Josh,

Why are you running?

Josh,

How do you plan to balance your first year at UCLA with your elected official duties if you're elected? Having just gone through it, the first year of college is a grind.

Brian,
The reason I’m running for school board goes back to my personal high school experience: I waited 4 years for change to happen in California education after leaving the defiler of innocence known as middle school; in other words, I waited for Superman. But he never came. So, I'm drawing the line here; the current generation of students is losing their future to obscenely large class sizes, a destitute job market, skyrocketing costs of college, and leaders who just look the other way. I want to give hope to them, and show them that they too can seize the future if they speak out and act. My campaign isn’t so much about me as it about bringing the student voice to the forefront of the local, state, and national education debate that is currently taking place. You can’t have student-centered reform or bring the education focus back on students without consulting them and bringing them into the discussion. I'm running because I have hope that students can both address and help change the problems and inequities of our educational system.

Nico,
As far as time commitments go—I will make time for the district. I may have to forgo many leisure activities and events that constitute the “college experience” in order to commit to the SVUSD, but that is nothing more than what we ask our students to do in order to achieve academic success in our schools, so if I didn’t, I’d be a hypocrite. It sets a good example if the leader is willing to personally share in the hardships of their followers, but our current leaders do not appear to be doing that. A tone of mediocrity is currently being set by some of our leaders, and I seek to change that. I believe that serving our district is not only worthy of, but also requires self-sacrifice.

Josh,

What do you want local schools to do to decrease bullying in our schools?

Josh,

What do you see as the solution for reducing the class sizes?

Mr. Galanti, how do you plan on achieving a balance between updating schools technologically and keeping the budget that the school's have intact?

Josh,

What other issues do you see within our schools, besides overcrowding of the classroom, and how would prioritize them? In addition how would you gain support for these issues?

Brian- Sorry for the slow response. Because this is such an important issue, I wanted to make sure I didn't gloss over it and give a poor answer.

First, we have to look at the causes of bullying before we try to take action. Treating the symptoms without treating the causes of the bullying won’t do any good. Bullying happens quite often because students feel insecure about themselves, don’t have respect for the human dignity of others, and many students don’t report bullying. We’d have to change the student culture of our schools, which would require action to be taken early on in students’ careers in elementary school, and follow through in middle school and high school. If we can have teachers act as more positive role models and be more involved in spotting and prevention of bad behavioral trends early on, I think students will tend to lean away from bullying.

Casey,

To reduce class sizes, we will ultimately need to hire more teachers, which will require funding from the state. But to get funding back, we will have to petition our legislators who go to Sacramento to bring funding back to schools, which I would be willing to spearhead. We can, however, mitigate the negative impact of high class sizes by offering and promoting more online courses so students who can learn at their own pace in the meantime.

What is the first problem you'd like to tackle or fix?

Josh,

I appreciated your comments at the heroin task force meetings and I was impressed with your insights.

Was it your impression that the school board members on the task force were working hard to find ways to reduce drug use in our schools?

James,
First, we’ll have to communicate the importance of technology to the students and family, to get everybody on the same page. Next, because the state are cutting funding, I believe we should look in to applying for grants and creating partnerships between organizations and schools in our community to donate supplies to schools. Just this last year, Royal High School principal Deborah Salgado created a partnership with the Ronald Reagan library in order to help fund the application for an International Baccalaureates program. I would support more this type of work in order to obtain resources for our schools.

Josh,

What were some of your favorite science courses? How was evolution taught in your school? Do you have any objections to how it was taught? Should it be taught as a fact?

Josh,

With all of the constraints on the budget what would you cut first? What would you spend more money on?

Is heroin a problem on campus? How do you know?

Josh,

I understand that you support the idea of starting the school year earlier for SVUSD schools. Why do you support this and what affects do you believe it will have on students?

Casey,
Currently, there is a huge age gap between those that control our schools (the board of education and administrative officials), and the students. They have become out of touch with the needs of students, and have shifted the focus of education in our district away from supporting those students, as evident by several of their policies and decisions. The school district had a budget surplus this last year, but chose not to hire back new teachers that had just been pink slipped.

Schools in our district have been spending time and resources fighting against new technology in the classrooms such as smartphones, instead of embracing these new tools and incorporating them into the learning curriculum. The school board has also decided against starting and finishing the school year earlier despite the huge benefits to STAR and AP testing and planning opportunities that would be opened up to high school students and high school teachers, in favor of appeasing the few parents who would be upset at having to change their vacation plans. We also need to offer more opportunity in our school system for students to move on. Many students are ready to leave high school years in advance, but are trapped in classrooms that don’t fit their skill level because they don’t know of any other options. For example, a sophomore in high school could theoretically test for a GED and then move on straight to community college, but this almost never happens because students and parents aren’t aware that it’s an option.

