League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
Santa Clara County, CA November 6, 2012 Election
	Camille Townsend Answers Questions Candidate for Board Member; Palo Alto Unified School District

The questions were prepared by the League of Women Voters of Palo Alto and asked of all candidates for this office.
Read the answers from all candidates (who have responded).

Questions & Answers

1. What steps need to be taken to foster better communication among the school board, superintendent's office, and the local school communities?

Our District is large and growing. We have 12,400 students attending our nineteen school sites. The District employs more than 1,500 employees. This does create a challenge for timely and accurate communication.

Technology is part of the answer. We are using modern tools to connect parents, students, and teachers. Student registration and teacher applications have all gone online within the past three years. Our students and their parents are better able to access information from their teachers. The wider community can access much of our communication, decisions, and policies through a variety of means. These include:

District website: The district website maintains information relevant to students, parents, teachers, and the larger community. It is the repository for information as diverse as the budget and bond program updates, to residency requirements. The district is working on a new design to make the site easier to search and browse.

PTA Regular Online Newsletters: In addition to the district web site, school newsletters produced by the 17 PTA's for each school site, containing important district information, are pushed out to all registered parents weekly. These include important meetings dates, social events and other aspects of a student's school life or after school programs. These are also available online.

Superintendent's Update: The Superintendent updates the community every two weeks at the beginning of regularly scheduled Board meetings. These meetings are broadcast and stream live on the Channel 28, and are immediately accessible as archived online records.

No communication approach is complete without one to one contact. The Superintendent and School Board members regularly visit the school sites and attend school events where they are accessible to all.

While improvements are always possible, one of the best measures of communication effectiveness is community support. Voters in the PAUSD district approved our school bond measure and our school parcel measure by over 77% just four years ago during my tenure on this board. Open communications from the school board, the superintendent, and from the community, were key to these votes of confidence.

2. What approaches would you support to help all students achieve their educational goals, whether they are college bound or not?

Palo Alto Unified works hard to help all students reach their educational goals. Our District is unusual, as over 90% of our students attend college. Since the vast majority of our students progress onto college, they may choose a path designed to best prepare for whatever school they choose.

We also have numerous approaches for those students not choosing college. These include experiential learning in tandem with businesses, applied classes in the arts, engineering, foods, technology, computers, video-design and biotech.

The district is committed to helping each student find an avenue for success early on. This includes providing a quality pre-school for those who have not had one, advice and counseling on the most appropriate schools, and additional services if a student finds school a challenge.

3. How should PAUSD address potential budget cutbacks?

"In a community where our commitment to public education runs deep, Camille's collaboration and experience on critical academic and fiscal issues continues to earn my appreciation and support. I support Camille's re-election for School Board." Senator Joe Simitian

In the past five years our state payments plummeted from $16.5 million to $5.3 million, and we added 1200 new students for which the district did not receive additional funds. With the community's help we kept the cuts away from our classrooms. Budget challenges continue to be an issue for all public education.

A great teacher is the number one predictor of student learning. Most importantly we did not cut teachers. We did not shorten the school year, shorten schools days or place the teachers on furlough. This continues to be my priority and a community priority. We slightly upped class sizes, school sizes, and stayed flexible.

Reduction, revenue and reserve. We did reduce non-teaching positions, used some of our reserve to smooth out the cuts, and we shared our need with the community. Our community has supported us overwhelmingly twice + with more than 77% approval + on our bond and parcel tax measures. This reflects working closely with our strong professional management staff.

Even with the cuts we did have to make, our students demonstrated greater mastery of skills, with highest growth among our least advantaged students. Just in the past few months our teachers took home national excellence in teaching awards.

4. Do you see instituting a pre-school program for children younger than the "early 5s" age, as desirable for the PAUSD, and if so, have you any ideas on how it might fit into the K-12 structure?

Do you see instituting a pre-school program for children younger than the "early 5s" age, as desirable for the PAUSD, and if so, have you any ideas on how it might fit into the K-12 structure?

PAUSD believes that high-quality early childhood programs are important to children's success in school and to their future. PAUSD continues to offer early education programs to create a strong base for children.

Our local studies show approximately 90% of the students who attend PAUSD have a strong pre-school experience. For those who do not, we have a range of programs to meet their needs. The "Pre-school Family" program reaches children, birth to kindergarten. It is very affordable with sliding scale fees and scholarships. We have around 225 students participating.

"Springboard to Kindergarten" targets four year olds, who have never had pre-school or a high quality pre-school program. The school district is offering this to families for those parents who could not afford pre-school or a quality program. We currently have about 40 children in this program. We also have a program for Special Education preschoolers, and approximately 30 children in the 3 to 4 year old range attend. And finally, we have "Young Fives," which we have combined with the new state mandated "Transitional Kindergarten."

We in the district, believe in, and support younger and "early 5" education. It does fit into our K-12 structure.

---

Responses to questions asked of each candidate are reproduced as submitted to the League.  Candidates' statements are presented as submitted. Direct references to opponents are not permitted.

Read the answers from all candidates (who have responded).

Candidate Page || Feedback to Candidate || This Contest
SmartVoter Home (Ballot Lookup) || About Smart Voter

---

Created from information supplied by the candidate: October 29, 2012 10:32
Smart Voter <http://www.smartvoter.org/>
Copyright © League of Women Voters of California Education Fund   http://www.lwvc.org
The League of Women Voters neither supports nor opposes candidates for public office or political parties.