My Vision for PUSD

In order to address the growing challenges facing Poway Unified today and make improvements for all children in Poway Unified, we need to:

1) Increase Teacher Pay

We must pay our teachers more in order to attract and retain quality teachers. For the 2024-2025 school year, Poway Unified teachers did not receive a cost-of-living adjustment. In other words, all teachers received a pay cut when accounted for inflation. Instruction is Poway Unified's core offering, and instruction affects student performance more than anything else. Therefore, we must invest more in instruction, not less.

2) Increase Transparency

The public school system belongs to the public. As such, crucial information must be publicly available. For example, even though the 2024-2025 budget is 150 pages long, it does not contain information about the spending breakdown for individual programs. Without that information, it is impossible for the public (or even the Board) to know the effectiveness of the programs. To successfully balance the budget, cost effectiveness of each program must be studied.

3) Increase Public Engagement

For anyone that has attended school board meetings in recent years, it seems obvious that the Board is not receptive to public comments. In fact, the Board doesn't even seem interested in hearing them! Public comment has been cut to 30 minutes total regardless of how many members of the community are willing to take the time to provide feedback. This is not how public comment is supposed to be received, and this is not common practice in other school districts. I practice in front of the California Public Utilities Commission, and the five Utility Commissioners routinely spend hours listening to public comments -- there are no restrictions for how many speakers are allowed to provide feedback.

4) Increase Accountability

The Board needs to stop placing blame on external factors -- the state budget, the superintendent, the community for rejecting the bond. The Board must take ownership of Poway Unified's performance and any failures. As a Board member, I will accept full accountability -- the buck stops with the Board.