I believe that embracing technology is a must, so I’d put that high on the priority list, as failure to do so will set our education possibilities back. Other than that, I’d address issues in order of how many students our decisions would affect, and how each decision would affect their future opportunities to learn.

In order to gain support, I’d make sure to communicate my concerns and explain the needs of our schools to the community at large to raise awareness of the issues, and get people to come to public meetings and voice their concerns to sway the other school board members. I’ll make sure to have a public blog in order to provide information.

Deborah,
The first issue I’d like to raise to the community is the school district calendar. I can tell you with the experience fresh in my mind that the school district’s calendar, the way it is currently—leaving two to three weeks after winter break before the start of the second semester—makes planning studies and responsibilities a nightmare. Teachers have to spend time reviewing material we learned before winter break, teach the new material, and then review again before finals, which causes huge amounts of stress on behalf of both the students and the teachers. The current calendar also provides less time to plan curriculum before both STAR and AP testing, as well as excess time at the end of the year where students are hardly learning anything or even motivated to show up to school.
This was the issue that first brought me into speaking out and voicing student concerns to the school board, and this will thus be the first issue I push to fix if elected.

Dan,
Thanks for the kind words. I got the impression that the School Board was willfully ignorant of the drug problems in our schools after testimony on the issue. It seemed to me like saving face was more important to them than the health and safety of our students.

The Scientist,
My favorites were biology and physics. Evolution was taught by the Darwinian model our textbooks described, and I felt it was handled well—largely removed from the feelings or beliefs of the teacher. I think it should be taught as fact, because it is, according to nearly all university professors.

I will try to finish all the questions even though it's past 9:30, if that's ok with Brian, our host.

The Budget,
Our district has excess reserves and schools have already been cut to the bone. No more cutting. I’d spend more money on teachers to lower class sizes, as well as technology to better facilitate learning in the classrooms. Those are highest on my priority list.

Question,
To be honest, I’ve never seen anybody use heroin on campus, but from the stories brought forward by the anti-heroin interest group Not One More, along with personal testimonies before the heroin prevention task force, it’s pretty obvious to me that heroin is a problem everywhere--at school, at home, and everywhere in between. Most of the drug problems at school are of lesser drugs, like marijuana, which I’ve seen and smelled many times before in the boys’ restrooms.

Grant,
I covered this a bit in my response to Deborah, but I’ll elaborate further. For seniors in high school who are planning for college, the current calendar provides less time for learning at the beginning of the year and excess time to waste at the end of the year, causes a time crunch for teachers. More work is assigned towards the beginning of the year, during the same time frame that students must apply for college and scholarships, giving them less time to work on those responsibilities. I experienced this firsthand last year, and I can tell you from recent memory that there is no period of time during the year that causes more stress and anxiety than the season of college applications. We need to take care of our students throughout their entire career; falling short on their final year within our district reflects poorly on our commitment to them.

Alright, I got them all. Thanks everybody for coming here tonight and posting your questions, it's been a pleasure answering them!

If anyone needs to contact me, feel free to friend me and message me on facebook, or email me at: joshuagalanti@gmail.com

Mr. Galanti you support starting the current school year weeks earlier, will Dan White and Josie Hirsch support you on this or fight you on it? Also it sounds as if Dan White is claiming there is heroin use in our schools, but at a recent task force meeting I attended the acting Chief of Police said they have no evidence of heroin use in Simi schools. Mr. White are you claiming that the police are not telling the truth? What evidence do you have to the contrary? Also Mr. White and Ms. Hirsch do you support Mr. Galanti in starting the school year weeks earlier? Also Ms. Hirsch told me our schools are short of money but Mr. Galanti you claim there is a big surplus, who is right?

Mr.Dennert,

Why is "Another Answer" allowed to hide their identity?

Others posted their name. Why is AA allowed to make any statement she wishes without regard to credibility?

Essentially, this person is posing as multiple people. What kind of town hall concept is this?

Why is this format acceptable?

So "Not Brian Dennert" is complaining about fake names while hiding behind a fake name? What a joke! I just read the questions they are complaining about and see nothing wrong with them except they are tough questions. Looks like Gallante and Dan White are ducking these tough questions and I suspect voters will remember that in November. Also sounds like Gallante, White and perhaps Hirsch will support Simi Schools starting in early August.

I don't require people to use their real name. I didn't change the rules during the town hall. If a claim is false it should be countered with evidence. I don't think people should have to use their real names to ask legitimate questions. Do you? Some comments posted anonymously are good and many are not. You posted a question anonymously. I have no issue with doing you doing so. You had a legitimate question.