Catherine Crystal Foster, candidate for PAUSD School Board
Why are you running for school board?
What skills and experience do you bring to the role of school board member?
What are the biggest strengths of PAUSD?
What are the biggest challenges of PAUSD?
How can you implement change in a district with a strong culture of school autonomy?
Is PAUSD ready for the Common Core and new California test?
How should PAUSD move forward from the OCR resolution?
Should PAUSD open new schools to ease overcrowding?
What should PAUSD do with Cubberley?
What is one thing you want Palo Alto voters to know about you?
Why are you running for PAUSD School Board?
I’m running because I love this community and I want to help every student in PAUSD thrive intellectually, socially and emotionally. I’ve devoted my entire professional career to helping children and youth to improve their lives, to improve their education and their life chances.
I see the possibilities of this unique moment. We’ve got a new superintendent, new principals, new academic standards and new funding policies. This is an exciting opportunity for Palo Alto to innovate, communicate, and bring the community together to help every student maximize his or her potential. I have the policy experience, the legal experience, the evaluation experience and the collaborative spirit to make the most of this opportunity and I would be honored to use those assets to benefit every student in PAUSD.
Considering the three domains of board responsibility- administrative oversight, policy setting and judicial oversight- what are the experiences and skills you bring to be an effective school board member in these areas?
I’m particularly well qualified for this job because of the breadth of experience I’ve had. I have spent the majority of my professional career in the policy arena, including policy analysis, policy advocacy, policy advising, or policy evaluation. So the board role in policy making is something that suits my interests, my skills and my ability.
For example, I worked for Children’s Defense Fund to analyze the California state budget and its impact on children. After the governor put out a proposed budget, I would comb through it, read the legislative analyst’s report, and talk to community based groups, stakeholders, agencies, and legislators to really understand what the budget would mean for kids in California.
I’ve also done a lot of work in education policy. I was the co-lead evaluator for Communities for Public Education Reform, where I worked with community organizers, advocates and researchers around the country to make sure schools were serving low-income students of color effectively. My role was to gather information so these groups could advocate before local school boards to implement successful ideas.
In Washington DC, I drafted the local implementing legislation for major federal welfare reform. In this role, I worked with a variety of variety of stakeholders, including agencies, legislators, community groups, and attorneys to craft legislation that would serve children, youth and families in the most effective and compassionate way.
I’m also a lawyer by training, and I’m the only candidate who has a legal background. This expertise will enable me to understand the legal issues that are facing the district, to navigate judicial decisions, and to understand how legal opinions may impact the district.
In terms of the financial oversight, I’ve run a non-profit organization, balanced budgets, hired staff and raised revenue. I also ran my own consulting business for 15 years. So the financial aspect of the role is an area where I am also quite comfortable.
What’s your vision for this school district and how is that aligned with from the vision that PAUSD just released last spring?
Talking about vision is critical. My vision is that we have a district that is as innovative and nimble and creative as Silicon Valley itself. I would like to see a district that helps every single student reach his or her potential, intellectually, socially and emotionally. And the way that we do it is through effective and outstanding teaching that inspires every student to learn and to be prepared to live in the global world.
My goals and my vision are extremely well aligned with the district’s vision and the strategic plan, but I would put more emphasis on the whole child. As simple as it seems, I would like our students to be happy, which could mean being engaged and stimulated by their learning.
We also need to create a district culture of constant learning and improvement. This means that at all levels – district/administrative, principal leadership and teacher, we are learning and getting better. I also have the vision of a district that communicates proactively, clearly and effectively to bring the community together.
The last aspect of my vision is collaboration. Our district will do its best work when it collaborates internally and we have a clear through line from pre-K to elementary to middle school to high school and beyond. We also have a tremendous opportunity to collaborate externally in PAUSD. We have a wealth of community-based organizations and non-profit organizations, along with businesses, which would love to work with our talented students.
For example, we should have more service learning embedded into our curriculum through collaborations with local environmental organizations so students in a biology class could connect what they learning in the classroom to the outside world.
We also need to create more high school student internship opportunities. Right now our students tend to find internships through personal connections, but Palo Alto should create an equitable situation where these opportunities are open to all students.
