League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
	Santa Clara County, CA November 4, 2014 Election
	Candidates Answer Questions on the Issues Board Member; Mountain View-Whisman School District

The questions were prepared by the Leagues of Women Voters of Santa Clara County and asked of all candidates for this office.     See below for questions on Funding, Curriculum, Goals Click on a name for candidate information.   See also more information about this contest. 1. How would you determine that the schools are using federal, state and local funds wisely and fairly and how would you report your findings to the community? Answer from Greg Coladonato: Five years ago, our District had a group called the "Budget Task Force", which was made up of community members as well as board members, and which was the District's official forum for determining the best answer to exactly this question, and sharing its findings with the public. For some reason, this group was disbanded a few years ago, and our community is worse off as a result. Our current Board does not appear to feel the need to publicly discuss how to wisely and fairly allocate our finite financial resources, beyond state-mandated review and approval of budgets presented by staff. Little in the way of substantial discussion of the tradeoffs involved has taken place during board meeting open sessions during the years I have been attending them. Lately, this disconnect between the Board and the community has come to a head. The teachers' union has asked for an increase in salary that it claims is sustainable given the District's current fiscal position. The District has offered a lower increase; we are currently at an `impasse' in salary negotiations. Many members of the community have called for more transparency and clarity from the current board, but the district has been slow to respond, even as the impasse begins to affect students and families. During this time, I have consistently and publicly called for the Board and the District to be more forthcoming with their justifications for current uses of federal, state, and local funds. I would like the local tax-paying and voting public to have the information it needs to determine for itself how wise or fair the current allocation of funds is. On September 24th, I sent an open letter to the Board of Trustees (available here: http://www.electgreg.org/open_letter_on_sunshine_in_governance), requesting much more discussion about current fiscal priorities and their implications for budget projections, teacher retention, and educational effectiveness. The District has belatedly responded to this call, and I am hopeful for a more responsive and transparent Board in the future. As a member of the MVWSD Governing Board, one of my first actions would be to re-establish the district's Budget Task Force, re-opening a forum for community members to learn about and offer perspectives on our spending priorities, and assess whether they consider them to be wise and fair. Answer from Philip D. "Phil" Palmer: The Mountain View Whisman Local Control Funding Formula plans are carefully reviewed by the board and tracked through a series of specific goals. As a board member, I will monitor those goals closely and enhance District communications to the community through publishing of a Balanced Scorecard of key performance indicators. Answer from Ellen Wheeler: Our local funds make up about 25% of our school district budget. We are fortunate that we live in such a generous community that votes for a parcel tax, a school bond, and donates to our education foundation. Additionally, we get donations from local businesses. And, we are wise fiscal managers of our building properties such that we get good rental income from currently unused classrooms and buildings. We use these funds for everything from art, music, PE, sports, science enrichment, technology, counseling, school nurses, and generally helping our bottom line. We use our state funds primarily for teacher, classified, and administrative salaries. We use state and federal funds to help our special education students succeed in class and in life. The school district and various committees report how we spend these monies during quarterly budget reports or annual reports during board meetings. These reports are posted on our district web page and are available in paper copies at our board meetings. These budget report meetings are open to the public. During those meetings board members and members of the public ask questions about the budget reports so that we can feel satisfied that our local, state, and federal funds are used wisely and fairly. We are fortunate that our chief business officer and her budget staff are diligent experts in school finance. And, our superintendent is our former CBO and has a professional background in finance and the law. Our school district is so well run that we have been awarded the highest budget rating available, which results in our district being able to finance our school bond work at rates that are most favorable for our taxpayers. Answer from Hafsa Mirza: I think that the parents and community are immensely important in developing and over seeing the implementation of the district budget. Better communication through the school channels to inform parents about key decisions and program selections and hosting forums to address these would help to create and promote increased family engagement. All funds spent regardless of the source should be scrutinized to ensure that they are spent consistent with the sources' restrictions and inline with the spirit of the funding provided. Currently, the district community is lacking this transparency and communication. I believe in inclusiveness and I recognize that not everybody has time and bandwidth to engage in all issues. Having the information out there in a timely