Dear PVUSD Parents and Voters:
The Committee for Good School Governance is supporting Trustee candidates who will be accountable for student achievement.
We’ve recently completed interviews with Trustee candidates for the Pajaro Valley Unified School District’s Board of Trustees. We have assessed leadership, skills and experience, and believe the recommended candidates will be effective Board Members. We recommend these candidates for School Board on Election Day:
District 1 (Corralitos and more than half of Aptos area)
Kimberly works at Dominican Hospital assisting families throughout the County to manage life challenges after a medical crisis by connecting families with effective community support services. Kimberly brings her hospital experience and degrees in social work to her duties at Valencia Elementary School as a School Site Council Member for five years as well as serving a term as Council Chairperson. She has also served many volunteer hours for the Home & School Club. She served as Valencia representative on the North Zone Council for three years helping the North Zone (Aptos) schools to achieve better alignment of learning goals throughout elementary and secondary grades. In addition, Kimberly has dedicated hundreds of volunteer hours to grant-writing on behalf of local schools, in an effort to obtain additional school funding particularly for computer and classroom technology improvements. Kimberly says that student achievement success must be the primary goal for all District students and believes greater progress can be achieved through goal setting and holding administrators, teachers, and students accountable for results. Setting higher expectations is critical to replacing a culture that too often accepts mediocre results. While she welcomes the challenge of being a “one woman army,” she demonstrates skills in building consensus for common direction essential to effective Board leadership. Because California’s budget situation will not improve quickly, Kimberly is driven to help the District increase school funding by changing policies and services to increase school attendance daily figures and targeting grant funding to unmet student achievement needs for the District’s higher performing and lower performing students. The Committee believes that Kimberly is a hard worker and makes careful, data-driven, decisions that consistently place student academic needs first.
District 1 (Corralitos and more than half of Aptos area)
Patrice Edwards brings experience as a business owner and member of many community boards to improving student achievement results for all PVUSD students. She has served on the Santa Cruz County Fair Board, several Chambers of Commerce, and other community organizations. She credits strong Fair Board leadership in setting new direction and holding management accountable with turning a budget deficit into a substantial surplus. She is the owner-publisher of three newspapers, two magazines and local event publications. In her current board roles, she has been a thoughtful decision maker who understands that the role of the board is to set goals and policies, and then hold organization management and staff accountable for goal achievement. She plans to learn more about the District’s current goals and results, and then go to work assisting the Board to achieve greater results and progress. She believes that a necessary first step is to ensure available funding is directed to support student achievement needs in the classroom, and make changes if non-classroom expenses can be reallocated. She believes in learning how other schools and school districts, both in California and in other states, have achieved faster classroom improvement results. Patrice is committed to learning background information about school district regulations and processes, and then applying her persistence and management skills to identifying ways to advance student achievement results.
District 4 (Southwestern Watsonville and some outlying areas)
Willie Yahiro’s nineteen years of experience on the Board of Trustees make it possible for the District to avoid the problems that arise when planning the District’s future without knowing its past, ensuring mistakes are not repeated. Willie has worked with seven different Superintendents and understands the skills and personal traits of a successful Superintendent. When others advocated for students to join social issue protests, Willie asked parents and students to stay in school, and not disrupt learning. While Willie believes student achievement results are not improving fast enough, the recent year improvements have been possible because the Board pushed to overcome complacency, set higher expectations, and avoided political influences that have historically sidetracked needed change. Progress can be credited to improvements in what teachers are teaching in the classroom and principals increasingly holding teachers accountable. Willie applauds school improvements which have shortened the English transition from 7 – 9 years historically to 1 – 6 years today. Willie also supported the recommendations of the Superintendent and the Association of Mexican American Education in the creation of the Certificate of Bilingual Competency for graduating seniors. As non-English speaking parents are unable to assist with homework, Willie strongly supports afterschool tutoring programs that are linked closely to classroom instruction. Willie wants the Board to avoid a future crisis of rising public employee fringe benefit costs. District salaries and benefits already take up 94% of the budget, leaving no room for these costs to increase. Too little money is now available for textbooks and classroom supplies. Willie Yahiro would like to replicate the practices already achieving success in some District classrooms, discovered through test score results’ analysis, and would like to see Pajaro Valley High School’s facilities completed.
