Parents Running for School Boards in CA

Julie Hamill, Palos Verdes

1. Why did you decide to run for the school board? Was there a specific catalyst or school district failure that pushed you to run?

I decided to run because my district's policies were harming my children, and when I tried to speak to the Board and Superintendent about it, I was completely ignored. My middle son is speech delayed, and having to wear a mask meant no one could understand him and he spent lunch and recess alone. My oldest was in TK when covid started, and the district provided only online and then hybrid learning for him - so I had to put him into an expensive private school in order to give him an adequate education and social experience. Prior to starting the in-person program, he had become depressed and withdrawn.

2. Assuming you were disappointed by the handling of pandemic measures in schools, what are the other major issues you're seeing right now in your local district and want to address?

One of the major problems ailing our district is a lack of transparency. Many critical policy decisions are made behind closed doors in committee meetings that are not open to the public. I will end that practice if I am elected. Every policy decision should be debated publicly and made in front of the public.

We also have a pattern of kicking major budget problems down the road instead of addressing them head on. We need a long term financial plan to ensure our district does not burn through its reserves.

Many parents were excluded from participating in their children's school activities. Parents have legal rights to participate in their children's education, including being present and volunteering in the classroom. Policies of exclusion need to be eliminated.

Many issues are coming down from the state, like the dumbing down of curriculum (see the proposed k-12 math framework). We need board members who understand how the state legislature operates so they can effectively push back and work to change state policy.

3. How would you prioritize K-12 funding and where do you think the biggest gaps/oversights in spending occur?

We spend an incredible amount of money per pupil in public education, but only a very small fraction of that money goes to teachers. There is too much administrative bloat. Money needs to stay in the classroom educating children.

4. How can your district do a better job of engaging parents and families?

For starters, board members must stop maligning and attacking parents with whom they disagree. The policy of excluding parents with dissenting opinions from committees needs to end. Parents must feel free to voice their concerns and opinions without being attacked and retaliated against. We should have town hall format meetings with more opportunities for parents to speak and engage with one another. We should also add a standing slot for a parent representative to speak at every board meeting, just like the teacher and staff unions are given. 

Suverna Mistry, Newhall

1. Why did you decide to run for the school board? Was there a specific catalyst or school district failure that pushed you to run?

For the last 2+ years, I have been strongly advocating for the reopening of schools and restoring normalcy to our children. The pandemic was very eye-opening to many parents with regards to how little of a voice they had when it came to their children’s education and how politics and special interests infiltrated our local schools and negatively impacted our children. Having parents on the board ensures the focus remains on the students.

2. Assuming you were disappointed by the handling of pandemic measures in schools, what are the other major issues you’re seeing right now in your local district and want to address?

Right now every district is faced with the challenges of overcoming learning loss and social/development setbacks as well as declining enrollment. We have title I schools mixed with high-performing schools in our 10 school elementary district. I want to ensure every child gets the opportunity to reach their full potential and that academic standards remain high vs. lowering standards to lift failing schools. We need to rebuild our trust in public education and ensure students are top priority, parents have a voice when it comes to decisions affecting their kids, and we go back to focusing on education.

3. How would you prioritize K-12 funding and where do you think the biggest gaps/oversights in spending occur?Right now all focus should be on education—the basics and mental health. We cannot afford to focus dollars chasing an endemic virus or other social justice programs which shouldn’t be taught in the classroom to begin with. Let’s get back to the basics and get kids back on track!

4. How can your district do a better job of engaging parents and families?

Our district already does a great job of focusing on students and having parents’ voices at the table. We have 3 parents on the board now. The current outgoing board member, who isn’t seeking re-reelection is not a parent but endorses my candidacy. I would ensure the students’ first approach continues and we continue to involve & engage parents as much as possible.

Nick Resnick, Oakland

1. Why did you decide to run for the school board? Was there a specific catalyst or school district failure that pushed you to run?

