Monique,

Your website has this quote from President Barack Obama:

"No matter what you want to do with your life, I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You're going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You cannot drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You've got to train for it and work for it and learn for it."
- President Barack Obama, addressing students, Sept. 8, 2009

What did you think of the controversy some had with students watching this speech? If you were on the school board would you have encouraged teachers across the district to play it live for their students?

I believe that the President of our country has the right to free speech as any citizens of the USA. President Bush spoke to students in the past and others.
As a school Board member, my responsibility would be to ensure that the address was of a non partisan nature and appropriate to all age levels. Because the speech was delivered close to a national holiday, many administrators and school board members did not find the time to review the speech. Many schools' leaders decided to be cautious. I understand why.
I think there was no harm in waiting for an extra day for the speech to be heard.

Monique,

So now that you have had time to review the speech you would encourage teachers to play it?

The subject of the speech was released long before it was given.

Monique,

Your ballot designation you chose is educational consultant. What does that involve?

Absolutely! President is a very gifted speaker and an inspiration for our children.

For many years, I have organized language and cultural programs for International Students visiting the USA facilitating exchanged between several countries in Asia and Europe. I have had the opportunity to visit many educational programs overseas which gave me a broad perspective of different style of educational environments. In addition, the se experiences have given me an ampathy for anyone trying to learn a different language or assimilate into a different culture. Since I am trilingual in French, Spanish and English, I can be an asset to any Board trying to reach out to their minority learners.
I have watched the implementation of Bilingual Education in many countries and certainly can identify the most successful programs. I have acquired a great deal of knowledge in language acquisition methods.

Through the Caolition of Accountability in Education, I have lead numerous workshops and professional development programs for parents, teachers and educators with emphasis on Title I, Title II, III and most of the NCLB programs. The section 1118 has been a real focus since empowering parents and community has been the pillar of my advocacy work. The implementation of Choice and the SES programs are usually the most requested workshops for our communities of low performing children. The NCLB emphasis of the workshops has made me an expert in the topic and had lead me to be invited to Congress and get actively involved in the reauthorization process. I have been invited to present at many educational conferences by the Department of Education, CACE and others throughout the State. I have served on several advisory committees revamping the SARC, revising academic data and recently participated in the correction of the drop out rate reporting with Dr. Bonsteel.(California Parents for Educational Choice)

Who invited you to speak to congress?

Have you lead workshops for teachers in Ventura Unified School District?

Congressman Buck Mc Keon form the Education Committee.

All teachers are invited to our workshops and yes VUSD teachers have attended my workshops.

Do you support vouchers? Do you think it is a conflict for a member of a public school board to advocate for vouchers?

Which endorsement from someone local are you most proud of in this campaign?

I support Choice under NCLB and Choice of parents and teachers willing to create an improved learning environment through the free public option offered by the Charter schools. We do not have a voucher system in California. The question is therefore moot.

Your campaign site said you helped found a group called "Coalition for Accountability in Education".

Who are some of the local elected officials, activists, or organizations that have helped you out?

I am endorsed and supported by so many well respected citizens of our community that I cannot choose just one. Sorry! And I am proud of all of them!

Have you advocated to create a voucher system in California? We might not currently have a voucher system but many elected officials use their position to advocate for reforms they would like to see put into place.

Would you use your position to advocate for vouchers for private schools?

What do you mean by helped out? I am the founder. What exactly are you asking?

I looked at your website and I don't see any local leaders. I am not very familiar with Ventura but who in your district has endorsed you?

Have any notable elected officials, activists, nonprofit leaders, teachers, or other people well known in the community endorsed you?

Monique,

The website says it is a statewide grassroots organization.

What support for your organization is there in Ventura? Are any elected officials, activists, PTA type organizations, or nonprofit leaders supporting it?

What do you think of the the local PTA organizations? Are you currently a member of a local PTA?

Sorry, my cursor jumped on submit.
Marcos Vargas, Excutive Director for CAUSE.
Please keep on checking my website as I am updating the information. Thank you!

Have you worked with any of the current members of the board on a successful project or assignment before? What was your role?

You might have missed my follow up so here it is again:

Have you advocated to create a voucher system in California? We might not currently have a voucher system but many elected officials use their position to advocate for reforms they would like to see put into place.

Would you use your position to advocate for vouchers for private schools?