District 5 (Northwestern Watsonville and some outlying areas)
Francisco Diaz obtained a BA degree from St. Mary’s College in May, 2010, after attending Cabrillo College and PVUSD schools. Leveraging his personal experience, he understands first hand the challenges faced by non-English speaking students from Spanish-only households, and what our schools must do to provide an educational experience that will help all students succeed. Francisco believes that learning to speak English is essential if we are to turn the District’s low-performing students and schools around. Our District should not be reluctant to set more aggressive goals dramatically shortening the time it takes our students to be come English-speakers, despite the criticism from some groups in the community. He believes that increased parental involvement in each child’s educational activities is vitally important and that the Board should do more to communicate its importance to the community. He wants to carry this message to parents and students in District 5. Francisco believes the that the District should set a high expectation for teacher quality including academic knowledge and teaching skills, and address teachers who aren’t succeeding. Francisco understands the role of the Board in setting student achievement goals and policies, and the separate role of the Superintendent in developing and implementing plans to achieve the goals. The Board’s frequent evaluation of education achievement results is essential in achieving changed performance expectations. He is articulate, demonstrates careful decision-making, with maturity beyond his age, and offers a high level of energy that match his conviction that student achievement is the District’s primary goal and that recent results, although showing stead improvement, fall substantially short of where our schools need to be.
District 5 (Northwestern Watsonville and some outlying areas)
Leslie De Rose was selected as Board of Trustees’ President during her first four years on the Board. Prior to her Board responsibility, Leslie served on a local School Site Council and volunteered many hours to work in classrooms and school offices. When State funds to PVUSD were cut by the largest amount in PVUSD history, Leslie supported increasing the number of Board meetings so parents, teachers, and students could provide input regarding budget priorities and alternatives, and people could voice disagreements with proposed Board cuts. She encouraged the Board and public to make hard decisions and ensure that those decisions were consistent with supporting student achievement. While such large cuts in the budget left no choice but to reduce some school resources that were helping student achievement, Leslie is confident that available funds are being directed to uses that have the greatest positive impact on classroom learning results. The District must continue to hold the Superintendent, principals, teachers and students accountable for improved results. Leslie would like for the Board to consider a parcel tax or bond measure to repair school facilities and complete Pajaro Valley High School’s campus. Leslie is enthusiastic about continuing her efforts as a Board Member, using her experience gained over the last four years, to advance District initiatives to rigorously track student performance trends, identify impediments to progress, and ensure a quality education is provided to all students. She wants to see the English-Learner Master Plan fully implemented, and achievement measured in schools and classrooms to ensure progress accountability. Leslie believes that reducing the timeframe before students are able to join an English-only classroom will dramatically impact student achievement.
Our Committee has developed Governance Standards based on both the recommendation of the California School Boards Association and added other standards that clarify Trustee and Superintendent responsibility for goal setting, planning, and results measurement. We believe that a commitment to them by each Trustee, and the Board acting together, will greatly enhance Board leadership effectiveness essential to improved student achievement results.
Your vote counts. Please consider the special responsibilities and duties of Trustee, as described in the Governance Standards, and support the recommended candidates.
Jim Abendschan Retired President & CEO, Spectra-Mat, Inc.
Janet Bell, M.D. Former PVUSD Trustee and Pediatrician
Jess Brown Executive Director of the Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau
Judy Doering-Nielsen Former Mayor and Member of the Watsonville City Council
William G. Dorey Retired President & CEO, Granite Construction Company
Rocky Franich President, Marty Franich Ford
Hal Hyde Former Vice Chancellor UCSC and Cabrillo College Trustee
Doug Kaplan Former PVUSD Trustee and co-founder of Lomak Property Group
Christine Quinn Associate Superintendent of Hayward Unified School District, formerly PVUSD Assistant Superintendent for North Zone
J. Miles Reiter Chairman and CEO, Driscoll Strawberry Associates
Diane Siri, Ph.D. Superintendent of Schools, Santa Cruz County
Gary Smith Executive Director Leadership Santa Cruz, Former Fire Chief of Aptos-LaSelva Fire Protection District and Watsonville Assistant City Manager
Elia Vasquez Farmer, Director of California Farm Bureau Federation, and Past President of the Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau
Bruce Woolpert President & CEO, Graniterock
The Committee for Good School Governance’s Members are passionate about improving the education experience and results for all students in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District. We need capable leaders as Trustees on the PVUSD School Board. Trustees must make it their responsibility to establish clear measurable academic goals along with a timetable for goal achievement and hire a strong Superintendent. Trustees must then give the Superintendent the responsibility for developing and implementing academic plans to achieve goals. Throughout the school year, Trustees must scrutinize student achievement results to confirm that progress is on track. This creates a District with organizational checks-and-balances in which there can be “no excuses” in meeting academic improvement goals.
We recommend candidates only after each candidate receives a two-thirds or greater approval vote by Committee Members. Candidates completed a background questionnaire and were interviewed by the Committee in September. Committee Members who may present a conflict of interest with any candidate did not participate in the selection process for that candidate. All candidates, both new candidates and those seeking re-election, were invited to seek the Committee’s endorsement.