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The Job Ahead

We as a board worked hard to develop goals that will take our district to the next level.
Below are areas I personally will continue to push for when re-elected.

Delivering Student Achievement

  • We will increase student achievement in ELA and Mathematics by a minimum of 2% per year at every school as measured on the California School Dashboard (here it is important to note that while our high school graduation rate is 89.6% only 43.5% of our students end up prepared for college and career, meaning we are graduating a large number of students who are not ready for the future - our academic standards are too low).

  • We will increase our College and Career preparedness rate at all of our high schools by 2% per year as reflected on the California School Dashboard (note that college and career readiness is among the worst for our Hispanic students, where only 30.6% are prepared. We need to change this)!

  • We will replace failing programs such as the Dual Language Immersion Program at Schilling Elementary (where over 70% of the kids are performing below state standards in English) and replace them with programs that help ALL kids achieve.

  • We will actively promote STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, &  Math) in our district, and designate/promote Schilling Elementary as our first STEAM magnet school.

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Guaranteeing Safe and Healthy Learning Environments

  • We will update/revitalize each school’s Comprehensive Site Safety Plan to include student and staff wellness and to address the metrics below.​

    • Suspension/Expulsion Data: Fights,Drugs,Cyberbullying,Vandalism

    • Attendance Rate/ADA

    • Chronic Absenteeism Rate

    • Student Discipline Referral Numbers

    • Counseling/Mental Health Services provided

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  • Based on these metrics, the district will create an associated online Safe and Healthy Learning Environments Dashboard to track key metrics, which will guide our efforts in making all of our schools safe and welcoming.

    • The district will refresh its Facilities Maintenance Plan (hopefully with added funds from our school bond initiative) for the provision of clean, safe, secure, and well-maintained classrooms and facilities, with quarterly progress reports to the board.

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Promoting Parent and Community Engagement 

  • We will work with principals to revitalize, support, and broaden involvement in Parent Teacher Organizations (PTOs) at each school with the goal of increasing parent/community voice (not just the loudest ones), which will inform our educational programs. We will request that PTOs provide updates to the board when their schools are agendized for School Spotlights.

  • We will rethink the Local Control and Accountability Planning (LCAP) process. Over many years, this important board advisory committee has had significant turnover, with resulting gaps in leadership, representation, process, and supporting data/metrics. We need to get back to basics and begin a benchmarking effort with other successful LCAP efforts in California so that we can bring these best practices to our district. Based on our findings, we can then put together the right team and processes to ensure that board goals can be properly adopted at the local (site) level.

  • We will continue to promote and expand two-way parent communication through increased use of the ParentSquare platform, which automatically translates messages to the parents’ preferred language. We will establish formal processes where key district communications and policies are regularly posted and updated here, versus paper-based alternatives.

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Restoring Fiscal Health

  • We will build on the work done in 2023 to

    • Eliminate the structural deficit

    • Balance the budget, including strategies for:

    • Increasing revenue (e.g. ADA, enrollment/capture rate, sale/lease of surplus properties, etc.)

    • Reducing costs (e.g., departmental budget controls, procurement efficiencies/cost savings, improved employee utilization, etc.).

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  • The goal will be to achieve a right-sized organization and an ongoing balanced budget with a 6% reserve.

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Building a Positive, High-Performing Work Culture

  • People are an organization’s most valuable asset.

  • We need to formalize a program and processes to recruit, hire, train, and retain the best employees moving forward.

  • We also need to understand what would make the best and the brightest come to NUSD:

    • Healthcare

    • Competitive salaries

    • Dynamic culture

    • Professional development

  • We will then raise the funds to implement these benefits.

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