And we should collaborate with higher education. We have Stanford across the street from Paly, but we also have Foothill College down the road. There’s a high school nanotechnology program that we are starting in partnership with Foothill. We need more opportunities like this where students can collaborate with higher education institutions.
What are the biggest strengths of PAUSD?
We have some excellent teachers, and we have a school culture that is geared toward caring about children and learning. And that sounds like a given, but in my experience doing education policy work across the country, you cannot take this district commitment to success for granted. Our schools are safe, our community is strong and our parents are engaged and supportive of their children’s learning. Palo Alto parents give generously through PIE, through PTA and other means, which is a huge gift. And we have strength in our new superintendent.
What are the biggest challenges of PAUSD?
The challenge is that there are certain programs in our schools that are very strong, but they need to be spread more broadly. We feel excited about the innovative programs in Palo Alto, such as the maker space at Barron Park, the STEM fair at Escondido, the fantastic civics curriculum in Duveneck, the wonderful support for voluntary transfer families at Walter Hays, the journalism program at Paly, and the robotics program at Gunn. But the question that needs to be asked is, “Wouldn’t it be fantastic if some of these ideas were replicated elsewhere in PAUSD?”
How do you implement change in a district with a strong culture of school autonomy?
I think that’s a very important question, as it goes to one of the core tensions and opportunities in our school district. It is challenging to deal with autonomy within a unified school district.
There are tremendous benefits to being a unified school district. The school board and superintendent can impact the trajectory and the pathway a student goes through from kindergarten to high school. When a child arrives at high school in Palo Alto, we often know where they’ve been so we can make a difference along the way.
To take advantage of our unified district, we need to listen, learn, and lead. We need to listen – to hear what’s needed across the district and learn what’s working well and not. Then we need to lead and take action.
We need to bring people together around our shared aspirations. We now have a clear vision statement and a strategic plan with implementation directives. We have a superintendent who seems to be action-oriented and has a demonstrated ability to lead. What we need on the board are people who will approach their work as a unified school board leading a unified school district. That doesn’t mean everybody saying yes all the time, but the board needs to come together to best serve students of Palo Alto.
A learning institution like PAUSD must always evaluating, learning, iterating, improving and repeating the process. But that does not mean that we engage in endless conversation. Instead we should make decisions, put practices in place and rigorously and objectively evaluate to figure out what to tweak or change. For example, with the new homework policy, we need to evaluate its results before we know if it is effective.
We want to balance centralized direction with local innovation, but there are issues where there isn’t room for that. The bullying policy is one of the areas where there has to be consistency across the district, and parents and teachers need to know the rules and where the accountability rests for implementing them.
Is PAUSD ready for the Common Core and new California test?
The Common Core is both an opportunity and a challenge. What’s beautiful about Common Core is it gives us the opportunity to deeply examine what we teach and how we teach it. It gives teachers new professional development opportunities to get out of the classrooms and to see what is going on outside of Palo Alto.
The essence of Common Core is critical thinking, deeper learning, and more applied reasoning, which are great directions for PAUSD. I worked with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on a project called Core to College that looked at how to use testing to line up the exit doors from high school with the entrance doors to college to ensure that colleges. It’s an exciting thought.
The challenge is our teachers are very busy but they have to learn new ways of thinking and adapt to new materials, which is going to be difficult. There are some teachers who are embracing Common Core, while others are still trying to figure it out what it means. Common Core is more than buzz words; it’s a huge positive shift that is the result of work by expert thinkers around the country over many years. But it’s going to require time for Palo Alto to implement it well.
The new testing is going to be a process too. People might not have loved the California standards test, but it was a consistent longitudinal measure that we could use to track progress over time. Now it is gone so our ability to gauge progress is limited during this transition. Another challenge will be communicating with parents that the high scores they are used to seeing may not show up right away on the new test.
There will also be a lot of viewpoints about these changes in Palo Alto, as we are a very international community with families who come from all different learning structures and cultures. We also need to figure out how it’s going to work for children with special needs so they can benefit from this new way of thinking and learning. We have to communicate well and often to make sure the roll out happens well for Common Core and the new test.
We’re also going to have hiccups on the logistical side because the tests are computer based. Even though I’ve been told we have enough Internet bandwith and equipment, we won’t know for sure until the testing happens.