I heard that you once drove a van with a bullhorn outside the home of a local education official. What's the backstory to what I heard? Did that really happen?

Do you think it is too hard to fire a teacher? What do you see yourself doing as a board member to hold teachers and administrators more accountable?

Do you have any ideals on how to hold students and families more accountable too?

I have been a member of the PTA in the past, I have served on the board of our local school PTAs as well as School Site Councils and ELACs which are governing committees at school sites. I am a supporter of any parent/ teacher/faculty/community organizations (PFA, PTO etc...) committees or associations who will actively seek betterment of our educational system.

I believe all stakeholders in Education should be responsible and accountable to our children.
Is it too hard to fire a teacher? yes, under current contracts' restrictions, it is very hard to fire tenure teachers. Younger teachers on the other hand are easily disposable due to the seniority system. I find it unfair to get rid of passionate, newly trained and highly qualified teachers solely based on the lack of seniority.

In my view, the accountability should also rest on the Principals and District administrators. I hear so many teachers complain of a lack of support from their leadership. I would love to start an assessment process for administrators and District officials made available to the public and includ it in the SARC report.

Parents and Community: Parents are required to sign Compacts. These contracts are too weak. The Parent Involvement Policies are not compliant to NCLB requirements in many instances. Board Members have the responsibility and the duty to vote on policies written by parents and not District staff. Parents Students and Community members should be invited and commit to write policies in conjunction with District administrators. School Board members need to ensure that proper training and proper information are given to the community in order for these policies to be most effective.
Parents and students need to take ownership of their school results as well.
Truancy laws as an example should be explained and consequences enforced for the good of the child. Parents work well with the system when they understand the consequences or ramifications of their actions. ex: Extended vacations damage the continuity of the educational plan of the child while putting a burden on the teacher.
A Board could request for a committee to take on the task and help with this accountability piece.

I have worked with 4 of the 5 current Board members.
As a Ventura Education Partnership Board member, I have served on the Grant disbursement committee for teachers and staff of VUSD for five years. I also worked on the fundraising committee organizing the Festival of talent raising over $100,000.00 a year.
For the benefit of the District I wrote and submitted a federal grant for the support of the two way immersion program.
I participated in the grant writing process of the healthy school project, bringing salad bars and healthy meal choice to our underprivileged children.
I facilitated trips for Title I parents and escorted them by private plane to conferences.
I served on the VUSD PAC (VUSD Parent Advisory) for four years A along with Mary Haffner.

During my last campaign, a group of supporters and friends decided to drive their personal antique bus around to publicize my candidacy. I rode on it a couple of times, it was a fun party bus and I appreciated the support of all!
The route was aroud downtown.

Monique,

What is Ventura doing to close the achievement gap? What changes in this funding environment do you think are feasible to make progress?

Is there another local school district that has an innovative program that you would like to see?

Do you support dual immersion language programs to help all students become bilingual? Would you support schoolwide programs to help all students become bilingual in English and in Spanish?

As a reminder any comments, criticisms, or feedback belong on the open entry below this post on the front page of my blog.

I moved a comment from here to there. That isn't a judgment of the value of the comment but just me sticking to my format.

Thanks for reading and commenting.

I support bilingual or trilingual programs with proven track records. All children can learn new languages young. The human brain is not equipped to learn languages late in life. Yes, I support effective programs showing bicultural abilities and biliteracy before the end of 6th grade. VUSD has a dual immersion in place already. Is it effective? Are our EL students in the dual immersion program out performing their counterparts? Not if you look at the longitudinal data. VUSD has now created another dual immersion program at Will Rogers in failing status (PI 5) Why did they put the program into the worse performing school? Why didn't they decide to start the dual immersion into our higher performing schools like Poinsettia, Mound school for example where students are expected to perform well and are raising to the challenge? English only children could then be given the opportunity to learn and speak Spanish, all students would achieve at a higher level with higher standards for all.
The emphasis of the program has to be put in the English acquisition piece as long as our State tests are given in English. Too many of our EL students are lacking the English foundation. See AYP results of 2009 on www.cde.ca.gov
27% of our EL children cannot read and write at a C level or above of their grade standards. That is a huge deficiency and a huge gap. Let's revamp our curriculum and monitor the real progress. Let's not use TWI programs to delute the results and mask our deficiencies. I also disapprove using bilingualism as an excuse to create revenues when a District does not show a track record of progress. I will support quality bilingual programs for all children delivered with rigor and high expectations with proper monitoring of the results.
One of the incumbents (John Walker)is promoting the insertion of a third language, Chinese. How can he suggest that our District tackles this task when only half of our total student population is proficient in English? He inspired himself with the Oak Park School District who has made sure that 85% of their students are highly proficient in English. Let's start by duplicating their effort in the English domaine before imitating them in bringing a third language to our community.

