WHY I'M RUNNING FOR THE SCHOOL BOARD.

By Joseph Paul Perricone

I believe with my 28 years of being self-employed and operating a business I can bring common sense and an "out of the box" method of thinking and apply it to our school district.

My name is Joseph Perricone and I'm running for the Alpine School Board. My primary goal is to help the district get through these times of financial uncertainty. Its much easier to be on a board when times are good and the money is abundant - when you can afford to wait and see how things shake out. But in these times of budget cuts and California near bankruptcy a school board needs to be PROACTIVE!

That means in these hard economic times you can't just hope that things will get better or that the State or Federal governments will send more money. The fact of the matter is all the school districts are having to do more with less. Thats easy to say but much harder to put into practice. I have had to keep a business running when the economy has been soft, to make the tough calls as to what to cut and still keep your quality of service at a high level. This requires common sense and an "out of the box " strategy to accomplish this.I believe I can use these business skills and apply them to the Alpine school district. Our kids deserve to attend clean schools and have quality teachers. We must do everything possible to keep these budget cuts away from ALL of our kids.