Candidate for
Trustee; Santa Clara Unified School District; Trustee Area 2

Dr. Christine Koltermann Ballot Statement: As School Board President, I work to provide families with improved access to robust educational options. We now provide more effective intervention for struggling students and more challenging opportunities for high-achieving students. The District now has a greater emphasis on basic reading, writing, and math skills to narrow our achievement gap and increase graduation rates.

As an Earth Science teacher and businesswoman with a Stanford Ph.D. in Hydrogeology, I know the support students need in math and science. I encourage parents to get involved, and have personally volunteered over 2000 hours in SCUSD classrooms. As a Santa Clara homeowner, married 35 years, and parent of high-school and college students, I have seen how school quality impacts property values, lifelong success, and safe neighborhoods.

By making the School Board work together, I've helped bring the District through challenging financial times. The District now has reserve funds, and we must continue to spend every penny wisely. I support teachers and staff in broadening academic and vocational opportunities, maintaining sports and extracurricular activities, and ensuring that all students succeed.

For fiscal responsibility, administrator accountability, educational choices, and transparency in governance, please vote for Dr. Koltermann. http://www.chriskoltermann.com

Additional information about my Political Philosophy: When I was elected in 2010, the District faced the worst budget crisis it had seen in 50 years. Careful decision making with input from all stakeholders allowed the District to make strategic budget cuts and institute furlough days to keep the District solvent. With the improvement in the economy, we now face brighter days and have some reserves. We've restored programs (such as elementary music and elementary library), and are working to reduce class sizes (we recently hired 11 new elementary teachers to reduce our K-3 class sizes.) I believe in charting a fiscally sustainable course for the district's future, to help us with planning for growth in our enrollment, need for additional staff, and need for additional facilities.

I support parent choices in education, a strong core curriculum which provides all of the basics,a multi-tiered system of interventions for struggling students, more support for special education students and their parents, and more opportunities for students who are ready for a challenge. I support bringing more non-profit and corporate partners into the district to increase opportunities for our students.

Data from our own district show that readiness groupings by subject for reading/language arts and math, coupled with frequent assessments, direct instruction, teacher collaboration, and re-groupings when needed produces remarkable results. We have good teachers and good students; we have encouraged more parent participation and provided more professional development for our teachers and staff.

Through the LCAP (Local Control Accountability Plan) requirement of all districts in 2014, we have increased parent involvement in decision making within the district, and in particular have made great efforts to reach our entire parent population through providing materials in multiple languages and providing translators at our LCAP Community Forums. Through our parent education programs, we have provided many more parents with an opportunity to learn about the Common Core State Standards and the new state assessments. Students benefit when their parents are involved in our schools; now, more than ever before, SCUSD is working to increase parent involvement.

Through our Strategic Planning process, SCUSD is engaging members of the community as wells as parents and staff to help chart the vision for the future of the district. This process is occurring now, in the 2014-2015 school year.

We have a highly qualified administrative team in place to lead our district to the next level of student achievement; maximizing the potential of each and every student. I ask for your vote to remain on the Board of Education to help support the exciting and positive changes being made for our students.