BY BRADEN CARTWRIGHT
Daily Post Staff Writer
Math advocacy, suicide prevention and international elevator manufacturing — Palo Alto school board candidates are bringing a wide range of experiences to the race.
Three candidates competing for two seats were asked at a debate how they’ve “worked collaboratively with diverse stakeholders to achieve a complex objective.”
Shazam co-founder Avery Wang said he’s mostly known for his math activism and advocacy against eliminating advanced classes in Palo Alto. “But at the same time, I have studied performance data among many demographics, looking at trends and looking for reasons why performance has been dropping,” Wang said at the debate on Oct. 5, hosted by the Palo Alto Council of PTAs.
Elevator safety project
Tech executive John Craig said he deployed a safety system for elevator manufacturing first in Korea and then Japan, China, Australia and finally India. Craig said it was a five-year project that involved groups from many countries, with real-time translation. Craig said he had to adapt the safety system to local laws, regulations and practices.
“Particularly, the Japanese and the Chinese didn’t like working together very much. But by the end of it, the different perspectives were valued,” Craig said at the debate.
Track watch
Classroom aide Linda Henigin talked about her experience organizing volunteers to sit by the Caltrain tracks in an effort to prevent student suicides.
Henigin said she worked with mental health experts to do training, nonprofits to offer logistical and financial support, and police to make sure volunteers were safe.
“So this was really a whole town-wide project and a community-wide project that brought together a variety of stakeholders to get people at the end of the day in their yellow vests with their flashlights at the tracks — in the dark, in the cold, sometimes in the rain — to show care for our young people,” Henigin said at the debate.
These three candidates are really more of the same, they know nothing of managing a superintendent to manage a school district. I have witnessed a steady decline in the quality of a PAUSD education over the past 10 years, and we cannot blame COVID-19. Enrollment is dropping, not because housing prices are out of control (they are), but because the quality of a PAEA education has plummeted. I would like to back that up with statistics about private and home school enrollment numbers but I could not find good data. Regardless, seeing the current board begin the school year by rubber stamping another cookie-cutter superintendent to reap the millions of dollars in pay and benefits to manage and not lead indicated what kind of school year PAUSD was going to have. Top that off with seeing PAEA President Tom Culbertson whining about administrator pay and defending huge pay raises, it was cringe. I will be keeping an open mind, though, hoping for true progress in enrollment, community, and quality.
Self governance is not easy, so I applaud John and Avery. All they want is to transparently survey all the damage within PAUSD and then collaboratively find solutions. Are there more qualified people in Palo Alto, maybe, but did anyone else willing to grab PAUSD by the horns decide to step forward? No, so that is that. In my opinion, John and Avery are the best of the 3 because status quo is absolute non starter. All you really need are people who actually care and are brave enough to dive head first into what might be one of the toughest years in PAUSD recent history. The community, the superintendent, “new” management and the unions need to work together to support the new board members in whatever way possible because it is about children. What are you teaching the kids if we cannot put aside differences, address the real problems and solve them together? Experience is not the end all be all. Take a good hard look at the dysfunctional, incompetent leadership in California. The 5th largest economy in the world, with all that tax money, somehow cannot provide the basic essentials to our most vulnerable population. Who remembers the 24 billion that was supposed to help the homeless population? What happened, homelessness gets worse, then no one could make the receipts add up and yet no one has gone to prison. Sounds like another big money laundering scheme like the “train to nowhere”. To me that’s the epitome of too much experience. We need to work together and support each other. We are all in this together and it is the right thing to do. Good luck John and Avery!
How do you expect teachers to contribute in a positive way since the board is claiming they passed the recent disastrous wage increases under threat of a strike. Who’s telling the truth here?
Who was threatening to strike? I know Shounak is saying the union threatened a strike. But the union denies threatening a strike, and no strike-authorization vote was ever taken. That’s a matter of record. And the unions and district never reached an impasse. Never. So who was talking about a strike? Or was Shounak making that up as his weak defense for approving these disastrous contracts?
Did the union say there would be no strike regardless? Of course not. This is the first time I’m believing anything Shounak says.
Besides, there’s nothing preventing the teachers from agreeing to give back part of their raises to help eliminate the district’s budget deficit and avoid potential layoffs. Don’t hold your breath on that one.
Correction – impasse was declared on June 1. While there are several mandated steps between impasse and a strike, the union accepted the district’s offer within a few days.
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Definitely John and Avery…..new blood, with some experience from the outside….looking in at the issues with the system!