Political Philosophy for Chris Bohl

Candidate for
Governing Board Member; Redwood City School District

The Redwood City Elementary School District is the most diverse school district in San Mateo County. 50% of our students enter school unable to speak English. Over half of our children come from families below Federal poverty lines. 67% of the children are from ethnic minority groups. We have a high rate of transiency. In some of our schools over 70% of the students leave the district between kindergarten and the fifth grade. They are usually replaced by students who are newly arrived in our country, mainly from Central America.

The district includes parts of Atherton, Menlo Park, Woodside, San Carlos, all of Redwood City (except Redwood Shores), and large unincorporated areas, including North Fair Oaks, Emerald Hills, and Palomar Park.

This level of diversification means that the one size fits all approach will not work. Parents must be allowed choices for their children in both programs and schools.

RCSD is a magnet district, allowing parents to send their children to any school of their choice. We have one charter school at Garfield, a Spanish Immersion school at Adelante, and an academic magnet school at Northstar. We also have established a techology institute at Mckinley and have an alternative school at Orion.

Redwood City has more non-English speaking students than any district in the County. We must do a better job teaching these students English, but just as important, making them academically successful in English.

To that end I believe we should adjust our bilingual program to fit the conditions of each of our 15 schools. Schools with overwhelming percentages of English Language Learners need a different approach than schools with very small numbers.

Many of our children live in neighborhoods where the dominate language is Spanish. Children from these neighborhoods regress badly during the traditional 3 month summer vacation, because they have little exposure to English during that period. I believe many of our schools should switch to a single track year round schedule. With this schedule, students go to school for nine weeks than have a three week break. The summer break is only 6 weeks. All traditional holiday vacations continue to be observed.

Single track year round schedules are heavily used in Southern California and have been shown to be very beneficial to English language learners due to the shorter but more frequent breaks. Three week break periods can be used for intervention programs for students who are not performing at grade level.

We are a poor district financially, with many poor families. We must focus on what is most important. I believe that for our District the most important priorities are teaching kids to read, write, do grade level math work, and English acquisition. This is where we should be concentrating our resources.

I believe every child in our district can learn. But achieving that requires a real understanding of our community and the resources we have available.