Candidate for
Board Member; San Mateo - Foster City School District; 4 Year Term

I am a candidate for school board because I want to improve all of our children's education. The current school board has failed to retain staff, teachers, administrators, and its own members. It has failed to provide a long-term strategic plan to guide our district. It has failed to provide adequate compensation for your teachers. It has failed to build permanent district offices. And it has failed to address the special problems confronting the students and teachers at Turnbull Learning Academy. Although academic performance has continued to gradually improve throughout our district, I believe that the failure of our current school board will quickly erase these successes if allowed to continue.

My qualifications for school board are listed below:

a. I am a product of public education from kindergarten through graduate school. I hold a Bachelor of Science degree in Architectural Engineering with honors from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Science degree in Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. I completed three years of Ph.D. studies in Fire Protection Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley.

I am a licensed professional engineer in California and Texas. I am a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, National Fire Protection Association, International Conference of Building Officials, and Tau Beta Pi (an Engineering Honor Society). I have 22 years of professional experience. I have been a small business owner for the last 12 years performing failure analyses and accident reconstructions and providing expert witness testimony in civil and criminal proceedings.

b. I believe that a good education is essential to achieve & maintain a high standard of living for everyone in our community and to protect our fundamental rights and liberties. I also believe that public education is the most important means that we as a community have to bind ourselves together with a set of common experiences, common knowledge, and common ethics.

c. I have been a resident of the Laurel Elementary School and Abbott Middle School neighborhood since 1992. I have two daughters in two of our district's schools # one in Fiesta Gardens International School and one in North Shoreview Montessori School.

d. I have worked as a classroom tutor at Fiesta Gardens International School (FGIS). For 6 months I tutored first grade students who were having difficulty leaning the fundamentals of arithmetic. From this experience I saw first-hand the amount of planning, effort, and dedication required to teach a classroom of 21 students of widely-varying abilities and family backgrounds. I also saw the importance of volunteer assistants in every classroom.

e. I worked on the FGIS school site council for two years. From this experience I learned what is involved in planning an educational program, monitoring the results of that educational program, determining what needs to be done and what can be done on a limited budget, the importance of PTA and other voluntary contributions in the proper functioning of a public school, the extraordinary dedication of teachers to educating their students, and the compromises required to accommodate the disparate interests of a large student, parent, & teacher population.

f. I worked on the SMFCSD district facilities advisory committee for one year. This committee evaluated all requests for facility improvements from all schools. It also monitored the general budget from bond sales revenues that were being used to modernize all of our school facilities. From this experience I learned of the needs of all of the schools in our district and I had the opportunity to work with parents, teachers, and administrators throughout the district. I learned the importance of sticking to a detailed renovation plan and of not making any changes to this plan without the same level of study that was used to create the plans in the first place. I also learned the financial costs of random changes, inadequate planning, and catering to the desires of vocal yet non-representative groups within our community.

g. I worked on the SMFCSD financial advisory committee for 6 months. This committee was in the process of identifying its mission within the district. While on this committee I learned the basics of how the school budget worked, the complexity imposed by state categorical funding, the devastating effects of excessive PERS contributions, unequal equalization of funding, under-funded state and federally mandated programs such as special education and the GATE program, the amount of time dedicated to testing, the lack of training and planning time for our teachers, and the inadequate funds available to pay our teachers.

h. I worked with the SMFCSD Educational Foundation on their deficit reduction fund drive. This was an effort by the Foundation to reduce our district's deficit between expenditures and the funding available from the state. From this experience I learned the basics of how to run a fund-raising drive, the limitations on how contributions can be spent within the district, the amount of contributions required to fund various "discretionary" programs, and the need for coordination between PTA fund raising, school specific fundraising, and district-wide fundraising.

i. I met with our district's former superintendent to learn our district's educational history and the results of various educational programs within our district. I also met with our district's chief financial officer for a more detailed explanation of our budget.

j. I worked on the El Camino Real Master Plan Committee. This committee created a plan to guide the redevelopment of El Camion Real between Highway 92 and the Belmont border. While on this committee I had the opportunity to meet and work with our city's staff, commission, & council members as well as neighbors and business leaders from the community.

k. I attended the Leadership program sponsored by the combined Chambers of Commerce of San Mateo, Foster City, Burlingame, and Hillsborough. I this class I was introduced to representative from many of the state, city, & county government offices and learned what services they provided to our community. I also received instruction in working with committees and volunteers as well as public speaking, alternative dispute resolution, et cetera.

l. I chaired a committee that evaluated a pilot Youth Leadership Program. This is a leadership program for high school juniors that show leadership potential but have not been involved in student government or other positions of leadership. As a result of this evaluation, this program became a permanently funded program in our community.