond all my other qualifications, I have one truly unique qualification:

I am the first candidate to be a regular reader and poster on the SFSchools yahoo site since its founding! SFSchools was a revolutionary concept in the SFUSD and provides the best forum for debate on issues, dissemination of information and virtually same-time problem solving that education junkies of the SFUSD have ever had. It has benefited me tremendously in helping me to formulate the policies I hope I have the privilege to implement. I want to tip my hat to KC Jones and Caroline Grannan for their pioneering work.

In addition, I have been an active public school parent volunteer for the past 16 years. I have served on three different School Site Councils (SSCs) for a total of five terms: Presidio Middle School (which I chaired during the challenging time when Presidio Middle School was made a pilot project of the Weighted Student Formula (WSF); Lowell High School and Washington High School. I have mixed paper mâché, escorted innumerable field trips, been a Junior Great Books leader, mopped floors, prepared and served food, and all the other major and minor activities that hundreds, if not thousands of SFUSD parents do on a regular basis. The experience of parenting two children through the public schools is the best possible experience for bringing a depth of experience and knowledge of school issues to the important position of Board of Education Commissioner.

Additionally, I am a member in good standing, since 1978, of the State Bar of California. I was a civil litigator for twenty years in federal and state courts. I am closely advised by my mother, a veteran teacher (now retired), of tough urban high schools in Akron, Ohio (where she was once stabbed breaking up a fight) and my husband, who was a credentialed K-12 art teacher in Rhode Island prior to moving to California. I am privileged to be advised also by the very bright members of the SFSchools group whose energy, research and grasp of issues keeps me awed and on my feet, even when we disagree.

I will bring a special vision to this office because I am not interested in higher public office. Rather, I am interested in the plight of the children in the SFUSD. I never would have run for public office had I not been so appalled by the handling of the Prop H funds by the Board of Education. I have seen far too much in the mishandling of money over the 16 years I have been a parent. Enough already!!!

2. The next BOE will lead the effort to hire a new superintendent. What is your opinion of Arlene Ackerman's administration? What can the BOE learn from her tenure at SFUSD as they go about hiring the next superintendent?

When the last superintendent was being selected, Arlene Ackerman was not my first choice. I favored a different candidate, whose name I no longer remember, because he had a better background in finance. I felt it was critical to have someone in the Superintendent's position who was able to get to the bottom of what was, probably, the worst financial scandal the SFUSD has ever seen.

I took a wait and see attitude on Dr. Ackerman. I regularly wrote to her and never had my letters acknowledged. I watched as the SFUSD almost flat- lined in her initial two years.

Unknown to me, she was quietly and persistently forging ahead, moving mountains and performing miracles. First, after roiling through personnel, she was finally able to find, hire and surround herself with highly competent people who were her peers in terms of intelligence and dedication. Secondly, she jump-started the School Site Councils by giving them the power to set up their academic plans and the power to determine, within a budget, where their money would be spent. She had the wisdom to see that the bottom-up approach was a better one than the top-down approach. Third, she got to the bottom of the financial scandals and put embezzlers like Tim Tronson in jail and got restoration of stolen funds from overreaching corporations. Fourth, she put the children of the SFUSD first, whether it was their safety or their academic achievement.

For any ONE of these major accomplishments, she should have been beatified. Instead, she was berated. I can't blame her for leaving. It was our children's loss, not hers.

What can we learn from this? That visionaries are not appreciated until it is too late.

I would like to see a superintendent who will continue the sound policies Arlene Ackerman put into place, such as the excellent staffing she accomplished and the devolving of power to the SSCs. The new superintendent should be ethical, bold and visionary. S/he must be willing to surround her/himself with bright, creative honest and ethical people. S/he must put children before any other stakeholders and certainly before politics!

3. What are the most important considerations for a new enrollment policy? Between the opposing poles of desegregation, parental choice, and neighborhood schools, where do you stand?

We are a city of neighborhoods. We don't live in "San Francisco"….we tell each other we live in "Noe Valley", "Bernal Heights", "North Beach", "Ingleside" etc. We parents want our children educated in our own neighborhoods. I have been campaigning for a month now. NOT ONE PERSON, parent or otherwise, has approached me to say, "I love the lottery system of assignment." Nor have they even said, "I love school choice." But hundreds have said to me, "I hate the lottery system. Are you for neighborhood schools?"