Our technology adoption in Palo Alto needs to be linked to specific district goals and have clear implementation plans. I’ve been talking to current high school students and recent graduates as part of my campaign efforts. One of the things I’ve heard frequently is that buying those iPads was the stupidest darn thing. It’s funny because you’d think the kids would love them, right? These are just stories and not data, but they provide insights about our approach to technology in Palo Alto. Technology needs to be linked to student learning and clearly aligned with our strategic plan.
How should PAUSD move forward from the OCR resolution?
PAUSD must move forward by complying fully with OCR requirements, communicating clearly and openly with the community about OCR proceedings, and cooperating fully with OCR. Consistent with my 20-year record of child advocacy and working for social justice, I stand firmly in support of federal and state laws and district policies that protect our students from bullying, discrimination, and harassment. If elected to the school board, I will not support spending district funds to fight with a civil rights agency.
PAUSD has not been as transparent with the community as it could have been, and did not have uniform, effective policies to deal with complaints of bullying, discrimination, and harassment. I am pleased that the district has improved its policies and is making a commitment to greater transparency, and I hope that the remaining open OCR cases come to a swift and just conclusion that benefits and protects our students. We all want every PAUSD student to thrive in safe and welcoming schools. As a community, we must move forward and bring our community together in productive and respectful dialogue to support our shared goal of excellent education for every PAUSD student.
*please note that this response, which was revised on September 30, 2014 is an update to what was originally posted on September 14, 2014.
Should PAUSD open new schools to ease overcrowding?
In order to provide the small class sizes and manageable school environments that help our students learn and thrive, PAUSD should open a new elementary school and a new middle school in the next several years and should begin active planning now. This is not a simple process, however, because of decisions about location and cost. Fortunately, while our District is growing as a whole, elementary enrollment growth was flat last year and again this year, and we have increased some elementary school capacity. These factors brought some short-term relief in elementary schools but do not solve the underlying problems.
Palo Alto is facing mounting budget pressures as a result of recent state policy changes, increases in operating costs, and enrollment growth in secondary schools. Opening a new elementary school is an expensive step, which includes loss of rental income, construction costs, and additional costs of about $700,000 per year over and above teacher salaries. A new middle school is even more expensive.These decisions would require trade-offs against other spending for our students, and have long-term implications, so we need to make our decisions in an informed and careful way. In addition, one of the potential elementary school sites that the district has discussed is not located where our enrollment is growing, and there are limited options for a new middle school. We should make sure that our plans for locating and paying for the 13th elementary school take into consideration the need for another middle school, and the need to find a location for it.
Given all these complexities, I am in favor of investing in student supports that improve the learning environments for students in our existing schools, and working immediately to create a vision and revenue plan for both elementary and middle schools so that we can open both a 13th elementary school and a 4th middle school promptly and in a way that best serves our students.
What should PAUSD do with Cubberley?
The school district should engage in collaborative, joint discussions with the City on this unique and valuable local resource, negotiate a lease extension, and immediately follow the recommendation of the Cubberley Community Advisory Committee to create a comprehensive needs assessment so that we make the best long-term use of this shared space.
Cubberley should be a vibrant, attractive place for our community and students, and we should look for innovative, “outside the box” uses of the land and buildings. Negotiations should also include other sites like the Ventura property to maximize benefits for the school district and students. I would advocate for any construction at Cubberley to permit use as a school site in the future.
What is one thing you want Palo Alto voters to know about you?
Collaboration is a core value of mine. I collaborate well, I do it often, and it is something I will do if I’m on the school board. For example, when I was leading an organization called the Peninsula College Fund, I realized that there were other local nonprofits that were also working to help low income kids complete college so I invited them to brown bag meetings where we could exchange best practices, talk and learn from each other.
It’s important for us to bring a collaborative spirit to the board and to think about ourselves as a unified school district and as a unified community. To be effective, we need to find common ground with people who don’t always agree. My business is called Policy and Advocacy Consulting and I know that to be a good advocate, you push for certain things, but you have to achieve your goals while preserving relationships for the future.
I love to connect people and ideas. And I don’t do it because I’m going to get something back later, I do it because it’s fun and also because it works. Better together- that’s what people should understand about me.
Visit Catherine Crystal Foster’s website to learn more.
