Why change in education must come from the bottom up

As the challenge of educating and providing for the well-being of our children continues to grow, so does a popular storyline: That the problems facing our schools originate in Washington, D.C., or our state capitols, and therefore that is where the solutions lie.

I think that is wrong and a cop out. The solutions can often lie within our individual school districts and school boards, which for too long have failed to show the leadership needed to address the profound challenges facing our children.

Too often, our local leaders choose to point the finger and place responsibility for solving these challenges at the feet of others, all the while rubber-stamping the status quo or shirking the controversial questions of the day as they focus on personal agendas or loyalties to local interest groups.

We've seen it on the issue of school safety in the years since the Sandy Hook massacre. Instead of making the safety of our children a priority amid the gun violence epidemic, most school districts quickly went back to business as usual and chose to stay as far from the broader political debates as possible. The Martinez Unified school board wouldn't even do something as basic as pass a resolution calling on state and national leaders to address the issue with action, as as at least one neighboring district did. As a result, there was little or no pressure on national leaders to solve the problem once and for all, and school shootings and violence have only grown in the years since.

It is time for school boards to stand with children and not behind them on the issue of safety.

There was another opportunity for change after the Parkland, Florida, massacre last spring when students across the country, including right here in Martinez, stood up and demanded action that has been missing for so long. But once again, school boards such as our own showed no willingness to wade into the broader societal issue and chose instead to tell our students, "We hope your generation fixes this." Instead of passing the buck, imagine what might happen if school boards across the state and nation banded together to place relentless pressure on state and national leaders to fix the problem of gun violence and make our schools safe? 

The issues surrounding sexual harassment and assault stemming from the #MeToo movement have provided another opportunity for school boards to take the lead on addressing the prevalence of this problem in their own schools, where it surely exists. But as with gun violence, it's so much easier to chalk this up as a societal and not a local issue and pay it little more than lip service. School boards could be on the front end of revamping their sex education curriculums to adapt to the changing realities and awareness around this issue, but it's so much easier to simply wait for direction from the state or national government, which is often slow to come, if it ever does.

In the area of school funding, we see how much easier it is for districts to simply point the finger at the state or national governments for failing to provide enough money to meet their needs, instead of taking a hard look at ways to root out waste and inefficiency in their budgets and ensure that our tax dollars are spent efficiently and with an eye toward achieving the most impact for the most students. Our school board leaders often seem to expect blind loyalty on the part of taxpayers to entrust them with more money without showing that those dollars are being spent transparently and wisely in a way that places the interests of students and taxpayers first. And to the degree that a lack of funding is a problem, why aren't they doing more to pressure leaders in state capitols and make clear to legislators that they demand more support from them? 

Our school board leaders often cast themselves as being above politics and partisanship, which gives them cover from dodging the divisive issues that directly impact our schools. But in reality, they often align themselves with local interest groups, whether they be business or labor oriented, that may place their interests and priorities ahead of those of our children. I saw that first-hand last spring when, amid the tumult of school safety concerns and an exodus of teachers from our district, our board in Martinez decided to prioritize a project labor agreement sought by local trade unions that had given two board members thousands of dollars in campaign contributions (one board member called the negotiation process a "money grab" and a "crock" because of how one-sided and unfair it was to the interests of district stakeholders). In the case of the West Contra Costa Unified School District, this type of blind allegiance to campaign contributors and interest groups led to widespread waste and mismanagement of a construction bond program that resulted in the fleecing of local taxpayers, many of them from working or middle class backgrounds.

When I called on candidates for the MUSD school board in this election to take no contributions from outside interest groups that could directly benefit from their votes so that there would be no question that the interests of taxpayers, students and staff come first, one of the groups that benefited directly from the project labor agreement still found a way to try to influence our elections: by spending over $4,000 through an independent PAC expenditure on a mailer for one of the board members (my opponent) who had offered them blanket support, never mentioning in the mailer their motivation:

It is time to elect school board members who will stand with -- and not behind -- our students who are demanding action on the issue of gun violence and school safety. It is time to elect school board members who will do more than pay lip service to the big issues facing our children and will roll up their sleeves and tackle these issues head on with innovative programs and initiatives. It is time to elect school board members who are humble and committed enough to spend as much time acknowledging and trying to solve their district's shortcomings and failures as they are in trumpeting its accomplishments. And it is time to elect school board members who are NOT beholden to local interest groups that stand to benefit directly from their votes, regardless of what it means for our district and the people it directly serves. 

In short, it is time for change to start coming from the bottom up. As we should all know by now, waiting for Washington or Sacramento to solve our problems is a losing strategy.