manner would allow people to be informed, involved and engage best when they can. 2. Are the schools offering instruction appropriate to the diverse educational abilities of all the students? Answer from Ellen Wheeler: We have talented and specially trained teachers who are able to effectively teach our diverse population of students. Our school district mission is that we "demonstrate, daily, a relentless commitment to the success of every child." Think about that for a minute. EVERY child. Relentless commitment. Every day. Our teachers, administrators, and parents choose to live in Mountain View with our rich diverse community because we believe in our mission statement and we all want to make it work. Our low income students who are not proficient in English are a priority of ours since they make up over 40% of students in our district. It's critical for their success and for the success of our overall district that we provide quality, up-to-date instruction and materials for this group of students. Our hard work is paying off. Our low income English language learner students have had the highest level of test score gains of all of our students over the past few years. I congratulate our teachers for making this happen, and I congratulate the parents of those students for diligently helping their children at home, and for coming out after work to take parent education classes. Most of all, congratulations to those students! And what of the other 60% of our students? Our talented and trained teachers also know how to work with the students who regularly are able to do grade level work. And, they are trained to work with the large number of students who are able to work at above grade level. For example, we have math classes at both of our middle schools where children learn geometry before they enter high school. Those students are on a top tier track for top tier colleges. But all of our students should be on track to take algebra in 8th or 9th grade so they are on track for the A-G required classes they'll need in order to be able to apply to good to great colleges in California and beyond. When you hear that Mountain View Los Altos High School District has two schools that put them in the top 1% of all high schools in the country, remember that our MVWSD students helped put them there. Answer from Greg Coladonato: In a word, no. One of my core beliefs about education and children (and I currently have 3 children ages 10 and under in elementary school) is that almost every child, if not every child, in elementary school has the intellectual ability to learn grade-level material and above. There are a number of factors that make it difficult for some children in our community to achieve grade-level proficiency, including low parent educational achievement, low socio-economic status, and low English language proficiency. Of course, parents, teachers, principals and staff must all play their proper role in educating our children too. While the District does make an effort to bring our students up to grade level, almost a third of our students still do not perform at grade level, and this situation has persisted for quite a few years. Our current programs and efforts are clearly insufficient. There are a number of programs that work well at other schools that may work wonders for our own students, including extended school days, extended school weeks, and extended school years, and many other programs. Online resources for learning English, math and other subjects offer a low-cost means to deliver targeted instructional material to many students of diverse abilities at once. At the same time, the district has recently discontinued administering GATE tests, which were used to identify students with an unusually high aptitude for academic achievement. Some of these students already get good grades, but are bored in class. Other students' boredom with classroom material sometimes leads to behavior issues and bad grades. As a board member, my first action regarding student achievement would be to work with our teachers and staff to implement some targeted, high-impact programs to both lift students performing below grade up to grade level as quickly as possible, and to support all students reaching as high up the educational ladder as their abilities allow. Answer from Philip D. "Phil" Palmer: Yes and we are constantly striving to improve. Significant resources will be focused on the implementation of Common Core Standards this year. This includes educators creating authentic, classroom-based curriculum and assessments along with high quality professional development that is directed by local educators. Answer from Hafsa Mirza: Right now our schools are going through a challenging time developing and implementing a new curriculum, which is expected to align with common core standards. Decisions about this curriculum need to be made quickly, efficiently and dynamically, maintaining flexibility and reassessing in a timely fashion to make necessary changes. I believe a lot can be changed to make our children ready for the future. Our kids deserve a well-rounded school system with enough time to do music and art year round. Our high achieving and low achieving kids both deserve equal attention and should get some special programs to challenge all of them. MVWSD students are lagging behind in STEM. I want to change it by introducing more hands on programs in Science and Math. Our middle school kids should be allowed to choose more electives. Both our Elementary and Middle school children need typing instructions and anti-bullying programs. Not only do our students need more attention, our staff also needs training in technology, math and science. 3. Where do you want the District to be five years from now? What steps should the District take to get there? Answer from Philip D. "Phil" Palmer: Five years from now: 1. I expect that the district will be fully immersed in Common Core State Standards. 