Candidate for
Governing Board Member; Hacienda La Puente Unified School District

I believe that we must restore the dignity and respect for teachers that has eroded over the years. Teachers must have a minimum of a Bachelor's degree plus 30 hours just to be employed in the state of California. New teachers cannot survive on entry level salaries. Many of them graduate college thousands of dollars in debt. Educators are the single most important professionals, teaching potential doctors, lawyers, engineers, astronauts, inventors, and yes other teachers and professors. Teachers are liflong learners who constantly have to study and continue to educate themselves, yet they are the lowest paid, least respected of all professionals. We must attract the best and the brightest and pay them well to retain them. Recruit, Retain and Retrain teachers.

Mandatory testing: has created a situation whereby the benchmarks have become the objective. I will work to change or modify mandatory testing to allow teachers to be creative and teach our students critical thinking and problem solving skills. With good critical thinking and problem solving skills, they will excel on tests.

School Safety: As we have seen in the Columine and Virginai Tech massacres, school safety is a very important issue facing public schools and colleges today. Much of the violence is rooted in bullying and harrassment of many students on our campuses. I support zero tolerance on gangs, drugs and bullying. I will cooperate with local law enforcement to establish a safe school zone that encompasses a minimum of 4 block radius aroung each school, which will bring stiffer penalties for crimes committed within the safe school zones.

We must spend more on education and less on Prisons. If we priortize education and concentrate on reducing the dropout rate, there would be fewer of our precious resources wasting away in prisons.