Candidate Introduction

By Erik C. Lyon

Let me start by first acknowledging that although I do not have children of my own (yet) I am helping with raising two very wonderful girls. One who is getting ready to enter the school district soon, and am planning to have my own children in the next year who will also be entering the Chico Unified School District (CUSD), so I have a vested interest in the future of the CUSD, and seeing that it continues to be as successful as possible, and that improvements also continue.

I currently work as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist at a non-profit agency providing school based mental health services to at-risk youth. This position has allowed me to work closely with families and the children who attend our schools, as well as teachers and staff who work tirelessly within the school system. My job allows me the opportunity to work with children who are at-risk of failure and struggling to achieve their personal goals, including sometimes just graduating. My job affords me the chance to help these kids be more productive and successful with their own goal attainment.

I would be very honored and proud to work along side, and with, the people who make this community's educational system so successful. The teachers and the administration involved with CUSD are part of a dedicated group of staff and personnel who have created a continuingly improving school system here in Chico.

As a member of the school board, I aim to help continue this progress and success, as well as help to make the Chico school system even better. I see my role on the school board as one that is not aimed at running the schools, but to insure that schools are well run. We need to make sure our schools and our children are given the best opportunity to succeed.

I do not see my platform as having a specific agenda per se; however there are things I would like to see continued progress with. My primary goal is fiscal responsibility. My position working within the schools, without being an employee of the school, has allowed me to objectively see where there are strengths as well as areas where there is waste and inefficiency. I do not see this waste as being a major problem, but any savings made could equate to a saved teaching job. Small areas of continued waste, adds up to a lot of money over the expanse of all the schools within the school system.

I also would like to increase communication within the school system and increase parental involvement. I see where we need to build bridges between the families and the schools, whether those bridges need to be more "supportive" or more "accessible" is what I plan to find out, and then act upon. It is not the school's job to raise our children, and encouraging more parental involvement can only improve an already great school system and community.

Lastly, and not the least of which, is prevention. I have been working with at-risk kids within the school system for 5 yrs, and have seen the benefits of programs like the one I work in. I see kids who feel hopeless and without direction, at-risk of dropping out of school or expulsion, turn their paths around. I've seen kids go from being on the cusp of dropping out of high school to going to college; a life choice of social dependence to vocational independence. The success of programs like school based mental health services is staggering, and something that could be expanded to every school so that more kids can achieve the success that they want, but feel is out of their reach without more support. The fiscal impact of these programs for city's and the state could dwarf the cost in savings over the long run.

This is a very important time and we are at a critical juncture financially. It is very much within the realm of possibility that we could loose control of our school to the state, and then we would loose our autonomy and an important part of the community's personality and sense of pride; which could take years to undo. It is imperative that this does not happen, and I will do my personal best to try to help our school system become more fiscally neutral and an institution that Chicoians can, once again, feel secure in.