I am confident that neighborhood school assignment works better than any other assignment system devised so far. It's not perfect, but it's the best. We have tried the lottery/so-called-choice system and it has failed. We have a better chance of improving neighborhood schools than we do randomly assigned schools. We stand a far better chance of staunching the bleeding of families from our midst with neighborhood schools. The desegregation of our schools was better under neighborhood schools. We need to return to neighborhood schools.

4. If you could implement one change as a BOE commissioner to address the achievement gap, what would that be? What is the most important action that you, as a BOE commissioner can take to address this problem?

So I would try to work with the Mayor to formulate an academic swat team approach to each failing child. Using a team drawn not just from the SFUSD, but from social services, medical services and even, perhaps, the SFPD's community outreach, get to the bottom of every child's barriers. Is the barrier a learning disability? Is it a health problem? Is it an emotional problem? Is it a tutoring problem? By using a team from all areas of the city, both governmental and nongovernmental, we can share the financial burden and really formulate an IEPs of sorts for each struggling student.

5. Give us your opinion of the recent school closures and consolidations. What would you do differently when this issue comes before the BOE.

One of the reasons, in my opinion, that the closures and consolidations generated so much bitterness was the lack of adequate mechanisms for addressing school closures. A major flaw in the way in which they were handled was the failure to engage the SSCs at schools affected by the closures and consolidations.

The SSCs are the most representative bodies of each school. Their composition is set by law and is comprised roughly in the following way: 25% administrators/classified staff; 25% teachers; 25% students and 25% parents, except in elementary schools where there is no student representation and instead 50% parent representation. There is no size limit to the SSCs, but the proportions must remain the same. Each constituency is elected by its own members. In other words, teachers elect their teacher representatives, students their student representatives and so forth. As such, the SSCs are the only duly elected, representational governing councils of each school. Once the SSC is elected, officers are elected from among its membership.

Amazingly, SSCs, these governing councils, were ignored by the Board of Education in the school closure crisis. They were not invited as bodies to appear before the Board of Education, their counsel was not sought, and therefore the information the Board of Education received from schools facing closure was not complete or adequately reflective of the individual schools.

It is a crime to waste this resource.

The first change

The first change which should be made is to involve the SSCs in the process. I would junk the Parents Advisory Committee, which has never functioned well (despite the earnest efforts of some of the members) and is certainly not representative of the parents in the district. It should be replaced with a council made up of representatives from the SSCs, which would advise the Board of Education and be an important resource.

The second change

Immediately after the "ten day count" (ten days after school opens, usually) the district will know which schools are under enrolled. Using that criterion and others, including school performance, the SFUSD staff will compile a proposed closure list, similar to the way it was compiled last time. This list should be available to parents in the fall, before any enrollment fairs, whether or not the present system of school assignment continues. This will give the individual schools an opportunity to recruit for the following year. Schools successfully enrolling new students might move themselves off the under enrolled list. Otherwise, notice can be served in time for schools to adjust to grim realities.

As you know, I still maintain that, since the SFUSD is the highest performing urban school district in California, we may have some success offering spots to students in other urban districts nearby (such as the cities of Richmond and Oakland) because an education in the SFUSD is superior to that of their home districts. Many are already seeking to be educated in neighboring districts. Some of those students actually moved from the SFUSD and this would be a homecoming for them. I think we should try this.

6. Enrollment is declining in district schools, and is projected to continue declining for the immediate future. What does this portend for the district and what can the BOE do about it?

We have three options: close schools; increase enrollment; or both. I want to concentrate on increasing enrollment by retaining families through neighborhood school assignment and by recruiting students from outside the SFUSD. Think it can't happen? I've got news for you: it already is happening. George Washington High School, for example, has had student commuting from as far away as the city of Richmond, enrolling illegally, using addresses of friends or family in San Francisco, because schools in the SFUSD are better than the ones in Richmond. We have students commuting from many of the counties outside San Francisco to attend Lowell illegally by using local San Francisco addresses of friends and relatives. The SFUSD also encourages, legitimately, commuters from outside San Francisco to attend SOTA. Let's declare a moratorium on these illegitimately-enrolled students. Let's legitimatize them and welcome them and their friends (back) to the SFUSD.