I’m running because the Oakland school district is in chaos, and Oakland’s kids desperately need change. I’m a former Oakland teacher, a district parent, and the leader of a successful organization focused on learning. I’m a skilled manager who understands schools and budgets. I’m running to put the focus where it belongs: learning and financial sustainability.

My entire professional career has been a catalyst for my decision to run. My first job was at Community Day School (in Oakland Unified), Oakland’s school for students who have been expelled. This is the place where students went as their last resort in OUSD, to be “rehabilitated back” into the comprehensive school system. My students had to walk through metal detectors everyday. They did not have access to grade-level curriculum or programs that would support their interests. These children were dying for rigorous curriculum and programs that their white and affluent peers had access to, but in our city, the zip code you live in dictates your access to choice and opportunity, and my students, back in 2008, were robbed of that chance. 

At Edna Brewer Middle School, where I taught 7th and 8th grade math for many years, I saw the promise of what can be possible when programs, grant funding, experienced leadership, curriculum and hard working teachers worked tirelessly for student equity and academic achievement. Positive culture and inclusivity matter. Representation matters. Engaging parents and guardians is crucial to student success. 

I know better is possible in our local schools because I was part of creating one. I know better is possible for our district, because I worked with many Title I districts achieving unprecedented results for populations just like ours. These experiences are what leads me to believe we can create a future where the past isn’t replicated and our students are promised a future of choice, opportunity, and upward mobility. 

2. Assuming you were disappointed by the handling of pandemic measures in schools, what are the other major issues you're seeing right now in your local district and want to address?

In one of California’s lowest performing districts with significant racial disparity between student groups, I continue to be shocked at how little the board focused on these core challenges. Oakland Unified has 13% of the lowest performing schools in the state and reading rates for Black students are less than 1/3 of those for White students. These statistics should keep our school board up at night.  

As a board member, my top priority will be focusing on student achievement and especially on these racial gaps. To start, we need a board committee focused on academics that monitors the data, strategy and progress and brings this focus to the board. No school organization I have worked with has achieved its goals without monitoring its progress toward goals. 50% of board meetings should relate directly to academic goals, monitoring student learning, and holding our district accountable to access to quality programs.  

3. How would you prioritize K-12 funding and where do you think the biggest gaps/oversights in spending occur?

Here in Oakland, we’re famous for initiative overload, investing in too many areas and implementing them a mile wide and an inch deep. Our system cannot implement everything at the same time. There’s a mantra in the design thinking world— designing for everyone means you’re designing for no one. 

I would like to bring our budgetary decisions in line with student learning. Not all dollars spent have the same return on investment for our children. We need to look at the academic return on each and every investment decision. We have to be clear what we’re prioritizing and let the community know it means we’re not doing other things (and that’s okay), because if we try to do everything, we’ll succeed at nothing. While not all investments will reach every child, it’s helpful to understand the emphasis of those dollars and the per pupil impact on who and where and why. 

An African American woman I met while canvassing recently said to me: “we can’t lose another generation of children, we must do whatever it takes to teach them how to read.” We need to focus on early literacy and make certain every child can read before they leave elementary school. 

4. How can your district do a better job of engaging parents and families?

Our district has had a number of harmful adult conflicts (emotional and physical) in the past few years, and I think the lack of a parent/guardian engagement plan is a large reason why. Part of the responsibility of a school board and school district is to provide spaces that equip our parents/guardians with the knowledge and skills to advocate and make informed decisions on behalf of their children. Due to our lack of success doing this, many families are ill informed and often are unsure how to best support their children.

I believe we need to have monthly Town Hall meetings for all district parents/guardians to join. Issues could include:

• Early literacy achievement across schools 

• Math achievement across sites 

• Access to Library Sciences across sites 

• Access to school counselors across elementary and middle school sites 

• Community partner connections across schools 

• “Electives” (PE, Music, Art, Science, Gardening, etc.) across sites 

• Teacher hiring and retention across sites 

• Principal hiring and retention across sites

• Teacher vacancies across sites and across years 

Additional question added by candidate: What is your position on charter schools, and what do you think their role in OUSD should be? 

