Candidate for
School Board Director; City of Berkeley

Education is our most important civil right. Equitable access to a quality education forms the foundation for both our democratic and economic systems. While we may all embrace these concepts intellectually, actualizing such lofty principals has proven to be an enormous challenge. In Berkeley we struggle with the troubling dichotomy of persistent and glaring race-based disparities in student achievement, and another group of chronically successful students, who have thrived in our relatively well-resourced and dynamic schools. Too often our community debate around how to address the achievement gap devolves into a zero-sum game over resource allocation. I believe that high quality education is not a "hills" or a "flats" issue, or a black, white or brown issue. Instead, it must be the issue for all of us.

My campaign for school board reflects an attempt to make concrete the principles and actions needed to realize the goal of high achievement for all students, by focusing on priorities, maintaining programs that work, and not being afraid to discontinue those that are not.

1. Parent and Community Engagement I believe that strong bridges between schools, parents, teachers, staff, students, and community must be built and sustained.

• Empower parents, teachers and staff to help transform our schools and district
• Develop multiple pathways for, and create an expectation of, parent involvement at the school site and district levels
• Ensure transparent and accessible processes for participation on school and district governance bodies
• Provide governance bodies with the tools and data needed to evaluate program and practice effectiveness
• Disseminate data regarding school site and program effectiveness routinely and in formats accessible to all parents
• Effectively collaborate with city and community-based organizations
• Create formalized partnerships to advance specific goals Identify key responsibilities for each member of the partnership
• Establish accountability mechanisms to ensure that goals are actually achieved

• Work in partnership with the community to identify concrete and measurable implementation activities
• Implementation goals should be based on both evidence and scale - what has been proven to work and what will have the most widespread impact?
• Commit the resources necessary to achieve identified goals
• Evaluate the success of implementation of Vision priorities

• Provide professional development for teachers, staff, and administrators
• Based on a coordinated plan
• Focused on differentiated instruction
• Focused on the expectation for, and purpose of, use of data
• Focused on the quality of instruction and student engagement
• Evaluated for effectiveness - is the training actually working?
• Promote teacher leaders and mentors
• Evaluate teachers, staff, and administrators
• Support and create actionable expectations for struggling administrators, faculty, and staff
• Regularly evaluate whether programs and initiatives are actually improving achievement
• Data and evidence should be used to select, pilot and monitor programs, and eliminate those that are not working

• Maximize resources
• Explore possibilities for inter-district purchasing to realize economies of scale
• Develop and implement a targeted attendance and truancy program
• Program budgeting
• Develop a program-based budget to determine how much we are spending across multiple funding sources for district programs and initiatives

• Align resources with identified goals
• Hold site administrators accountable for implementing strategic priorities
• Develop site specific implementation plans with concrete benchmarks
• Ensure school sites implement programs and initiatives with fidelity