Ideas for the Future of K12 Public Education

By

Bob Tucker

Candidate for the Board of Trustees

Garden Grove Unified School District

November 2, 2010

“Public Education Should Provide Students a Chance to Succeed, Not a Guarantee”

Candidate Ballot Statement

Public education must begin the process of gradual change from demanding that every student be college bound.  There are multiple paths to success. Our nation needs skilled mechanics, machinists, carpenters and electricians, computer, solar, cable technicians, just as much as it needs college grads. We need to strengthen the two track system – one for the trades and one for the university.  Quality vocational training should be enhanced in every school district.

Students who lack discipline, come from troubled homes, should not be abandoned. Greater effort in partnering with community resources can provide alternatives to students by offering them real career choices.

I have experience in California schools all my life, as a student, a classified employee, a leader with my union. I have served on a district education foundation and school site council. I currently serve on the Personnel Commission for GGUSD.

Garden Grove Unified is a great school district that embraces forward thinking through the collaboration of all stake holders in the district. As a Board member, I will continue to collaborate with those stakeholders to improve the lives of our students and our community.

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Ideas

Increase collaboration with community stake holders, i. e. Chambers of Commerce, City Councils, Local and State Legislators from all political persuasions, PTSO’s, Work Force Investment Boards, Education Foundations and Employee Unions to support public education. A well educated workforce benefits everyone. Community engagement should be part of performance indicators in every districts accountability system.

Develop smart strategies to attract and retain effective teachers and other staff.

Enhance a strong two track system that provides support for both the college and non-college bound.

Offer greater choices in vocational training for the non-college bound student. Collaborate with local Work Force Investment Boards to utilize Federal funds to help pay for training in good paying careers.

Constantly refine a singular goal that students must meet or exceed state standards in core academic subjects, and that English language learners must gain a certain amount of proficiency in the language. (Garden Grove Unified).

Raw standardized test scores are flawed because they tend to reflect socioeconomic levels more than learning. Test scores do not tell the whole story.

Students need to enjoy life at school and not just be test taking automatons. Allow time for social interaction, arts and physical exercise and play.

Close Charter Schools that are not out-performing public schools.

Add to curriculum, courses related to preparation for the work force so that students will understand how to navigate workplace “rules of the road”. Labor Unions could collaborate with school district personnel to bring real life experience to such trainings.

History classes should include the recent local history of the diverse populations within school districts.

Maintain funding for afterschool and summer programs to provide a “safe harbor” for students who may be exposed to gangs in their neighborhoods with a focus on students below high school age.

Utilize funds stashed and un-used in district budget slush funds under “books and supplies” for actual books and supplies including libraries only. School libraries must not be closed. Studies show that library quality is related to higher scores on reading tests. Libraries are still a great resource for students, and librarians are teachers too.

If the brain is not challenged at the level it is growing, it will lose ability and function. It is unacceptable to knowingly create conditions in which any student loses intellectual growth by “dumbing down” subject matter.

Introduce new learning technologies like Los Alamitos Unified’s “Qwizdom” hand held question and answer program that force students to participate in classroom lessons. This has proven to dramatically raise test scores. (OC Register)

Passing children on to the next grade level regardless whether or not essential skills are mastered is a disservice and a perpetuation of a terrible farce.

Infrastructure/Safety:

Mandate that worksites be represented at district monthly safety meetings by an employee genuinely familiar with the maintenance and operations (M&O) of that site.

Train at least one employee at each site on disaster preparedness by partnering with local Community Emergency Response Teams (CERT).

Explore the use of solar panels on building roofs and new carport roofs over existing parking lots to save significant energy costs. (Irvine USD)

New schools should be built from a choice of a few standard architectural designs developed by the state that meet basic safety and classroom learning environmental needs as well as recognizing the cultural look of each individual community.

Transportation:

Begin to eliminate old un-safe school busses with new, safer, non-polluting ones.

Explore transitioning other maintenance vehicles to electric powered ones. Set up charging stations at M&O. Seek various grants to fund this transition.

Food Service:

Healthy food legislated directives from Sacramento are bankrupting school district food service departments. You cannot force students to change habits by legislative mandate; they must learn to do so.

Partner with local farmers markets to provide the freshest and healthiest food for our students.

Teach students about healthier foods at an early grade level, including basic farming skills, and safe food preparation. (Park Place restaurant in Stanton grows its own vegetables on site).

Students should partner/learn from district food service staff.

Partner with local restaurants in the community including those that represent the diversity of the community.

Provide more spacious and comfortable dining areas for students. High School Students are less likely to leave campus for fast food if the eating areas are improved.