As in nearly every other facet of American society, Americans value having choices and don't want to be limited to one-size-fits-all. I believe students and parents should be able to choose from a variety of high quality schools. Vouchers do not have the political support to be viable in California, so I don't plan on spending any time on the Board on voucher programs. I strongly feel that a Board member should concentrate on the imediate changes necessary to give our children a chance. If Choice is what VUSD parents want, Board Members need to be pro-active in offering flexible programs (such as magnet programs or open classroom programs) to address the needs all the different learning styles of our community of learners. IF Charters schools is what VUSD Parents want, school board members will need to be open and welcoming to these requested Choice of our community. These volunteer and free programs allow a District to attract motivated and involved parents, a key element conducive to higher achievement.

RE:As in nearly every other facet of American society, Americans value having choices and don't want to be limited to one-size-fits-all.

You have hit the nail on the head, Monique....the very reason we don't want obama running our health care, or union indoctrinated teachers and administrators being the sole education providers.....

You don't like the system? Then make the choice to send your kids to private schools.

RE:You don't like the system? Then make the choice to send your kids to private schools.

No....then the choice dictators will still be dictating THEIR choice to everyone else...using OUR tax dollars....so stop taxing us and we will leave your broken and oppressive system

Too bad, Andy! You enjoy the benefits of public education, you pay your fair share of the taxes. If that's too much for you then I suggest you look into emigrating to a place where you won't have to pay taxes. There are plenty of them out there.

Funny, how the places with the highest taxes are also the places where people don't want to leave, where they enjoy a high quality of life and where the state makes certain they're not preyed upon by insurers, corrupt bankers and far right politicians. We only seem to get immigrants from low tax and no tax countries.

RE: Too bad, Andy! You enjoy the benefits of public education, you pay your fair share of the taxes.

How come teachers don't pay their fair share of social security taxes....

300,000 active california teachers pay no social security taxes

190,000 retired california teachers went thru their whole teaching career without contributing a dime to america's social security

RE: Funny, how the places with the highest taxes are also the places where people don't want to leave,

Ever hear of NY city?

Anyway it's time to get union thugs out of government....get the unions out of our school systems, police stations, and fire departments, cities and counties

Why should CA teachers pay SS taxes? Why aren't you paying more into SS? Why should teachers pay into a system that benefits YOU but not them? Why should CA teachers pay for your retirement? Isn't that socialism?

NY City? It's the place everyone who wants to make money wants to go. Just cause YOU don't like NYC doesn't mean its not a magnet for capitalists and their money. But you're right...the taxes are high and that doesn't prevent the doers and movers from bidding up the cost of housing and office space.

On the other hand, how do no-tax places like Alabama, N Dakota, Moldavia, Albania and others fare? Not too well, Andy. Smart businesses don't want to work out of places that have poor transportation, bad cops, no firefighters, no public education, little govt services and unreliable supplies of water. Those things cost money, commensurate with how much you want out of them.

We can all pay less if all we want is lousy police protection, less firefighting coverage, and future generations of ignorant, jobless kids & young adults milling around the streets. But most of us want more.

But you want less. That's fine. That's a valid desire...to do with less.

Andy and GS:

It is my understanding that many teachers, who worked in the private sector prior to being public school teachers, paid FICA taxes into social security and lose out on social security benefits once they become public school teachers. Some have even fulfilled their full "quarters of credit" obligations under the program indicating they would be eligible for full benefits if they were disabled or reached the age requirements to draw on the program.

Many teachers also may work side jobs during the summer or in the evenings and pay social security taxes.

If they met the contribution metrics, should they be eligible for social security or not?

I would think they should be.

*Stop being "post insurgents" and posting on the Live Interview post. Major blog foul.

Monique-
Thank you for representing our voice in Congress! You have worked hard to have our values and standards heard. Good luck!

Mary Walther