About this blog

I am currently a Governing Board Member of the San Carlos School District, elected November 2007. I created this site to keep in touch with folks who want to know more about what is happening in the District and what it's like to be a Trustee.

Please note that ANY OPINION EXPRESSED HERE IS PURELY PERSONAL AND DOES NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT OFFICIAL POSITIONS OR POLICY OF THE SAN CARLOS SCHOOL DISTRICT NOR THE OPINION OF ANY OF MY COLLEAGUES ON THE BOARD.

I encourage everyone to visit the District web site as well as attend School Board meetings.

Note that I reserve the right to edit, reject, or delete posts based on spelling, grammar, readability, or my judgment of what is appropriate discourse.

 

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Furlough the Furloughs

One of the stranger concepts that I have been exposed to since taking public office is the notion of the “furlough” day. This essentially means that public agencies tell their employees not to come into work a certain number of days so that they can reduce their pay proportionally. Often such terms need [...]

End of Year Update

The following is a letter I sent to my personal e-mail list outlining a summary of this school year and what we look forward to next year:

Dear Friends and Supporters,

As another school year has ended, it seemed appropriate to give everyone an update on the state of the San Carlos School District, what we have [...]

Cause and Effect

Two interesting updates were juxtaposed today. The first was summarized in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about how a group of students, school districts, the California PTA, CSBA (California School Board Association) and ACSA (Association for California School Administrators) have filed a lawsuit arguing that elected officials in California have failed in [...]

Video on How California Education Finance Works (and doesn't work)

For the last few months, I’ve been contemplating putting together a video to explain how education finance works in California. It is an incredibly complex topic, and requires a bit of history and context setting. Doing this was partly inspired by a series of presentations done by SCEF, talks by Joe Simitian on [...]

We Knew It All Along...

Last Fall I posted an entry about our schools’ API scores. As I pointed out then, all of our schools have both excellent and improving scores. I have also stated many times that, by design, our four K-4 elementary schools offer an equally excellent education. Although most parents and District staff understand [...]

The Tough Work Now Begins

Unfortunately a good chunk of the remainder of the school year will be devoted to trying to solve our current budget mess, and this process kicked off in earnest with a Board study session we had on Tuesday, Janaury 26th. With the recently proposed State budget, our friends in Sacramento whacked education again. [...]

Can California Government be fixed?

Most folks in any way exposed to the workings of Sacramento know that it’s one of the most dyfunctional government systems we have in the country. It’s a systematic issue and not one related to specific legislators, as I actually admire many of our state elected representatives. However, they are paralyzed by a [...]

These Budget Issues Affect Real People

Probably the lowlight of yesterday’s Board meeting was our budget discussion. As I reported in early November, we continue to have a serious budget crisis due to the continued decrease in revenue from the State. And unfortunately the State appears to be in a new fiscal crisis and most people believe it will [...]

Dr. Baker – No Longer the “Interim”

In June I blogged about the hiring of our new Superintendent. At the time, because of the short time frame we had, we assumed we would hire an “interim superintendent” for a single year and then go out for a broader search for a permanent Superintendent. Well, we got lucky and found someone [...]

Back to School

The beginning of the school year is always filled with a lot of energy — and this year was no exception — energy from the students, the teachers, and the parents. I now have both a middle school student as well as an elementary school student, so it was great to spend some time [...]