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 Education Competition Myth

The education publication eSchoolNews just published a second article of mine, entitled “The Education Competition Myth.” The genesis of this article was from all of the comments I received from parents and other school board members from my first article last year, “Why Education is Not Like Business.” Although this piece was somewhat [...]

Welcome to Our New Board Members

Last night we finished a process that we kicked off last month to appoint two new school board members from the vacancies created by Carrie Du Bois and Mark Olbert who each successfully ran for other political positions in the middle of their school board term. We had seven applicants for the appointments who [...]

Suing Your Brother

Although in many ways this is the perfect illustration of “inside baseball” and something that I’m sure most San Carlans were not aware of, the San Carlos School District was involved — along with the Sequoia Union High School District and the San Mateo County Community College District, in a lawsuit against the San Carlos [...]

Victory, and Next Steps…

Although the election isn’t officially “certified” for a few weeks, the results are in. Thank you to all San Carlans for your overwhelming support for my candidacy. The final results from last night are:

SETH A. ROSENBLATT – 2,628 (40.9%)
ADAM RAK – 2,377 (37.0%)
PETER TZIFAS – 1,418 (22.1%)

Congratulations to my soon to be [...]

Do you Want to be Board Member? (Redux)

Also on the agenda for last Thursday’s board meeting was a discussion about the process for filling potential board vacancies after the November 8th election. Although the current board — by definition — wouldn’t be the one actually making any decisions on this matter, it seemed prudent to get some preliminary information to inform [...]

The Most Important Unimportant Number

California parents, prospective parents, education professionals, and other caring citizens often wait anxiously for the one day each year that they found out how their school performed in the annual API (Academic Performance Index) reports. Today was that day. Once again, San Carlos schools performed exceptionally well (although due to a computer glitch, [...]

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 [...]

When Traditions are Just Dumb

Last Thursday night, the School Board discussed the new proposed Wellness Policy for the district. This was a product of an SCSD Wellness Committee formed nine months ago. The committee was comprised of school and district staff, a board trustee, parents and community members (including a pediatrician and dietician), and they were charged [...]

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 [...]