I do not support any more charter schools in Oakland – we don’t have enough students for the schools we have. Charter schools have minimal oversight by the Oakland Board of Education but do impact the funding going to traditional schools and I believe that we have the fiduciary responsibility of supporting and rebuilding our traditional Oakland public schools for future generations to come. 

Their role historically has been a different option for low-income families of color in east and west Oakland who decided their neighborhood school didn't support their child's needs. In Oakland, white and affluent families have always had that choice, and end up at private or parochial schools. As a white parent privileged to live in a neighborhood with a good school, I can't in good conscience look at another parent exercising their choice and call that a problem UNTIL we ensure every school in those neighborhoods has the curriculum, educators, community partners and programs that they deserve. My goal as a board member is to focus our priorities and investments at the site level, so that in ten years our families will consistently choose the OUSD school in their area. 

Scott Davison, Carlsbad

1. Why did you decide to run for the school board? Was there a specific catalyst or school district failure that pushed you to run?

I decided to run for school board in late 2020, after I had spent 6 months advocating to our school district and school board only to realize that they simply weren't interested in listening to parents. After a particularly contentious board meeting where my board representative essentially kept repeating the concerns of the teachers' union and dismissing the pleas of parents and students suffering from school closures, I found out she actually worked for the California Teachers Association and her job was to advise the local unions on how to negotiate against school boards. Despite this clear conflict of interest and violation of the board bylaws, our Board refused to take action against her, and that's when I realized the only option was to run against her in 2022.

2. Assuming you were disappointed by the handling of pandemic measures in schools, what are the other major issues you're seeing right now in your local district and want to address?

The biggest problem with having a school board which mishandled the pandemic is they don't want to admit that school closures were a mistake because they would then have to assume responsibility for the resulting harms. An apology would be nice, but instead we're getting the opposite - they either bury their heads in the sand about declining enrollment or purposely obfuscate data on learning loss. So the biggest issue is being transparent about what's happening in our schools, whether it's mental health, teacher burnout, learning loss or parent disengagement. We can't solve problems if we're still trying to pretend they don't exist.

3. How would you prioritize K-12 funding and where do you think the biggest gaps/oversights in spending occur?The priority in K-12 funding should absolutely be on rapidly identifying and addressing learning loss. While some kids did fine, many did not, and until we identify who they are and work to catch them up, the inequity created by school closures will only get worse. These are also the kids that are mostly likely to drop out or transfer out of the district if their needs aren't being met, so providing them with extra help serves the dual benefit of catching them back up and keeping them in the school district so we don't lose even more funding. Spending to address learning loss also represents the biggest oversight, particularly since my school district is publicly messaging that there was no learning loss and therefore no need to spend money to address it. Internally we know they are aware and are trying to handle it without discussing the extent of the problem or how much money is being spent to address it.

4. How can your district do a better job of engaging parents and families?

This question makes me laugh, which is sad, but that's because not only has our district failed to engage parents and families, they've spent the past two years criticizing, ignoring and essentially doing their best to exclude parents from being involved at school. Anything they do at this point would be an improvement, but I think the best option would be for the Superintendent to figuratively hit the reset button and send a message that parents are welcome back on campus, that we need their help, and that we need them to be involved with their children's education and value their input and opinions. This sounds pretty easy, but I think it's unlikely to occur because we have leadership that does not actually value parent engagement and is at this point more afraid of parents than they are interested in listening to them.

