Voters in the Portola Valley School District will choose between two candidates when they mark their mail-in ballot to elect a new school board member to serve a 17-month term.
Both candidates — Dr. David Morris and Bill Youstra — have experience teaching and working collaboratively on teams in research and on projects. Both say they have a passion for education, and emphasize the importance of preparing students to face changes and challenges of the 21st century.
Beginning April 7, ballots will be mailed to all registered voters in the district. The deadline for returning ballots is May 6. Both candidates have submitted statements that will be mailed with the ballots.
The school board in December called for the special election to fill the remaining term of former trustee Donna Carano. She resigned Oct. 17 — before the Nov. 6 regular election but after the deadline for candidates to file and get on the ballot. The term expires in December 2009.
The board agreed to call an election after splitting 2-2 on making a provisional appointment to fill the unexpired term. The four trustees — Ray Villareal, Don Collat and newly elected trustees Judith Mendelsohn and Steve Humphreys — couldn’t muster the three votes needed to appoint either applicant: former board member Karen Jordan or Brad Turner, who came in a close third in the November election. So they instead decided to let the voters decide.
Dr. Morris and Mr. Youstra said they were not aligned with any of the three candidates in the November election, which, some say, had become “toxic.”
During the election campaign last year, candidates’ supporters had launched aggressive e-mail, phone and letter-writing campaigns to influence friends and neighbors. Although there didn’t appear to be a dividing issue, a difference in perspective centered on change versus the status quo sparked an unusual degree of election year heat.
Three months later, the community appears to have moved closer together and is focusing on how to preserve the district’s quality of education in view of a $1 million budget shortfall, both candidates observed.
The candidates will participate in a candidates’ night on Monday March 31, starting at 7 p.m. at Corte Madera School, 4575 Alpine Road. The forum’s sponsors are the Portola Valley PTO and League of Women Voters.
Both candidates have read the district’s strategic plan for the future and have some ideas about the path ahead.
Here are the candidates’ opinions on some key issues.
Strategic plan
Mr. Youstra, who calls the strategic plan a “great document,” said that differentiated learning is a component in the plan that resonates with him. Children, he stressed, all learn differently, and recognizing and accommodating a student’s learning method can be critical in sparking that child’s engagement with learning.
He said he would like implementation of the plan to move faster to accelerate getting tools into the hands of teachers.
Dr. Morris said he would increase the plan’s emphasis on the study of foreign language, including more languages in the curriculum and exposing children to language studies in lower grade levels.
He said he also supports expanding the breadth of student experience, including increased exposure and opportunities for students “to think outside Portola Valley.”
Coming from the experience of a trained scientist, he said he embraces the importance of involving American students in science, and of involving teachers in “learning opportunities” such as summer partnerships in science and industry that would energize them and their students.
The $1 million shortfall
Mr. Youstra said he supports the district’s approach and process of looking at a three-year horizon by belt-tightening in areas outside the classroom, tapping the district’s reserves, and seeking additional funding from the education foundation.
This approach, he said, will allow time to look at the financial realities and structural changes that might be needed. “Let’s not mess with the teaching culture,” he said.
Dr. Morris said he would take an analytical view of where every dollar goes. He said he supports “peeling back the layers of the strategic plan” and assigning priorities to determine “what we must have, what we would like to have, and what would be nice to have — but not now.”
Challenges ahead
Mr. Youstra sees the budget as the big challenge in both the short and long term. “We need to find a way to isolate the children and schools from the impact of financial shock” and keep up the morale of the teachers, he said. The district, he said, needs to further engage parents and the broader community.
Mr. Morris said he places a top priority on preparing students to be critical and creative thinkers who are involved in their learning, and also have time to dream. Children learn best, he said, by being involved in “experiential learning,” sometimes called “investigative learning,” and interacting with people.
MEET THE CANDIDATES
Voters in the Portola Valley School District will have an opportunity to meet school board candidates Dr. David Morris and Bill Youstra and submit written questions for them on Monday, March 31, during a candidates’ night at Corte Madera School. The public forum, sponsored by the Portola Valley PTO and League of Women Voters, will be from 7 to 8 p.m. The school is located at 4575 Alpine Road in Portola Valley.
CANDIDATE BIOS
Dr. David Morris
Education: University of Rochester, BS in biology/neurosciences; University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, MD with distinction in research; Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, resident, internal medicine; UCSF, fellowship in pulmonary and critical care medicine.
Occupation: Physician, pulmonary and critical care medicine; clinical researcher in early drug development at Roche, Palo Alto.
Civic service: volunteer attending physician at San Francisco General Hospital.
Experience: Associate clinical professor of medicine, UCSF; previously full-time faculty at UCSF and Yale schools of medicine.
Years in district: 1
Age: 43
Family: Married to Annie Ahern; daughters, Maille, 5; Mattie, 7 months.
Bill Youstra
Education: University of Maryland, summa cum laude, BS in marketing, BA in TV and film, BS in computer science; Stanford University, MBA in business management, MA in education administration and policy analysis.
Occupation: Consumer tech/media consultant.
Civic service: Coaching kids’ sports and occasional ad hoc work such as the search for Ormondale School principal and the Portola Valley committee reviewing home basement allowances. Previously, after-school soccer coach in East Palo Alto; leader, “Outward Bound” program for high school kids; piloting a teaching-through-technology program.
Experience: 15 years at consumer media and technology companies, including seven at America Online, launching and running consumer products; consultant and adviser to startups and small entrepreneurial companies, including internet media, mobile applications, and virtual social networking.
Years in district: 8
Age: 42
Family: Married to Jennifer Youstra; four children, ages 3, 5, 7 and 9.
