Thursday, November 30, 2006

SF Today - Senator Jackie Speier exits public office, CA School Board Members shmooze in a Chilly San Francisco

The blogging life of a school board member in San Francisco is never dull. 5000 or so school board members from all over the state [there are some 1000 school districts represented] are meeting here for the 75th Annual California School Boards Association conference.
After patting my sleeping daughter on the head at 7am and kissing my elementary school teacher wife goodbye I headed out for the CSBA delegate assembly meeting. We are the 200 or so person policy setting body for CSBA. One of our veteran board members Jill Wynns is our region's representative to the CSBA Board of Directors and I serve on the CSBA delegate assembly.

FAREWELL TO SENATOR JACKIE SPEIER
We voted on our new CSBA officers and heard from Senator Jackie Speier on her last day of her 25-year service in public office. Speier had just lost a close race on Nov 7th for Lt. Governor and is now termed out of office.
"Leadership is tough," she said.
"You are not there to rubber stamp. Work to craft new opportunities for the children. If you are not standing on the edge, then you're taking up too much room," she said to a standing ovation of school board delegates.
WORKSHOPS; CHALLENGING ENGLISH ONLY TESTING
Afterwards I went to uesful workshops on parcel tax campaigns [Larry Tramutola and Associates], reflections on governance team: the superintendent's perspective, superintendent searches, and an informal 'table talk' on the do's and don'ts of blogging.
During lunch I had the pleasure of chatting with Pajaro Valley Unified school board members who are part of a 10-district Californians Together lawsuit filed last year against the state of California challenging the state's English-Only testing system and NCLB.
Coachella Valley Unified School District, et al v. State Of California, et al,
I will be having dinner with one of the lawyers in the case this evening to hear an update as well. The conference continues through Saturday afternoon.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

From the time of her shooting at Jonestown to now, Ms. Speier has a lot of guts. She will be missed.