All Staff:

There should be financial incentives, including professional growth stipends to encourage staff to improve their skills related to their actual work in the schools (Laguna Beach Unified). Skill improvement should not be based on higher college degrees alone. There should be additional incentives for staff to work in more challenging schools (Title 1) and with challenging students (special needs).

Teachers:

Students don’t care how much a teacher knows until they know how much a teacher cares. –Steve Franklin, MS teacher, LAUSD

Match student needs with teacher strengths. Cultivate a collaborative working environment.

Ensure that teachers are aware of the curriculum requirements for the grades just below and above the ones they teach by using those teachers to coach one another. And give teachers a say in the hiring of their colleagues.

Teaching to the test does not work if students are not well versed in subject matter. Standardized tests do no determine a teacher’s mettle.

Tenure should not be abolished, however the rules should be changed and probation extended. Any changes in Teacher Tenure must be fairly addressed (negotiated) by all stakeholders involved.

Class Size Reduction (CSR) has been proven to not aid student improvement. There has been no bang for the buck. CSR, if used at all, should only be applied where there is the greatest immediate need.

There must be greater collaboration with outside businesses and Work Force Investment Boards (WIBs) to train students in career path vocations.

Evaluations are a two way street. Teachers should be able to evaluate the administrators they work with.

The current practice of un-announced, ten minute visits to classrooms by Principals, must not solely constitute a teacher’ evaluation.

The recent and controversial “value added” system of evaluating teachers (LAUSD) should only be one piece of judging teacher proficiency. Peer review should make up the majority of judging teacher proficiency. “Peers” should include other teachers, union reps, parents, administrators, and maybe former students.

Every school should have effective, teacher driven professional development and common planning periods for collaboration and sharing of best practices.

Reform of education should not be solely on the backs of teachers alone.

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Classified:

Recognize the partnership classified employees provide with our teachers and management to improve the lives of our students and community.

All school districts should be Merit districts (Garden Grove USD) when hiring classified employees in order to prevent rampant cronyism in the hiring process and to assure that the most qualified person is hired to work with our students and staff.

Enhance professional growth stipends/incentives to create a constant learning and skill improvement cycle.

Eliminate classifications based on school site, i.e. Elementary Secretary, High School Secretary. All classifications should be tiered/remunerated based on actual accretion of new and different duties.

Establish a “Maintenance/Custodian” classification at each school site (Laguna Beach USD) to immediately provide general repair and maintenance at each site. This will improve service and safety.

Para-educator career ladders should be established so that our excellent classified instructional aides can become teachers as they learn on the job as well as attend school. This builds a stronger partnership between teachers and their Para-educators (Instructional Aides).

Classified employees must have a representative at each school site council.

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Management:

Administration should make up no more than 5% of a school district budget.

Management must be trained on how to do basic employee discipline and in assertiveness. Without this, bad employees will make probation, creating a bigger problem that upper management and unions ultimately have to clean up, and usually at great expense. Managers that are un-willing or afraid to fairly assert themselves regarding disciplinary issues should be removed.

Consultants should be greatly reduced. Administrators should know how to do most administrative work. If not, they should get trained or not be hired in the first place.

Management must be annually updated on employment law

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School Board Members:

School Board members must strive to communicate regularly and directly with employee organizations regardless of politics. (Brown Act applies)

Board members must become regular and frequent lobbyists with local and state legislators regardless of their political affiliation. Silence = Death—of effective public education.

Board members should not ignore classified employees during site visits or elsewhere. Classified employees are more than just “the help”. They are education partners at every level.

Board members should take a more direct role with students and their families when considering suspension or expulsion.

Board members must ensure the arts and physical education are preserved. Funding could come from district education foundations.

Board members should not be afraid to get involved with local and state education coalitions when fighting for our turf in Sacramento. Don’t be afraid to fight for the students and families you represent. School Board members were mostly not present at recent OC Education Coalition meetings. Why?

School Board members should not be offered health benefits in that they are part-time employees. Those that currently have them should give them up and maybe help keep a Librarian or a teacher or two from being laid off.

School Boards should advocate for Single Payer Health Care legislation (SB 810 Leno) in Sacramento.

Get school districts out of the health care business, and use those funds for students in the classroom.

Students and their families:

Students with or without the support of their families are ultimately responsible for their success or failure in school. School Districts provide them with a chance, not a guarantee. However, school districts can and must try harder in collaboration with the many outside community resources available to assist the less fortunate students who have learning disabilities or behavior problems, and may not have support at home.

PTSO’s and School Site Councils are an excellent resource at each site in directing parents on where to get help for struggling or troubled students.

There must be training for teachers on how to communicate to parents of students who come from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities.

The Raising a Reader, Reach Out and Read, and THINK (teaching, helping, inspiring, nurturing kids) programs in Santa Ana (OC Register), prepares children for Kindergarten and teaches parents to help them. Parent- education classes like these offer a running start for families that cannot afford pre-school and should be emulated in all school districts where there are socioeconomically disadvantaged families.

