Much at stake in Santa Rosa school board race

Five people are vying for three open seats on the Santa Rosa City Schools board, which makes decisions for the largest number of students of any district in Sonoma County.

Board members elected in November will be tasked with overseeing the operations of the elementary and secondary school districts, both of which are experiencing big changes under new state policies and the leadership of a relatively new superintendent, Socorro Shiels.

Those changes include rolling out new academic standards called Common Core and fine-tuning a comprehensive spending plan created under the state’s new Local Control Funding Formula. They’ll also have to help implement a number of initiatives identified in the district’s new strategic plan, completed last winter.

And, should two bond measures pass, they’ll be responsible for prioritizing how $229 million should be spent.

The race includes three incumbents: current president Bill Carle, clerk Frank Pugh and director Ron Kristof. The challengers are Omar Medina, a county eligibility worker, and Mike Kallhoff, CEO of United Way of the Wine Country.

Medina, 35, is the youngest candidate. He said he is running in the hope of providing better representation for southwest Santa Rosa, where he grew up and attended school. He also wants to see better Latino representation on the board.

Currently, Laura Gonzalez is the only person of Latin-American heritage on the seven-member board, despite about 44 percent of secondary school students and 59 percent of elementary school students being Latino.

“To me, it would be nice to have someone to address the needs of Spanish-speaking parents,” Medina said.

That need was evident after the death last fall of Andy Lopez, who attended Cook Middle School until shortly before he was shot and killed by a Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy. “That brought out a lot of tension,” he said. “As part of the healing, I think we need to make sure people know they’re being listened to, have someone who can represent their concerns.”

He also wants to help Santa Rosa City Schools administer its new approach to discipline, called restorative justice, which seeks alternatives to suspending students who act out. Last year, he helped the district pilot program at Elsie Allen and Cook Middle School as a member of the North Bay Organizing Project’s education task force. He previously ran for the school board in 2004 when he was still a student at Sonoma State University.

Kallhoff, meanwhile, said his experience with his two daughters, one a sixth-grader at Sequoia Middle School and the other a freshman at Maria Carrillo High School, motivated him to run.

In the four years his girls have been enrolled in Santa Rosa schools, he said, he’s seen a large number of students from other parts of Santa Rosa coming to northeast Santa Rosa schools, presumably because those schools are considered more desirable.

“It’s hindering the resources teachers have to work with when families that would have been invested in the school are leaving,” he said.

If he’s elected, he said, he wants to work to make all schools appealing choices for families, something he thinks his career has qualified him for: “As a nonprofit CEO, I’ve spent most of my career working on providing equality for everyone.”

He added that administering United Way’s budget of $3.5 million across five counties has taught him to make the most of scarce resources and prepared him for making hard decisions about the district’s budget.

Kristof, a retired Santa Rosa City Schools high school teacher, is running for re-election after serving one four-year term. He says he sees a lot of unfinished business, such as ensuring that all schools get the resources they need to succeed through the district’s new spending plan and continuing to roll out the restorative justice discipline model.

He also said the district must continue to adjust to a rapidly changing population that will include more Latino students, more students in poverty and more foster children.

He said the most important aspect of school board governance was transparency in making big decisions such as how the new strategic plan and potential bond measures are implemented, as well as how the district evaluates its new spending plan.

“It really has to be something we discuss with parents, the community,” he said of how bond dollars would be spent. “The worst thing that can happen is that this is a top-down decision.”

Carle, a lawyer and winery co-owner, has served on the school board since he was first elected in 1998, when his sons were attending Santa Rosa schools. He said the most important issue he sees before the board is the continued rollout of the new strategic plan.

That includes expanding partnerships with nonprofit agencies through a model known as community schools - a concept that all candidates said they support.

Another priority, he said, will be making sure the public has a chance to weigh in on how bond money is spent should the measures pass. The district has identified the need for far more projects than the bond could pay for.

The district should also try to stretch the bond dollars it receives by seeking matching funds from the state, he said.

“On the one hand, there’s ways to stretch the (bond) dollars and on the other hand, we’ve got to make priorities for the things that need to be addressed soonest,” Carle said. That will include consulting with experts and holding public hearings where the community can weigh in, he said.

Pugh, a counselor and instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College and father of two Santa Rosa City Schools graduates, is the board’s longest-serving member, first elected in 1990.

He said he offers something unique: representing the district’s interest at the state and national level. He was the 2010 president of the California School Board Association and is currently an elected member of the National School Board Association.

Pugh said he, like Carle, was proud of the district’s new strategic plan, particularly its focus on preparing students to enter the workforce or attend college without the need for any remedial classes or training.

“One of the huge issues you hear from (state colleges and universities) is that many students aren’t quite ready,” Pugh said. “This strategic plan is the first one we’ve ever worked on that talks about college and career ready.”

Pugh said another top priority for him would be ensuring the district has a high-quality staff by making sure teachers and other employees have attractive salaries and benefits to make Santa Rosa competitive with other districts. Carle supported this idea, too.

“I think we have an excellent staff now, but I’m worried about the future,” Pugh said.

“It’s gotta be one of the highest priorities.”

Staff Writer Jamie Hansen blogs about education at extracredit.blogs.press?democrat.com. You can reach her at 521-5205 or jamie.hansen@press?democrat.com. On Twitter @jamiehansen.