Vanguard News 1. To improve the students learning experience, we need to emphasize our mission on education. Vasquez High School has three classrooms devoted to sports, but it does not have a library. The ill-planned closure of the Acton School placed a class in what used to be the library at Meadowlark, closing it. The overcrowding and excess spending on non-educational items closed the library at High Desert. The control of the curriculum was given away to the teachers' union and the test scores show a steady decline. All these decisions must be brought back to the community and made by the community's elected representatives, the School Board - not by employees, administrators and consultants who are usually not from our community.
2. Many current teachers within the district are qualified to bring our schools back to a “Distinguished” status with competent administrators, supervised by a pro-active Board. Without question, the superintendent was unqualified to run the district and a failure during her short term, and she is now gone. A major issue will be the selection of a new superintendent. The Vasquez principal is the third within a year, and his performance will bear close scrutiny. The Meadowlark principal quit and has temporarily been replaced by Margaret Gonder, who retired as principal of Meadowlark. The board will have to search for a permanent principal for Meadowlark. If the administrators cannot return our schools to “Distinguished” status, then we need to replace them until they do. We lost our distinguished status for Acton School over 15 years ago. Dr. Wagner then closed Acton School, with the highest API scores in the district.
3. As to how I am definitely uniquely qualified, I am the only graduate of our school district running for the School Board. More seriously the local school system and its success means a lot to me. I spent the last 25 years working in the financial field and intimately understand accounting and dealing with government bureaucracies. I've always supported a quality, local school system, and for that matter a quality community independent from both the Antelope Valley and the more urban portions of the Santa Clarita Valley. For more information on what I have written, see my website http://www.vanguardnews.com or call me from 10:00AM to 9:00PM at 800-773-5228 or e-mail me