League of Women Voters of California Education Fund
Santa Clara County, CA November 7, 2006 Election
	Ina K. Bendis Answers Questions Candidate for Trustee; Santa Clara Unified School District; Trustee Area 2

The questions were prepared by the Leagues of Women Voters of Santa Clara County and asked of all candidates for this office.
Read the answers from all candidates (who have responded).

Questions & Answers

1. How would you determine that the schools are using federal, state and local funds wisely and fairly and how would you report your findings to the community?

Our children, parents, teachers, and community rely on the District Board to make the responsible and cost-effective choices in allocating precious funds. The great diversity of our community enriches our School District, and challenges us to meet the needs of all students.

My education, expertise, and experience make me uniquely qualified, among all the candidates for Trustee positions on the Board, to add value to the Board's wise and fair decision-making process. Specifically, my Stanford Business School education, my consulting experience in cost-benefit analysis and change management in commercial and nonprofit settings, my leadership experience on Boards and in organizations, and my decision science expertise will enable me to contribute in a needed and meaningful way to the Board's funding analyses and decisions. In addition, my medical practice and medical management expertise will add value to the Board's decisions on health issues, an area of inquiry that has taken much of the Board's time and attention in recent years.

Finally, I believe that all leadership work, especially Board work, requires teamwork. My participation in Board decisions will involve contributing whatever knowledge, wisdom, and opinions I have to offer, listening to my fellow Trustees' perspectives, and working together to come to a wise and fair decision that takes all students' needs into account. Therefore, I will participate in and support the Board's determination as to the most effective way to report findings, recommendations, and decisions.

2. Are the schools offering instruction appropriate to the diverse educational abilities of all the students?

Our recent API scores show that we are not meeting our students' diverse needs. While our overall scores continue to increase, our African-American students' performance did not increase, and our students of Pacific Islander descent backslid considerably. http://api.cde.ca.gov/APIBase2006/2006Growth_DstApi.aspx?cYear=&allcds=4369674&cChoice=2006GDst2

In addition, there continues to be a vast difference in API performance, as well as student and parent perception of school desirability, among our various schools, especially at the elementary school level. The fact that placements in Milliken and Washington Open must be made by a lottery in which hundreds of District children lose out on an educational opportunity that their parents feel would best serve their needs means that, by definition, we are currently not serving the needs of those students. The parent participation and support philosophies of these schools support not only best-practice education, but also family values and family unity, which are so important to child development. One of my goals, if elected, is to expand opportunities at the Elementary School level, for children and parents to enjoy the advantages that these wonderful programs have to offer.

Finally, many of our best students leave our Unified School District between the time of their graduation from Elementary School and their entry to High School. Some parents send their children to private high schools, and some even move to other Districts so their children can attend other High Schools. This is a clear message to the Board that we are not currently filling the felt needs of our diverse community. We must improve our High Schools' college preparatory academic programs, increase our students' access to top quality vocational education, achieve a 100% pass rate on the exit exam for our High School graduates, and create an atmosphere of respect, responsibility, and passion for learning in our High Schools.

3. Where do you want the District to be five years from now? What steps should the District take to get there?

My first goal is that every child's educational needs will be fully met. This means that the children in every cultural and ethnic segment of our diverse population will not just experience academic "improvement." Rather, it means that every child will be academically challenged to perform to his or her best ability, and that families will be motivated to participate fully in supporting their children's learning. This, to my mind, constitutes true academic "excellence" in a School District, and it is my goal for every child in our District.

To achieve this goal, our Unified School District must take more advantage of its "Unified" character. Specifically, our Unified School District must be "unified" across all dimensions - Vertically, Horizontally, and Cross-Culturally. I will explain below what these terms mean in the context of our particular District, and how the various aspects of our school system fit into this construct.

1. Our Unified School District must be more "Vertically Unified."

Every "Unified" School District faces a great challenge, in having to achieve educational excellence at a minimum of 13 different grade levels, from pre-reading level to "ready for college or employment," and must do so in Elementary, Middle, and High School settings. With this great challenge comes a great opportunity, in being able to structure a fully integrated learning experience from pre-K through pre-college/-work, which robustly prepares our young people for a responsible, successful, and fulfilling adulthood.