Students must be offered as part of the available curriculum at all grade levels, a diverse choice of the arts which should include industrial arts as well.

Students must have exposure to a variety of sport activities. One sport should not be predominant.

Students who frequently disrupt classrooms with bad behavior to the detriment of the rest of the class should be removed from classrooms immediately by site administration and given over to professionally trained counselors and therapists either on or off campus to try and get them back on track with compassion.

Bullying of students on campus by other students must not be tolerated. All employees must never look the other way and refuse to intervene (“Not in my job description”). Employees that do so should be trained on how to properly intervene or be disciplined. Noon Duty and Campus Supervisors are the frontline to stop bullying and must be trained how to do so. All school district employees are the guardians of students all the time.

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Future K-12 Dreams:

Poverty and low test scores go hand in hand. Fight poverty by providing a career track for current students so that their children will likely be more successful. Break the poverty cycle.

All stakeholders should convene and create a true definition of what student learning is.

Tiny local districts should consider joining neighboring larger ones for more efficient use of resources. (Not as big as LAUSD though). But work towards smaller schools in bigger districts.

City and School district grounds departments should merge. They both serve the same public interest to keep fields etc. safe and scenic. Cities and School Districts could form Joint Powers Associations (JPAs) for maintenance and operations departments.

Collective farming in parks or school sites should be established to provide healthy, fresh food for students and staff. Irvine and Tustin Unified will be utilizing the Great Park for this.

Get school districts out of the health care business by advocating for a single payer health care system in California and elsewhere. This would free districts from limiting the hours of needed employees to avoid health care costs. This is especially critical with Special Ed. staffing.

Establish community clinics at larger school sites in order to quickly serve the daily and varied medical needs of students. This would be a true partnership with the community that would benefit students as well. (See current pending legislation, SB 56 –Alquist)

Develop a single standard payroll process for school districts through the services of the Department of Education. Currently there are many different and confusing formulas being used in Orange County. Find the best one and stick with it.

Seek consensus on pension (CalPERS &STRS) reform for new hires as did the Orange County Employees Association did through Sen. Lou Correa’s SB 752. Unions and management jointly ratified this deal in 2009. The rest of the state should use this as a template.

Have greater training and facilitation of Interest Based Bargaining (IBB). IBB is a slow but very fair and effective process for negotiations and consensus building.

Establish standard employee contracts with fair trigger mechanisms/formulas regarding compensation regardless of economic times.

How to pay for it all?

Advocate in Sacramento for a fair tax system that does not leave school district funding to the mercy of the ups and downs of the economy. Moderate bipartisan tax reform proposals that enhance revenue in a growing state should be gradually implemented.

Bio

Name: Bob Tucker

Age: 54

Birthplace: Baltimore, MD

Residence in Orange County: 34 years

Family: Domestic Partner, Quan Nguyen, 19 years

Religion: None

Hobbies: Gym, Reading, Politics

Work History:

Current:

· Labor Relations Representative with California School Employees Association in Orange County, 10 years, representing classified employees in Tustin, Irvine, Laguna Beach.

· Personnel Commissioner, Garden Grove Unified School District, 5 years

· Santa Ana Workforce Investment Board (SA-WIB), board member, 2010

Prior work history:

· School Custodian, Huntington Beach City School District, 25 years, and last position there, Head Custodian (“Mr. Bob”) at Agnes Smith Elementary, 15 years.

Activism:

· Orange County Workforce Investment Board, (OC-WIB) member, 2009

· CSEA Huntington Beach #316 Chapter President, 4 years, 1992-96

· Huntington Beach Education Foundation, Board Member, 2 years

· Agnes Smith School Site Council, HBCSD, 1 year

· Pride at Work, AFL-CIO, (LGBT labor constituent group) founding member, 1994

· CSEA, Political Action for Classified Employees, (PACE), 2 years, 1997-98

· CSEA, Regional Representative #12, 1 year, 1999

· CSEA, Organizing Institute, Graduate, 1996

· Center for Collaborative Solutions (CCS) Certified- Interest Based Bargaining,2006

Endorsements:

· Lou Correa, State Senator, 34^th District

· Jose Solorio, Assemblyman, 69^th District

· Phu Nguyen, 68^th Assembly Candidate

· Andrew Nguyen, School Board Member, Westminster Unified

· Jordan Brandman, School Board Member, Anaheim Union HS District

· Barbara Michel, School Board Member, Buena Park Unified

· Orange County Labor Federation

Contact:

· Phone, 949 648-2797

· Email, bobtucker@socal.rr.com

“One person can make a difference, and every person should try.” -JFK

Donations: Just your vote please.