7. The distrist has had a rocky history implementing its Small Schools initiative . Please tell us what you think are the pros and cons of small schools, and what do you think is an appropriate small schools policy for the district at this time?

There can be smaller communities within bigger schools. Those going on to higher education will often be faced with enormously large schools. I fail to see what small schools offer which cannot be offered by small classes in large schools.

8. What do you see as the future of Lowell High School and School of the Arts, the district's two selective high schools? What, if any, changes would you make to enhance GATE and AP offerings throughout the district?

1. The Lowell/SOTA question: I think the future of both of these schools is bright. They keep families in San Francisco and are competitive with private schools in that parents who would not consider public schools will consider some public schools, with Lowell and SOTA leading the way.

There are many improvements I can see for both of these schools, but, in keeping with my belief in devolving even greater power to the SSCs, any changes must come from the deliberations of the Site Councils at these schools.

2. The GATE/AP question: First, let me preface the answer to this question with an overview:

Our students must know what they are shooting for!

The last census showed that 70% of current high school graduates go on to some form of higher education. That figure is a lagging one, so we can expect that percentage to get higher as time goes on. Therefore, in the future, we can expect that 70% or more of our SFUSD students will go on to higher education. Both our GATE students and our non-GATE students will be seeking higher education. We must prepare them for that.

The first way we must do that is to start the process of planning for higher education in the middle schools. Too soon, you say? Not at all. Every middle school child should have at least one field trip to a COLLEGE. The minute a student hits high school, that student will be making decisions on course work and on his or her own academic dedication which will determine whether or not the students are able even to apply for higher education out of high school. Without adequate preparation in middle school, the high school student will be ill-prepared to select and tackle his or her high school coursework with an eye toward higher education.

Colleges demand particular types of coursework and particular credits in order for an applicant to be considered. Many, if not most, of our students will be seeking financial aid. The ability to inform and inspire our students toward higher education must happen in middle school. I learned this clearly, when, after I had taken my son on a college tour the summer after his junior year in high school, he said to me, "Gee, Mom. I wish you had done this after eighth grade. Then I would have known what I was shooting for." All of our middle school kids need to know what they are shooting for!

GATE ENHANCEMENT

Before we can enhance the GATE offerings beyond what we now have, we must identify every child who is GATE, including those who are Special Education/GATE students. Such students need to be identified so that they can be challenged appropriately. Identified GATE students carry more money with them into the WSF. The GATE supervision at the central administration of the SFUSD has had its funding cut drastically and we must seek to restore enough of that funding to accomplish the identification goals.

Having accomplished this goal, we must charge the SSCs with formulating their own individual GATE programs, reminding the sites that GATE student offerings must be qualitative and not merely extra busy work, as happens too often. We must not bar any students from being identified as GATE merely because they are gifted in certain areas, but not all areas.

A.P. OFFERINGS

We must keep a jaundiced eye toward A.P. offerings, realizing that the A.P. system is an ever accelerating merry-go-round which is fraught with educational peril. On the one hand, successful completion of A.P. coursework and subsequent high performance on A.P. tests will generate higher admission rates to college and cost savings in college credit. On the other hand, high schools across the country are rated based on the odd criterion of how many A.P. courses are offered, rather than the quality of instruction in all classes, the rate of college admission, and so forth. Some high schools offer A.P. classes at the cost of classes which would better prepare students for college curricula, such as classes in writing research papers just to look good in the national press. If ever there were classes which "teach to the test", about which so many complain, it is the A.P. classes. As a consequence, some colleges are reducing their demands for A.P. classes in admission criteria and we must keep this in mind as we plan the future of A.P. offerings in the SFUSD's high schools.

In keeping with my policy of devolving power to the SSCs, it will be up to the individual high school sites whether to offer more A.P. classes or not. I think it would be appropriate to recommend to the high school sites that they all offer a basic threshold number of A.P. classes to assure that their students are able to meet college entrance requirements.

I believe that George Washington High School, under the leadership of Rosemary Jacobs, has created a "best practices" standard for how A.P. classes could be conducted city-wide. At GWHS all students who enroll in A.P. classes, must take the A.P. exams. Working scholarships enable the students to pay for the expensive A.P. tests. The Site Council monitors the performance of the GWHS students on A.P. tests to determine the success of the program and modifies it as necessary, including, most recently, beefing up science classes. An A.P. program which functions well, not only helps our high school students succeed, it raises expectations for all students in high school.