Five California Parents Shed Light on the Public School Enrollment Crisis

Written by Rebecca Bodenheimer

Since the onset of the pandemic, California has seen a troubling decline in K-12 public school enrollment. This past academic year, enrollment declined by 1.8%, following a 2.6% drop in the 2020-21 academic year, when most California schools were closed. In April, State Superintendent Tony Thurmond announced a task force to address declining enrollment. However, as our Executive Director Megan Bacigalupi noted, there are no parent representatives on the task force, which is a major problem—particularly because state educational leaders don’t fully understand the factors accounting for the drop in public school enrollment. 

While enrollment had been declining even before the pandemic, now even charter schools are seeing slight declines. Private school enrollment is up by 1.7%, but that doesn’t account for the 110,000 fewer California public school students from 2020-21 to 2021-22. A percentage of them can be explained by the lack of affordable housing in the state (forcing families to move) and the decision by many parents not to enroll their children in kindergarten during the pandemic. Nonetheless, it’s clear that California’s educational leaders are at a loss as to why parents have abandoned public education, and thus about how to reverse this decline. 

CA Parent Power decided to ask our followers why they left the state’s public education system—and what (if anything) could bring them back. We spoke with five parents from across the state about their experiences. While the first story is unsurprisingly related to how prolonged school closures have driven parents away from public education, the parents we interviewed raised a number of other issues as well. 

Luna*, a San Diego mom saw the writing on the wall early: by September 2020, she knew the San Diego Unified schools weren’t going to reopen any time soon, and began looking around for private schools for her older daughter. They were able to find an opening in a private Waldorf school in January 2021. Luna also has a younger daughter who’s eligible to begin kindergarten this coming September, but she’s decided to keep her in preschool for another year, because her trust has been broken by the public school system. “You don't know when they're gonna close again and San Diego Unified, if you compare with the other suburban schools…they have had the policies that are geared towards keeping children out of school the most,” like strict quarantine and masking policies. Nonetheless, Luna doesn’t see private school for two kids as a long-term solution, and her family is thinking of moving to a more suburban part of San Diego County, where she saw public school districts work harder to reopen schools during the pandemic. 

Anne Ponugoti’s twins were in the second grade in the Castro Valley Unified School District (Alameda County) when the pandemic began. She’d been heavily involved at their school—she was PTA president—but knew virtual learning would be a huge challenge, especially for her son. Like virtually all Bay Area school districts, their school didn’t open in Fall 2020, and while Ponugoti’s daughter seemed to be managing alright in virtual learning, her son was often “laying on the floor crying.” She pulled him in November 2020 and enrolled him in a small private school. But once her daughter saw her son going to “real school,” as she put it, she insisted on going too, because they gave out textbooks, and not just worksheets. Ponugoti said, “I'm planning to keep my kids at this private school until [the end of] middle school.”

While Ponugoti’s initial reasons for moving her kids to private school were because of prolonged school closures, she has come to realize other issues that make her hesitant to return to public school. For one, she sees a high rate of attrition from teachers and is worried about possible behavioral problems and not enough adult supervision once her kids get to middle school: “What's been nice about the private school on top of the education is, it's clean. They have bathrooms that work. They get to sit down and eat their lunch. It's not this constant madness at recess and lunch.” She added that the reason she got involved at her kids’ public school in the first place was that she saw so little adult supervision at lunchtime, because of inadequate staffing. 

Finally, Ponugoti is worried about the way public schools are teaching math. She believes the curriculum has been “dumbed down” through an integrated math approach: “You don't have to have specialist teachers and then you can just smooth over those grades. So if you're doing geometry and algebra in the same year, if you're strong on one and weak on the other, you can still sort of average out at a passing grade.” She wants a more traditional approach to teaching math. 

Despite her concerns, Ponugoti is hoping to return to public school for high school because private high school tuition is so expensive, and because private schools are often too small to offer good athletic programs. 

