A school board position comes with great power; it must also come with great responsibility

SSF City Clerk Rosa Govea Acosta (left) swears me in for my first full term as a Trustee for the South San Francisco Unified School District Board on Dec. 13, 2018.

On Nov. 6, voters re-elected me to a new term on the South San Francisco Unified School District's Board of Trustees after I had spent the previous 2.5 years filling out the term of the late Rick Ochsenhirt. I had been elected to a two-year term in 2016 after being appointed earlier that year, and this election netted me a full four-year term -- as well as the most votes among eight candidates (thanks everyone!).

Last month, former Trustee (and current South San Francisco City Clerk) Rosa Govea Acosta ceremoniously swore me in (above) and I got down to work with my new colleagues. They honored me with their votes and elected me to the presidency of the Board for 2019.

Being president gives one a soapbox, and in my Dec. 13 inaugural address, after a page of thanking voters, my colleagues, and my family, I drew upon the inspiration of the recently-departed Stan Lee, and reminded my colleagues on the Board that while student learning is our primary responsibility, we can’t other ignore situations in which we can help, because the costs down the line of not doing so will be great:

I enter this new role, and I’m sure trustees Flores and Richardson enter their new positions with similar feelings, mindful of the words of a great author who recently left us: “With great power, there must also come great responsibility.”

When Stan Lee wrote those words in 1962, he may not have had school boards on his mind, but the lessons apply to them just as well – there is possibly no greater power in our society than that of those who shape the minds of our next generation, and certainly there is no greater responsibility than that next generation’s care and safety.

Think of what happened in that famous issue of Amazing Fantasy where the phrase was first used and think how it applies to our role: Peter Parker, high on his own hubris after gaining great power and focusing on his own wants, refuses to help a security guard stop a robber despite being in a prime position to do so. That decision later results in tragedy for Peter’s family, as that robber later killed Peter’s uncle Ben.

So it is with the school board. We must not revel in our roles and become insensible to the needs of others. Our authority is narrow, but influential. We need to be aware of what our staff, our families, and, above all, our students, require, and we need to work together as a team to get it to them.

We all enter this position with our own expertise, passions, and ideas for the future. But ultimately, we as a Board must work as a unit, with our guiding principles directed by our LCAP, which was put together in consultation with our community, and is continues to be updated in consultation with all our stakeholders.

As a District and Board, we have made great strides over the years, but there remain challenges. For example, we have a teacher shortage. We have an achievement gap. We have seen complaints in the community about test scores at certain schools. But what do those test scores really measure? They don’t necessarily measure a teacher’s ability to teach or a student’s ability to learn. But test scores are  good measures of poverty and socio-economics -- especially in a District such as ours that is de facto segregated by income.

If you measure our students to like students in similar districts, however, the South San Francisco Unified School District acquits itself very well. As Dr. Moore wrote in the San Mateo Daily Journal yesterday, we are committed to offer the support students need to achieve equal outcomes, and that’s why our Board’s key focus has been – and must continue to be – equity, not necessarily equality. We need to get the most help to those students who most need it, and, as this District transitions to a neighborhood-based election system, we need to ensure equity remains a concrete part of our District’s culture going forward.

Our challenges are exacerbated by the high costs of housing in our region, which affects everything in our District: teachers and classified staff, who find it difficult to stay in our District or sometimes even in education as a profession altogether with what we can pay; Our students, who sometime have parents who can’t help with homework because they work multiple jobs and are either out working or too fatigues, and; families worried about housing security, resulting in instability that affects their students’ performance.

Our job is to educate those kids, but I think it is also our imperative as a District and a Board to advocate for our families. And by that, I mean both the families of our students and the families of our teachers and staff – two groups, by the way, that are often one and the same.

Unlike Peter Parker, who refused to stop the robber because it was “not his job,” we can’t ignore situations in which we can help, because the costs down the line of not doing so will be great. So, I challenge our cabinet and my fellow Board members: remember that while student learning is our priority, we must be able to help our families if we have the means to do so.

Some examples of what we can do:

•        We can discover what additional financial resources we can offer to help those we employ, funded by school finance reform measures such as efforts to close commercial loopholes in Prop. 13.
•        We can advocate for our school families before local planning officials to convince them to allow sufficient affordable units in northern San Mateo County in order to blunt rent prices.
•        We can continue and expand parent education programs, such as English classes for parents at Los Cerritos
•        We can expand after-school care options at our high-demand campuses

Finally, whatever one's opinion is on the development in our community, everyone agrees that the schools need to be ready for a changing, growing population. This means we need to ensure we have the capacity, both in terms of staff and structures to accommodate those new students.

If we can implement strategies such as those I just mentioned, more parents can help with homework, fewer students will feel insecure, and more teachers will stay with our district and become even more effective in the profession. Those positives will result in better outcomes for our students.

Because when you come down to it, this job comes down to doing what is right for Ian, Charlotte, and the more than 8,000 other students in our District.

We have the great power, now let’s show that great responsibility.

For video of the meeting, click here.