9. What experience with California school finances do you have? What have you done to familiarize yourself with SFUSD finances?

I have poured over the SFUSD's budgets for most of the past 16 years, including many years when the budgets were designed specifically to deceive.

The first time I tried to get a copy of the budget (over 10 years ago), the SFUSD refused to give me one. I told the finance office that as far as I was concerned, the budget was a public document and if they didn't cough one up, I'd take legal action to get it. So they agreed, only if I came in person to 35 Van Ness Avenue. So I did. The multiple-inch document was intimidating, but I spent the entire time on a round-trip business trip to Washington D.C. the following weekend pouring over the document and reading every page. It was a futile task. The document was completely opaque. It was not written to inform.

Only someone who has done that can truly appreciate what Myong Leigh has done to bring clarity into the process.

In addition, I have attended every budget seminar Myong Leigh has lead to allow the public to understand the SFUSD's budget process and the documents themselves. These have been immensely useful.

I have served five terms on three different school site councils and attended several SSC training sessions on budgeting. Familiarizing oneself with the SFUSD's finances is a never-ending challenge, but one I will continue to meet as I serve on the Board of Education.

10. Prop H, the Public Education Enrichment Fund, will bring new revenues into SFUSD during the coming years. What do you think of the way Prop H funds have been allocated so far, and how do you see them being used going forward?

Prop H was approved with by a 70% voter margin. Prop H proposed a carve-out of the City of San Francisco's budget and the use of that money for pre-schools (1/3), S.L.A.M. (Sports, Library, Art and Music) (1/3) and the murky third which was not so clearly defined. It was sold to the voters, however, as the SLAM proposition and named accordingly. It was the recommendation of the Superintendent that the funds be directed to the School Site Councils for their expenditure in the areas specifically designated by the Proposition.

Instead, the Board of Education chose to set up a committee to decide what to do with the Prop H funds. A majority of this committee was composed of non-stakeholders in the SFUSD. (A stakeholder being a parent, teacher, administrator, classified staff.) So the committee was handicapped by its unfamiliarity with both program and process of the SFUSD. What the Board of Education accomplished by diverting the distribution of the Prop H funds through this committee was the politicization of the process for distributing the money. It also weakened the bottom-up process of decision-making in our schools which had been set in motion by the advent of the Weighted Student Formula and the local decision-making for program and funding begun five years earlier through SSCs (School Site Councils).

Because of several factors, including the dithering of the committee about what to do with the money, the inability of the committee to actually fund what they finally decided to do with the money, and several other factors, the first year's Prop H money was largely banked, especially the clear 1/3 for SLAM. Because that money was banked and unspent, it became easy prey for the Board of Education to appropriate to close the budget gap and that is where the money went. This pilfering of SLAM funds was done by unanimous vote. Not one commissioner stood up to protect those funds so that they went to our kids for Sports, Library, Art and Music.

Only two groups protested this outrage: First, the brave Washington High School Site Council (of which I was a member); and Second, individuals from Coleman Advocates, including Sandra Fewer. The entire Prop H scandal was ignored by the press.

I believe that the Prop H committee should be disbanded. We need to send the Prop H money directly to the SSCs for distribution into their established programs, which differ at every site. We should also seek to follow the recommendations of the central staff for Prop H allocations of money which benefits the whole, or large portions of the whole, within the SFUSD. For example, the renovation of playing fields which are used by more than one site. Another example might be coordinators overseeing multiple sites.

But there is no point in having, for example, an arts coordinator when there are few art teachers to coordinate! Let our Site Councils add art teachers, music teachers, physical education teachers and librarians FIRST and THEN let us consider funding coordinators at the central office.

