CSBA’s wildfire mitigation bill part of long rebuilding effort

n October 2 of last year, EdSource published the first entries in its series titled “California’s Homeless Students: Undercounted, Underfunded and Growing,” offering a bleak look at the effects of a lack of stable housing on more than 200,000 children in California — a number they report has grown 20 percent since 2014.

On October 8, six days after these reports about the expanding crisis of homelessness were published, the Tubbs Fire started at 9:45 p.m. Seven minutes later came the first sparks of the Atlas Fire. The Nuns Fire began eight minutes after that.

Twenty-two days later, by the time Cal Fire declared the Northern California fires fully contained, 5 percent of the entire housing supply in Santa Rosa, California, was gone. Another 569 homes in Napa, California, were reduced to ash.

I am the superintendent in a northern California school district. We have a strong negotiation team, one that follows the direction and mandates of the board at the bargaining table. Our local teachers union has requested that our board come to the table to negotiate. I would like to get your thoughts on this issue from a good governance perspective.

Protecting students from school employee predatory behavior

ecently, reports of sexual misconduct, harassment and assault committed by powerful and influential players in show business, the corporate world and government have become rampant. Such reports from schools nationwide have become alarming, especially as they occur more and more between teachers and other school personnel and underage students. During this school year alone, there have been reports of such unlawful behavior in California, Oregon, Montana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Texas.

In an article published in the Washington Post on January 20, 2015, Terry Abbott, a former chief of staff to the U.S. Secretary of Education and now chairman of a communications firm which tracked news reports of sexual misconduct by educators for more than a year, confirmed this troubling trend. Abbott’s firm ascribed the increase in occurrences to the almost-universal access students have to social media, text messaging and other private and unsupervised modes of communication. School boards and administrators must be vigilant to keep students safe from the reprehensible and criminal behavior of a few bad apples among the teaching corps and other employees to which the students are entrusted. Reasons abound as to why a school board should take steps to protect students from these perpetrators, and the following are just a few.

Is your district engaging?

our years ago, in a particularly long board meeting, I recall reviewing the first draft of our first Local Control and Accountability Plan, and thinking: “We’re supposed to engage our stakeholders with this?” If I wasn’t excited to read (what would turn out to be) a “svelte” 50-page document chock-full of acronyms and education-eze, I knew parents and employees wouldn’t be either.

I also recall the sting of our recently failed bond measure, and the nagging feeling that the few-month outreach effort to convince the community to invest in better schools was too little, too late.

I focused my frustration on a solution: the original LCAP Infographic. I donated it to my district and soon had superintendents around the state asking if I could help them with their own version of this tool, which helped better communicate LCAP goals and progress to the community. Fast forward to today, and we’ve helped close to 100 school districts and county offices of education across California better engage their constituents with hundreds of LCAP Infographics. This work, which requires deep distillation and familiarity with each LCAP, has given us a unique perspective on district LCAP content, and perhaps more importantly, LCAP engagement.

Talking tech with Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi

ech entrepreneur and investor Hadi Partovi is the founder and CEO of Code.org, a nonprofit working to bring computer science into the lives of millions of students through curriculum resources, teacher professional development, the global Hour of Code annual event and more.

California Schools sat down with him to hear more about how to better prepare students for success in the 21st century.

What is the mission of Code.org?

The mission of Code.org is for every school to offer high-quality computer science classes and to increase participation in the subject, especially among women and underrepresented minorities. When most people think about the value of teaching computer science, they think about jobs and technology, especially in California with the massive opportunity in terms of careers in technology, but what really drives Code.org is the fact that computer science is foundational for all jobs. Today, 70 percent of all current jobs in the U.S. are somewhat digital in some fashion and that’s only increasing.

School inclusion program decreases bullying, increases student success

o walk onto the Standard Middle School campus at lunchtime is to walk into a true circle of friends. At this sixth- through eighth-grade Bakersfield school, special education students called “friends” and general education students called “peer friends” are paired together through the Circle of Friends school inclusion program to help foster friendship, provide students with examples of appropriate social behavior, spread disability awareness, encourage tolerance and decrease bullying.

Inspired by the peer role model partnering system of Link Crew programs, Standard Middle School’s Circle of Friends was started by language arts teacher Kayla Coronado and special education teacher Brittaney Lewis. “Peer friends” are trained to model appropriate social behavior and around 70 students join together once a week to eat lunch, play games, tell each other jokes and just have fun. The program has also led field trips and other activities.

CSBA’s Masters in Governance (MIG) program equips board members and superintendents with the knowledge and skills to build and support an effective governance structure. The following graduates have successfully completed the program, gaining essential knowledge for being an effective governance team member.

Menlo Park City ESD
Stacey Jones

Merced City ESD
Adam Cox

Merced Union HSD
John Medearis

Milpitas USD
Daniel Bobay
Modesto City Schools
John Walker

Moreland SD
Mary Kay Going

Ocean View SD
Efrain Cazares
Michael Conroy

“Describe a great boss. Someone for whom you have worked. Someone who inspired you to set and reach stretch goals.” This is a thought that I often present to governance teams when I have been asked to guide their self-evaluation, and the subsequent evaluation of the superintendent.

alifornia Schools recently sat down with new National School Boards Association President and CSBA Past President Frank Pugh to hear more about his NSBA presidency and his storied career in public education.

As a Santa Rosa City Schools board member for the past 28 years, a member of the CSBA leadership team for more than 20 years, and a counselor and applied technology instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College, Frank Pugh is no stranger to public education advocacy.

Tell us a little bit about your background.

I was educated in public schools in Chula Vista, Calif. I put myself through college by working summers in a shipyard as an electrician’s assistant and got my degrees at San Diego State University in Industrial Studies. In 1978, Ann and I got married and we were both planning to begin our teaching careers in San Diego when Prop. 13 passed and changed the funding mechanism for schools. So, we left our hometown and both took jobs at Porterville Unified School District where Ann taught kindergarten and I taught industrial arts at Porterville High School. A year later, we relocated to Santa Rosa where I am in my 39th year at Santa Rosa Junior College. I have taught electronics and applied mathematics, and now I am a full-time academic advisor and counselor. My whole career has been under the shadow of Prop. 13 and the tremendous negative impact that it’s had on the ability for schools to get themselves fully and fairly funded.

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Debbie Stephenson, Accounting Specialist