About this site

I am currently a Governing Board Member of the San Carlos School District, elected November 2007 and again in November 2011. 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.

 

February 2012
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The New Budget Roller Coaster Begins

A few days ago, the Governor released the first version of his proposed 2012-2013 budget. It will cut nearly $5 billion to public education if the voters reject the Governor’s plan to raise taxes in the fall (which will require a ballot initiative because 2/3 of the legislature will never vote for it). [...]

The Most Hopeful of Times?

Over the last few days, I attended the annual CSBA Annual Education Conference, which is the main event for school board members around the state. This year the event was in San Diego (but back in San Francisco for 2012). Like previous CSBA conferences, one of the more frustrating parts is not being [...]

Rallying the Troops

It’s hard to attract a lot of folks to an event on a Monday night, in the rain, to discuss education finance. But this Monday night almost 200 people attended the Educate Me! event we held at Mustang Hall. Hosted by Educate Our State, a parent-led advocacy group, the night was about making [...]

Educate Me! An Event to Fix California's Broken Education Finance System

I’m proud to be involved in organizing a fabulous event. I will be speaking there, but more importantly, you will hear from organizations such as Children Now and Educate Our State! who are building a growing movement and creating initiatives to fix our broken educational finance system. Many of you have seen my [...]

Missing the Big Picture

Welcome back to school! This year started with a lot of excitement, promise and some ambitious goals — including kicking off a set of community conversations and learning on 21st Century Learning and Global Education as well developing plans to meet the growing facilities capacity needs of the district.

However, there was one lingering issue [...]

Why SCEF is so successful

We just received news that the San Carlos Education Foundation has — once again — reached its fundraising goal for this year and — once again — reached an all-time high for money raised for San Carlos schools. SCEF raised over $2 million this year, a truly outstanding number, particularly when you realize that [...]

End of Year Update

Friends and Supporters,

As has been my custom, I am sending an end-of-the-year update to summarize the happenings in the San Carlos School District. It has been a remarkable year in so many ways (and you may have read my periodic blog updates), but I will try to summarize most of it here. On a personal [...]

Elbow Room

At last Thursday’s Board meeting, we had a very important and overdue discussion about our facilities planning. As any parent in the District knows, our schools are crowded! We will have over 3,200 students next year in a set of campuses that were designed to hold something closer to 2,600 students.

The [...]

Budget Roller Coaster May Be Ending It's Ride (for now)

It’s been quite the roller coaster ride this year in terms of the California state budget and its likely effect on education:

In January, the governor’s budget proposal largely spared education from the budget axe, but it was based on an assumption that the legislature place (and the voters approve) a ballot measure in June extending [...]

May Revise – Clear As Mud

Three weeks ago, I posted the Superintendent’s note which summarized our budget situation. At the time, the uncertainty over the state budget had estimates of cuts to school districts anywhere from $349/student to $825/student. This would translate to a need to cut another $1.3 mil – $2.6 mil from the San Carlos School [...]