2. Our teachers are compensated fairly. 3. Bond funds have been spent to improve our school facilities and our campuses are are awarded for their excellence. 4. We are using technology for blended and differentiated learning opportunities. 5. Communications and collaboration between educators, parents and the community are a model for the country. Answer from Greg Coladonato: By five years from now, I want to see all students at or above grade level proficiency, most of our critical infrastructure projects built, our schools no longer overpopulated, and our teachers no longer feeling unappreciated. I believe all these changes can happen in five years, but it would take new ideas, new energy, and new leadership. By five years from now, I want our District educating all of our students to grade level or above. Currently, 33% of our students are performing below grade level in English, and 29% in Math. When we are able to get all the students up to grade level, it results in better futures for our children, and opens the door to above-grade-level work for all students. Students in many other developed countries around the world are not only at grade level, they are one or more years ahead of our grade level standards. By five years from now, I want all of our most critical infrastructure projects around district to be completed and in use. This would require updating our 5-year-old Student Facilities Improvement Plan, incorporating the latest information about housing development, student population and needs, demographic projections, traffic and safety concerns, and other information, and moving forward expeditiously. By five years from now, I want our schools to not be overpopulated any more. Right now, the average neighborhood elementary school in Mountain View has nearly 70 more students than the average elementary school in Palo Alto. Our Mountain View K-5 schools have more students than Los Altos's K-6 schools. Our board has stood by as population in most of our schools has grown rapidly, beyond what is considered ideal for an elementary school. We need to think hard about how to address this problem, and which sites or locations make the most sense to open or reopen a school. By five years from now, I want our teachers to feel valued for the excellent work they do. This will require new systems of evaluation, compensation, and hiring. I want the most effective teachers to be rewarded for their effectiveness, and retained by our district rather than losing them to districts to our north or west. I believe all these changes can happen in five years, but to do so is going to take a school board with new ideas, new energy, and new leadership. Answer from Ellen Wheeler: We've accomplished a great deal since I got on the board, and I expect that five years from now our test scores will be even higher. Even more of our students will be graduating from elementary school ready for the increased rigor of middle school, and even more of them will graduate from our middle schools raring to go for high school work. In this "flat world" our students will be competing with students from around the world for college, for careers, and for skilled jobs. We don't have a child to waste. But what will it benefit us if we gain all this knowledge but destroy our souls? This is why it's so important for us to continue to honor "the whole child" and provide opportunities for art, music, PE, sports, science enrichment, technology, and counseling. I'm proud to be part of a school district and a community that values these things and "puts its money where our mouth is." Many schools and school districts do not provide for these things, and children and communities are poorer for it. In five years I want to see all of our schools freshly renovated and enriched via excellent management of our bond money, including opening a new elementary school in the northeast quadrant of town. I want to see that our school district is still financially stable, and that means careful management of our resources though good times and bad. I want to see that our community voted to renew our parcel tax. I want to see that we invested in quality early childhood education classes so that all of our children are ready for kindergarten on day one. I want us to continue to be a district that attracts and retains quality teachers and staff, and that includes paying them a good wage and showing them our appreciation. And (cue music) I want all of our children and families to be happy and involved in our schools. Answer from Hafsa Mirza: In five years, I hope that the district is seeing a benefit from what I would expect to be an increased investment in personnel, curriculum and resources. Hopefully this success will be evident in test scores, high graduation rates, well-rounded students entering the high school and engaging in myriad of extra-curricular activities. I believe in a balanced education system that allows every child to identify their strengths and weaknesses and enhance their true potentials. I like to see the district invest in our children today. I feel the district's over prudent planning for future is missing its opportunity to invest in our children now. We need more focus on present if we want to improve our future. Which means spending money today on our students, teachers, core curriculum, resources and electives. We should not tolerate any compromise in education! Responses to questions asked of each candidate are reproduced as submitted to the League.  Candidates' statements are presented as submitted. The answer to each question should be limited to 400 words. Direct references to opponents are not permitted. The order of the candidates is random and changes daily. Candidates who did not respond are not listed on this page.