11. What is your experience with Special Education? Are you close to anyone who has a child with disabilities?

My daughter turned out to have a hearing processing disability. No one at the SFUSD was even able to point me in the right direction for a diagnosis. Most refused to believe there was a problem and treated me as an annoying mom. This was before the CAC on learning disabilities was formed and I sought help from anyone I could find, which lead me down a number of blind alleys and wasted several precious years of my daughter's learning. Finally I found that California Pacific Medical Center had a program which could diagnose her problem. From there I was directed to a very new program called "Fast Forward". At our own expense (about $6,000) we enrolled our daughter in this high-tech program during the summer between Fourth and Fifth grade. At the time, her phonemic awareness was at Kindergarten level. She was compensating for this deficiency by memorizing every word she read with mixed success. Not one teacher thought it unusual that she was unable to spell her five-letter first name and six letter last name correctly, even though she was quite bright. After only two weeks in this remarkable program, her phonemic awareness level jumped from Kindergarten to Sixth Grade! Her verbal ability increased commensurately.

My child's learning disability turns out to be relatively common, but frequently undiagnosed. Children with her disability struggle academically their entire lives and many get into trouble. The changes in treatments for learning disabilities are coming in faster than we can imagine now, which is why the SFUSD cannot rely on its own resources, but needs to partner with the vast resources outside the SFUSD in order to meet the needs of its learning disabled population. Innovative, intensive programs can result in astounding results. There are children for whom inclusion is perfect and there are non-inclusion programs which work better for some children. I have friends who have used both to great success. Nothing, however, matches the energy and drive of a dedicated parent, who should be praised and assisted and not fought, over the best path for his or her child.

12. The IDEA law mandates that children with disabilities must have a right to a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment. What practical steps do you think the BOE can take to reach that goal?

I think the SFUSD should strive to be a national model for children with disabilities. We are blessed with exceptionally high quality entrepreneurship and research in the Bay Area and throughout California and we need to forge alliances with these providers and inventors. Both Lindamoode-Bell and Scientific Learning (Fast Forward) grew out of the intensive of local parents seeking solutions for their children with disabilities.

I used to have a dream about the Presidio's Public Health hospital at the end of 15th Avenue, which stood unused for so long. (I believe it is already spoken for now.) I saw it as a perfect center for children with learning disabilities. I envisioned floors and classrooms which would service children of all different needs. Instead of being "pulled out" of regular classrooms for intensive programs like FastForward, they would go to this site. Diagnostic clinics such as the ones at California Pacific Medical Center, would be situated there. There might be floors for children whose disabilities didn't lend them to inclusion or whose parents felt that intensive work was required outside of standard classrooms.

Of the moms I am close to who have children with disabilities, one child never saw a regular classroom because of severe autism. For a brief time, she attended a specialized new private school in Marin dedicated to autistic children, but has been primarily schooled at home. Another child with brain damage attended a The Armstrong School on the Peninsula and then high school in New York State in a school dedicated to similar situations. Both of these children did so with partial funding from their local school districts (one of which was the SFUSD). Yet a third left the SFUSD and went to local private schools at parent expense where she received adequate individual attention. I suspect that one of the reasons why low socio-economic children are over-represented in special education is because many parents with the will and/or the means to do so, move their children out of public education.

On a public policy basis, the more children with learning disabilities who can learn to live successfully and independently, the fewer children will be thwarted in their dreams, the fewer children we will have to support in expensive group home situations or….for that matter…jail! We know that many inmates of our prisons started down the wrong path because of learning disabilities which prevented them achieving success in schools.

When I think of what I believe we should strive for in our schools, I come to a very simple goal: They should be able to read; they should be able to calculate; they should be able to write and they should be able to find an area in which they shine and which they love. Children with disabilities often shine in areas where the SFUSD provides too little: Sports, Art, Music and hands-on vocational programs. And thus I come back, full circle, to my Prop H crusade!

13. Do you support the proposal to eliminate the JROTC program at SFUSD?

No.

14. The recent contract negotiations with the SEIU and UESF unions were difficult. The UESF agreed to a two year deal, meaning negotiations will resume during the next BOE's tenure. Tell us your views on the recent labor negotiations, and what will you do as a BOE commissioner to influence the labor negotiations to come?

When I am asked how to get more veteran teachers into low performing schools, my general response is, "You'll have to speak to the UESF about that" because to date, the UESF has had complete control over where teachers teach.

When I am asked how to eliminate bad teachers, my general response is "You'll have to speak to the UESF about that" because to date, the UESF has had complete control over the terms and condition of the employment of such teachers.

And if I am elected and it is time to negotiate the UESF's new contract, I plan to speak to the UESF about that!

I will always remember that the students in the SFUSD are my primary constituency.

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