aytekc

An Open Letter to MVWSD School Board Candidates

Sept 26, 2024

Dear MVWSD School Board Candidates,

Thank you for stepping up to represent our students and our community. Thank you for your courage to become a public servant at this challenging time.

A request: will you help me understand your ideals, goals and willingness to take action? Here is what I’d like to learn before I vote:

1. What are your top three Budget Priorities?
2. How would you improve Financial and Contractual Oversight?
3. How would you champion “Reading is a Civil Right” and transform Mountain View students into a Literate Community?
4. How would you improve Transparency and work to regain Community Trust?
5. How would you improve Community Outreach?

Responding with “I’ll listen to the community” is not enough. See below for recent community concerns and additional context regarding the questions.

I look forward to hearing your views at upcoming “Meet-and-Greets” and “Meet the candidate forums” and on the community email group for MV residents: [email protected].

Sincerely,

Aytek Celik

Mountain View Parent and Voter

---

Questions and Concerns for MVWSD School Board Candidates

1. What are your top three Budget Priorities?
   • How about Doubling the Number of Teachers?
     • Even if doubling is a stretch, this would directly benefit our students. With more teachers, my neighbors and I would joyfully debate smaller class size vs. co-teaching etc. For example, $1.8 million budgeted for the Office of Superintendent and $600k for Public Relations [p.19/20] – adds up to more than $2.4 million – enough to fund 16 teachers.
   • How about Reducing MVWSD “Reputation Spending?”
     • Cut “reputation spending” on Public Relations firms for the following:
       • Battles with the city of MV re allocation of Shoreline tax funds
       • Lobbying politicians in Washington D.C. (pp.1-3) to raise national profile of MVWSD
       • Presenting the parcel tax via district spokespeople (pp.4-6)
       • Repeatedly paying outside vendors to apply (2023 p.4) for reputation awards such as Green Ribbon Schools (2024 p.4)
     • For context, 2023-24 total spending on PR and the Office of the Superintendent doubled over 4 years to more than $2.4 million (p.18). Another school board reversed its decision to enter into a contract with the D.C. PR and Lobbying firm Woodberry Associates.
     • Let student literacy and educational success determine MVWSD reputation.
   • How about Reducing Non-Student Focused Expenditures?
     • Cut spending on non-student based expenses such as:
       • “Leadership training” consultants
       • “Energy healer” meditation consultants
       • Travel expenses for these consultants
     • Additional context: Media coverage of such spending: SF Chronicle, MV Voice, KRON; Time-stamped video of 8/22/2024 Board Meeting where Superintendent and Board President state, “had never been to her website” and “had not looked at the website” of the meditation provider, despite the board having signed off on $315,000 worth of business with her.
2. How would you improve Contractual and Financial Oversight?
   • Reinstate board authorization over Contracts and remove the superintendent’s right to broad contracting authority enacted five months after he began with MVWSD (pp.15-17) in 2015.
     • This resolution has legally enabled the superintendent to sign no-bid contracts without prior board approval – because the amount permitted to the superintendent (by the resolution passed in 2015) matched the CA state limit on no-bid contracts every year since then.
     • MVWSD did not give this contractual right to any superintendents prior to 2015.
   • Launch a robust, 3rd-party Financial Audit.
     • Avoid the appearance of wrongdoing by venturing into the legal gray area of spending taxpayer money to campaign – or in a manner that appears to campaign – for candidates or ballot measures such as parcel taxes [pp.12,37,43,46-48].
3. How would you champion “Reading is a Civil Right” and transform Mountain View students into a Literate Community?
   • Bring evidence-based, Science-of-Reading literacy education – and evidence-based, Science-of-Reading literacy interventions to every student who needs it – to all 9 elementary schools and 2 middle schools.
     • 354 students in K-3rd grade (19%) can’t read according to the Literacy Update at the 2/29/2024 Board Meeting (top of slide 29).
     • Of these 354 students, 106 of them at Bubb (39), Imai (18), Landels (32), and Stevenson (24), are being excluded from evidence-based literacy interventions that are available at the other schools (began fall 2023, except Vargas (28), which began fall 2024 (slide 30)).
     • Also, as of 2022-23, ~291 (out of 1028) students in 4th grade (30%) and 5th grade (29%) cannot read at grade level and ~580 (out of 1424) middle-schoolers cannot read at grade level (~215 (out of 537) Crittenden students (37%) and ~365 (out of 882) Graham students (42%) and are not receiving evidence-based literacy interventions.
     • Teaching students to read is a solvable problem. Students who cannot read feel excluded from society – which in the case of middle school, contributes to physical violence (student fights), chronic absences, classroom frustration for all students (including high-achieving students), increased funding needs for social-emotional instruction and counseling services – and ultimately, prevents Mountain View from become a literate community. If we enable students to learn to read – before middle school, preferably – the need for many support services would be reduced. And the positive culture would benefit ALL students.
     • Community-driven demand: It took 5 years of community organizing and parent advocacy (Providing literacy/dyslexia resources; presenting to School Site Councils and meeting one-on-one with board trustees; Project Cornerstone training sessions; countless emails to the board; speaking up at numerous board meetings, outreach to community email lists, including appeals to district surveys on Strategic Planning and LCAP priorities) to convince MVWSD to finally start screening for dyslexia and launch an evidence-based, science-of-reading literacy education/intervention program.
4. How would you improve Transparency and work to regain Community Trust?
   • Talk about success – and failure. Be upfront about current challenges and own up to the numbers of students MVWSD is failing to educate. Do not hide the student counts behind percentages. Removing the numbers of students in the most recent Literacy Update (pp.10,17), and only displaying percentages, frustrated the community and prevented transparency.
   • Provide comprehensive data and descriptions for Board Meeting agenda items. Avoid violating California’s “open meeting law,” the Brown Act – and facing lawsuits and unnecessary expenses, such as the recent MVWSD courtroom loss for not disclosing adequate descriptions of closed session agenda items.
5. How would you improve Community Outreach?
   • Set up publicly available subscribe/unsubscribe email for district communications (newsletters, board agendas, LCAP and Strategic Plan surveys, etc.) for all Mountain View community members. Public school is for the community – not just for parents.