Cathy Carley, from Fullerton (Orange County), had two children in public school when the pandemic began. Her older daughter was in eighth grade and was able to return to school in a hybrid format in 2020-21; although that wasn’t a great experience, she ultimately chose to attend a public high school. However, Carley’s younger daughter was in third grade and the large class size (33 kids) meant that the district could only open in a hybrid manner, due to social distancing guidelines. Although Carley described the quality of the elementary school as very good, with involved parents, she began to see class size as a big problem during the pandemic. Once her daughter transferred to a private school in spring 2021, she had only 20 students in her class, and Carley saw major academic growth. 

Carley stressed that she doesn’t blame the district or school board for this issue: “The problems plaguing our public schools are a direct result of our local and county and state governments that have not prioritized public education,” she said, adding, “at a certain point, parents cannot donate/fundraise enough for all the [staff] that schools need.” 

While Carley lives in an affluent public school district, Jamey Johnson-Olney lives in a poorer, more rural part of the state: the Central Valley town of Waterford in Stanislaus County. Her daughter was in eighth grade at the local public school in spring 2020, and when the schools closed, there was no instruction, only work packets. A middle school teacher herself, Johnson-Olney described her daughter as an overachiever with a 4.0 GPA before the pandemic. “I just saw a dramatic turn, where she just refused to do anything at all.” Her daughter would say, “This is not real school. This is busy work, which it really was.” Within a matter of weeks, she said, her active daughter “was just curled up in a ball in a dark bedroom all day long. I thought I was losing my daughter to depression.” 

Over the summer Johnson-Olney made sure to get her daughter outdoors, which really helped improve her mood. She was determined to keep her daughter from sliding into depression again, so she enrolled her daughter in a Catholic school that had assured parents they would open as soon as possible. The first two months of Fall 2020 were in distance learning, due to a county mandate that applied to private as well as public schools, but the school opened in November 2020 in hybrid format for two days a week. Despite the surge in January 2021, the school decided to open up five days a week for half-days. 

Johnson-Olney’s daughter really liked the Catholic school, especially because it was more academically challenging for her, but it was a 45-minute drive to get there, which was hard on the family. Ultimately she herself decided to switch back to her neighborhood public high school. Nonetheless, it’s a high-poverty rural school, said Johnson-Olney, so the classes are less challenging and there are more behavioral issues. But because her daughter will be a junior next year, they’ve decided to stick it out and focus on keeping grades up so she can get into a good college.

Johnson-Olney’s story is an example of a family that went private during school closures and have ultimately decided to return to public school. Michelle Koskella, from Burlingame (San Mateo County), offers an example of a family that switched from private to public school because of the overly draconian pandemic restrictions her son’s private school implemented. He was finishing fifth grade when the pandemic began and was headed toward a different, private middle school. Now, he’s going into eighth grade and he’ll be going to public school this fall. 

Koskella thought the private school would handle the pandemic well: “They talk about child-centered [approaches], nurturing the creative mind and hands-on learning. I thought, ‘they're gonna make it all about the kids, they're gonna do so great.’” Instead, the school stalled—it didn’t file for a waiver to start in-person school when it could have in Fall 2020, so it opened later. “It just seems like at every turn, when they could, they were perfectly within their rights within the county and state rules to make things looser and open up, they went extreme,” said Koskella. For example, the school had mandatory outdoor masking until March 2022, and would require families to take PCR tests after each school break, which would often result in kids missing school days. The younger kids, in K-4, were never allowed to unmask in the 2021-22 school year. “How crazy is that?” she asked, “The little kids are the ones who need the masks off more than anybody.” 

Koskella’s son wanted to finish out eighth grade at his private school, and then head to a public high school, but she talked him out of it. She said that when she had to commit to the private school tuition for this coming academic year, she saw that the restrictions wouldn’t be going away, and didn’t want to pay for private school anymore. She wishes the school had been more up front with parents about setting strict policies: “If they wanna be the most Covid-serious school in the Bay Area, then own it. And the parents who want to pay for that, can.”

*Luna is a pseudonym, as this parent asked to remain anonymous