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Schools

David Glasser: Reflections on His Time on the School Board

David Glasser, a parent of two children in the Albany Unified School District, was elected to the board of education in 2005 and served until December 2010. This interview took place in January.

[Editor's Note: This Q&A is part of a on two former board members.]

Q: What are the most important decisions the board of education made during your tenure?

A: A big one was when we elected a new superintendent to replace Dr. Willy Wong, who retired. We selected Marla (Stephenson) after a wide search that included interviewing candidates from around California.  We had some board members who were willing to just promote from within and not conduct a search. I think one of the important decisions we made was to actually conduct a search. Although the board ultimately chose Albany Deputy Superintendent Marla Stephenson to be the new superintendent, it first conducted a wide search.

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Chief among the benefits of a search is that you are sure you are picking the best candidate. Also by bringing in people from outside to interview, we heard interesting suggestions from the other candidates. That was good for board members and good for the community to hear what others are doing, to get some new ideas from the field.

Another important part of that decision, and I’d have to say one of my accomplishments, was to allow the community to participate in the process and meet with the candidates. We brought in members from the community onto the interview panel to get their input.

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Secondly, we started to review the curriculum, to focus on curriculum. One of the good ideas was we hired a deputy assistant superintendent for curriculum. We had not had one for many years. When we actually looked at the curriculum we found we had some very good curriculum and we had some old, sloppy, not so good curriculum. The study (which has started at the elementary school level) resulted in the new math curriculum at the elementary schools called “Every Day Math.” Science was changed, too.

Q: Is there curriculum review going on at the middle school and high school?

A: Our plan was to start with the elementary schools and work our way up. (Albany High School principal) Ted Barone is doing a lot of things with development of standards for high school classes. It’s the first time a lot of this is coming up. There is a lot of debate about standards and standardized tests. But the question is, if you don’t have standards, how do you know if you are actually teaching what students are supposed to learn? That is the big dilemma in education right now. Some say standardized tests are the answer. Ultimately it’s about how you hold schools and teachers responsible.

Where you see the need most glaringly is in the big dichotomy between performing math students and non-performing students, with a lot of students taking two years to complete algebra. (Albany High School has since launched intervention programs to try to close the achievement gap in math and algebra.) We need to have everybody on a common playing field about what they are supposed to be learning, what the expectations are for students when they go into sixth grade as to what skills they should have. We instituted Every Day Math to address that.

Q: What do you consider your personal accomplishments as a member of the board of education?

A: One of the things I’m proudest of is I tried to make the board more inclusive as a decision-making body.  In the past, we had a lot of committees that were made up of teachers and board members. Now we have community members on them.

Another thing I’m proud of is the focus on the curriculum. We started that in about 2008.

Third, about getting the board to consider the entire community when it makes decisions. I tried to make the board consider seniors and the disabled community in the decision about the pool, but I failed to do that. I tried to convince them we need a ramp and a (shallow) five-foot depth at one end of the pool. But we are building a pool for 50 swim team members.

What I want to leave with is, whenever we have those discussions we need to include the whole community, including the not obvious (or less vocal) part of the community, such as people who don’t speak English. So that is one of my accomplishments. I raised the consciousness of some board members to think a little less conventionally about what is needed by the wider community.

Some things are easily accomplished. For instance, the calendar didn’t include the extended school year for special kids, for special education students. It’s not hard, we’re putting out a calendar anyway, why not include that? So we realized there are things we can do without much additional effort to make things more inclusive.

Q: What else would you advise to Board of Education members going forward?

A: Well, on the school equity thing, the bottom line is you need to make sure we’re adhering to the law. You might make people uncomfortable, but when you take a pledge of office to uphold the law and the law calls for a free and equal public education for all, you have to make sure it is free and public and equal. You can’t let different levels of education be taught at different sites.

Another thing, you need to make sure parents have a voice in everything that goes on. The important thing to remember is that as a board member you represent the community, not the administration and not the teachers. It is a hard balance because you don’t want to be seen as second guessing them, but quite honestly you don’t want the board to be used as a rubber stamp of administration policy.

Q:  The board is about to address crowding and facility use and the policy on out-of-district transfers. Any thought on what solving the problem of crowded schools?

A: The reason we are over crowded is because William Wong decided we could fix the budget problems by letting more kids in from out of district, so we let in a lot of kids. The problem is when the budget problems clear up, you can’t tell them to leave. At sixth grade you also get a bulge from kids in private schools coming back to the public school system. Now we have 1,300 kids at Albany High School because we let in so many kids earlier on (when they were younger). The school is built for 1,000 kids. We did this to balance the budget, but the day of reckoning comes when the schools are too crowded.

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