District Vision

By W. Charles Perry, MSPE

The goal of public education is to turn our children into self-sufficient law-abiding adults. Parents, teachers, administrators, and board members each have a well defined role in this process. We must all work together in a spirit of cooperation and mutual respect to accomplish this goal.

1. I believe that the goal of public primary & secondary education is to turn our children into law-abiding adults who are capable of supporting themselves and their extended families while raising their own children without direct assistance from or intervention by the state; it should also provide the knowledge to start a university education for those children who desire to do so. It should serve the needs of children from all walks of life - underprivileged through highly privileged.

2. I believe that each teacher should be treated as a professional and be allowed to chose a different method of teaching each student as is needed to achieve that student's best education; this teaching should be done under the review of peers and direction of a principal; the general direction of this education (Montessori, Bilingual, Charter, Technical, Arts, et cetera) should be set by the parents via the school site council.

3. I believe that the role of the district administration is to provide the materials, facilities, and services needed to support this education as well as to monitor the performance of the students, teachers, and principals to ensure that they are achieving minimum site, district, state, and federal standards; when these standards are not met, then the district administration should become directly involved in investigating and fixing the problem; and when the parents lack the ability or desire to guide their own school, then this guidance should come from the district administration.

4. I believe that the role of the school board is to act as the public's eyes, ears, and voice: Is each student receiving full value for each educational dollar spent by the district? How should the roughly 30% of the funds provided by the state that are discretionary be allocated? What should we do to get more money for our district? What salaries and benefits should be negotiated with our classified staff and certificated staff? Whom should we hire as administrators? How do we balance the competing demands of salaries, classroom size, and variety of programs within a fixed budget? How do we balance the desire of our more wealthy parents to provide additional funding to their local school with the desire of the poorer parents to have an equivalent education? Do we push for a unified school district with San Mateo Union High School District to increase our student funding? Do we turn our district into a charter school district? How do we accept and distribute contributions? How do we support our local foundation in their efforts to solicit contributions? How do we coordinate efforts of individual school PTA's with efforts of the foundation to solicit contributions? What level of commercial strings do we allow to be attached to contributions? What level of parental involvement - if any - do we require? What level of scrip purchase - if any - do we require?

5. I believe that the school board should act as the district's advocate in San Mateo, Foster City, Sacramento, and Washington, D.C; it should inform the citizens of San Mateo and Foster City of what the district does for the available funds and how this compares with neighboring districts; it should support the local PTA's and Foundation in their efforts to solicit contributions; it should campaign locally for additional funds to give our teachers & staff at a salary increase to locally competetive levels; it should campaign in Sacramento for a refund of excess Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) contributions, for elimination of categorical funding (i.e., do not tell us how to spend our tax dollars that you so graciously deign to return to us), and to provide a higher level of revenue-limit funding (Equalization); and it should campaign in Washington, D.C., for full funding of special education mandates.

6. I believe that the school board should treat the district administrators with the same respect due to any other professional; board members should not tell them how to do their job, publicly gainsay them, or publicly demean them in any way.

7. I believe that the school board should negotiate with the representatives of the certificated staff and classified staff in a manner of full and open financial disclosure, and that the board should make every effort to present, explain, and elucidate a budget that is Byzantine because of the dictates of state and federal law.

8. I believe that the school board should adhere to financial and educational plans that have been developed by parents, site councils, teachers, principals, administrators, and previous board members unless and until these plans are changed by a process that is as thorough as the one through which it was created. Off-budget expenditures should not be approved without a full evaluation by all concerned parties of their impact on these plans. Changes in curriculum should not be approved without a full evaluation by all concerned parties of their impact on these plans.