Community for Excellent Public Schools (CEPS) Candidate Questionnaire

By Kelly McMahon Pye

Q & A with Kelly and the Community for Excellent Public Schools (CEPS)

Why are you running for School Board? I have lived in Santa Monica for nearly 20 years and I love this community. My family lives in the Sunset Park area and my children attend Will Rogers Elementary and John Adams Middle School. It was at Will Rogers that I first developed a passionate commitment to working for our school community. From that environment, I became involved in our district and larger school community. My desire to run for School Board is fueled by my desire to work on issues at the district level that are so important to me: Making our schools strong and effective for all our students and families; building stronger school communities; and supporting our teachers as they pursue high achievement for each student.

My overall dedication to our schools is inspired by a wholehearted and unwavering belief in public education as the best hope for all children to become socially conscious citizens who can draw upon the personal resources of self respect and self determination throughout their lives.

What has been your personal involvement with education in our community? My involvement began as a parent when my son first entered kindergarten at Rogers when I co-chaired a major fund raiser, the Adopt-a-Class program, which pairs local businesses with classrooms for funding. From that involvement, I took on several other roles, including Community Concerns Vice President, Site Governance Chair and PTA President, a post which I held for two years. I am now serving on the Executive Board of both the Will Rogers and John Adams PTA.

My PTA involvement led me to greater involvement in our district. I am proud to have been a part of the Santa Monica Malibu PTA Council for two years and to have served on the district's Blue Ribbon Bond Feasibility Committee and the Equity Fund Oversight Committee. My school volunteer experience in our district now spans over seven years. I feel fortunate to have worked beside so many wonderful people in these positions and hope to continue this work by being elected to the School Board.

What makes you stand out among the other candidates? What special attributes, talents, and abilities will you bring to our district? I have been intimately involved in addressing the issues facing a diverse Title One school in a gentrifying neighborhood. With administrators, teachers, families and community leaders, I have grappled with how to best promote high standards of achievement and build community in this setting.

My greatest attributes, I think, are that I am a hard worker; an effective community builder and collaborator; am genuinely interested in and care about people and their point of view; and am passionate and persistent in pursuit of my goals. I consider myself approachable, ethical, pragmatic, fiscally responsible and adept at bringing people together to achieve shared goals.

In addition to my experience working in our district, I have over 15 years of executive and managerial experience in the newspaper business, both locally and in the national newspaper realm. I worked for many years with local businesses and organizations at the Outlook newspaper and am a former Board Member of the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce. I am a creative and resourceful partner and am very inspired by the thought of how we can partner with people, businesses and organizations to bring more resources to our children through our schools.

What do you feel is the number one challenge facing our schools today? I feel our greatest challenge is how to create a rich learning environment that engages and challenges every child in our district. I have been a strong advocate of the need to strengthen our schools of lowest achievement. Yet, concurrently, we must improve our ability to challenge the child of average achievement as well as the child whose achievement is advanced. Certainly every child and every family must feel our schools are desirable and effective to continue to achieve the broad community support we have enjoyed. How do we achieve this in the classroom? How do we support our teachers in their work to differentiate instruction, at all levels, not only elementary? How do we promote creative and critical thinking skills? We are doing a great job as a district, but there are doubtlessly more great things to be done!

Are you familiar with and do you fully support the agreement negotiated for the City of Santa Monica to provide funding to the School District? What was your role, if any, in crafting, supporting or negotiating this agreement? Yes, I fully support the agreement negotiated with the City of Santa Monica to provide funding to the school district. I worked to help get this passed by gathering some of the 15,000 supporter signatures, as well as recruiting others to gather signatures. I participated in the rallies in support of the agreement (as did my children, I'm happy to say) and recruited others to do so as well.

If the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District faced a budget crisis brought on by circumstances outside the District's control, such as by funding cuts from the State of California, would you be willing to advocate for crisis funding from either of the cities beyond the City-School District funding agreement? Yes; strong schools are vital to our cities.

Although standardized test scores show increasing improvement in our schools, significant differences among economic and cultural groups still exist.  What can the District do to continue the overall success in academic achievement while significantly closing the achievement gap? First of all, it is critical to begin as early as possible in exposing children to a rich learning environment, which means starting children with a quality preschool program. A strong, early focus on literacy is also key. Also critical is our insistence upon rigorous academic achievement for all our children. This means appointing school leaders and hiring teachers whose expectations are rigorous for each student. This means insisting on a school climate and fostering a school culture that inspires and supports academic achievement for all children. It also means getting families and other adult role models involved and engaged as partners in children's education. Martha Shaw, the new JAMS principal, is, for instance, already beginning to put together a mentor program for young male students at the school. Hugo Pedroza at Samohi had similar goals in mind when he spoke of a family mentor program.

Other ways we can work to close the achievement gap include expanding Avid at JAMS and Samohi; introducing AVID at Lincoln; reducing class size in core courses in ninth and tenth grade; expanding our intervention programs; adding outreach specialists as we are able; and increasing the number of reading specialists at work in our district, because it is widely thought that these specialists are having a great impact on our students.

What is your view of the redesign of Samohi? What do you think should be future priorities for Samohi? I support redesign and believe there is mounting evidence that it is indeed strengthening student engagement and achievement at the school. Regarding goals for Samohi, I believe the most important goals now are community building and support of the leadership of Dr. Pedroza. With the change in leadership at the school, it gives the community the opportunity to make a fresh start, build bridges, improve communication and come together to work towards strengthening the strong foundation put into place by redesign and building student achievement. Lastly, I believe it is critical to carefully consider the recommendations of the SCORE committee in looking at ways to improve the school. Doing so allows us to participate in and partner with our teachers in the collaborative professional culture they are working to establish at Samohi.

What are your thoughts about how the district and school sites can encourage involvement and participation from families who have felt disenfranchised from their local school communities? First of all, our school leaders set the tone. We need to hire effective communicators who can communicate with diverse families. Teacher involvement is also essential. We need to make it a priority for our teachers to reach out to families. Frequent communications in a variety of ways about children's progress and school activities should be standard. School personnel at every level should welcome family members and value and support their efforts to become involved. We must reach out more and do so in non-judgmental ways in less formal settings at times that respect family schedules. I also believe small community approaches are effective as this is the way parents most readily relate to a school (i.e. host grade level dinners with a relevant program rather than solely large school events).

Do you endorse Measure BB, the Santa Monica-Malibu School Safety and Repair (Bond) Measure on the November 7, 2006 ballot and will you actively campaign for its passage? I have endorsed Measure BB and have been actively campaigning for its passage, by advocating for and educating people on the measure.

What is a priority concern you might have regarding the district that has not been raised? I would like to find a way to listen to our teachers more often and more effectively. Before my annual report to the School Board each year as PTA President, I surveyed our teachers directly as to what they would say to the Board if they had the opportunity about what they most needed in their jobs. The feedback I received was very valuable and instructive. I learned a great deal from our teacher's individual voices and hope, as a School Board member, to work with our union leadership and find a way to formalize this practice and give an increased voice to our teachers so we may support and assist them in meaningful ways.