In a perfect world, each child in a "Vertically Unified" School District would experience a smooth, seamless transition from each grade level and school level to the next. Realistically, especially in transitioning from one school setting to another, there are necessarily some bumps in the road. In our Unified School District, we must strive to make the transitions less rocky and less disruptive to our children's educational experience.

The philosophy behind our new Don Callejon K-through-8 school is a wonderful step toward vertical integration. By combining elementary with middle school, we have created a truly vertically unified pre-High School setting. The Don Callejon children will have to change schools only once during their education, literally halving the "culture shocks" they will experience, and teachers across all grade levels will be able interact and communicate on a daily basis. For District children who attend our other schools, we must strive to minimize the culture shock they experience as they progress from one school level to the next, and maximize the interaction among their teachers and administrators so that academic transitions will be smooth.

The most obvious aspect of the "Vertically Unified" concept is the academic component. The much poorer API performance of our High Schools, compared to our lower and middle schools, shows that we need to do better in providing a Vertically Unified education. But an equally important aspect (in some ways even more important because without it, best practice education is impossible), of this involves diminishing the "culture shock" of entry into High School, and part of the solution at that level is regaining the atmosphere of respect, politeness, comportment, and general good behavior that should characterize every educational setting in which teenagers grow into adulthood.

As is true for any goal, attaining this goal will require thoughtful fact-gathering and analysis, benchmark comparisons, and creative problem-solving. We need to seek input from students and parents who have experienced the full range our our programs from Elementary through High school, and from our teachers and administrators at all levels, to enable a continuous quality improvement process in our goal of achieving a Vertially Unified School District.

2. Our Unified School District must be more "Horizontally Unified."

Although all of our schools, at each grade level, have the same "curriculum," our students are not equally prepared for their next level of education regardless of the elementary or middle school they attend. This means we need to create more "horizontal unity" so that children at every school have the same opportunity to shine as those at our most sought-after and best-performing schools.

Our District's API scores show less discrepancy among schools at a given level -- Elementary, Middle, High School -- in comparison to San Jose, the Unified School District that is geographically and socioeconomically closest to ours. Yet, there is still a wide range in the academic performance of students in our various Schools, with some schools performing at just above the 700 level and one close to the perfect 1000 mark. Of great concern is the fact that though our District as a whole met its API goal and some of our schools improved considerably in their API scores, others backslid as much as 33 points. http://api.cde.ca.gov/APIBase2006/2006Grth_dst.aspx?cYear=&allcds=4369674&cChoice=2006GDst1

Our community's diversity, and the differences between the student populations served by our various schools account for some of this discrepancy in performance, but we need to do a better job in delivering our "unified curriculum" in a more consistent way across all of our schools, at every level.

Finally, the fact that we are forced to fill the spaces in our highest performing schools by a lottery that excludes literally hundreds of students each year means two things. First, that we know how to deliver an education that rivals any public or private school system in the State. Second, that we are failing our parents and children who are ready to commit to the rigors of a top academic institution by not providing enough Basic-Plus and parent-participation choices. To me, a waiting list that is literally hundreds of families long, desiring for school settings that we know how to provide, means that we have a moral obligation to meet this felt need for more of our students and their families.

3. Our Unified School District must be more "Cross-Culturally Unified."

Our community is enriched by its great racial, religious, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity. Meeting the varied needs of our diverse population is an awesome challenge for our School District. While some of our demographic segments continue to improve in academic performance, others have not. For example, though our English learner students' scores improved remarkably, our African-American students' API scores did not improve this year, and our Pacific Islander students' and socioeconomically disadvantage students' scores deteriorated. (See above)

We need to partner more effectively with parents and community leaders who represent each of our ethnic populations to better meet our students' needs across the board. We also must address more effectively and cost-efficiently the special needs of our disabled and gifted students, so that each and every student is challenged appropriately to achieve his or her best potential.

4. How to achieve these goals

As an educator in change management at the post-graduate level, and as a consultant in change management at the corporate and nonprofit level, I know that effective change requires partnership, cooperation, and respect. In my course in High Performance Leadership at Stanford Business School, in which I achieved "Honors" recognition, the most important thing I learned was that great leadership is all about empowerment.

If elected, I will partner with City and County government, with student, parent and teacher groups, and with local community leaders who represent and understand the needs our various diverse sectors. I will listen to, respect, and empower the wisdom of the community.

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Created from information supplied by the candidate: September 25, 2006 17:14
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