A 90-minute forum featuring the candidates for the Lompoc Unified School District board spanned a number of topics, including the job performance of the top employee and ways to boost student achievement.
The Lompoc-Vandenberg Branch of the American Association of University Women organized the virtual forum Thursday night for the seven candidates running for three seats on the board.
Seeking the four-year terms are incumbent William “Bill” Heath, a local dentist, plus challengers Tom Blanco, a retired educator; Janet Blevins, a retired teacher; Alexander Murkison, a database manager; Kathi Froemming, a retired educator; Martin Casey, a parent and systems engineer; and Gary Cox, a small-business owner.
Questions submitted by community members and asked by moderator Mike Phillips, a lifelong educator who retired from Lompoc High School, focused on student achievement, budget priorities, ethnic studies, employee relations, COVID-19 and a future bond measure for school facilities.
A question about Superintendent Trevor McDonald’s job performance and the board’s role in evaluating him — and themselves — prompted strong opinions.
“The problem on the existing board, I believe, is the superintendent runs the board, not the board running the superintendent. He’s been very skilled at manipulating how things work for the board,” Heath said.
In his six years on the board, Heath said, the board has evaluated the superintendent once. He added that, along with goals, the evaluation also should consider visibility, community involvement and more.
Blevins, who spent 34 years as a teacher, said she has understood that the current board majority does not support an evaluation of McDonald’s performance although board policy calls for it to be done annually.
“He also has told principals, who are supposed to relay to teachers, not to talk to board members,” Blevins said. “There is no transparency. There is no accountability.”
Noting that the board’s accountability comes from voters, Froemming likened the superintendent’s role to a chief executive officer.
“I would have to say that it’s not the superintendent’s fault he did not get evaluated. I think that was oversight on the part of the school board,” she said, vowing to establish goals and priorities for an evaluation.
Cox cited a survey claiming that 82 percent of parents agreed that their children were receiving a good education.
“If the superintendent isn’t doing his job, that’s 100 percent on the board,” Cox said. “They need to do the research with the union leaders, they need do the research with the teachers, with principals, with parents and find out what their opinion is.”
Murkison said the school employees should be surveyed about the superintendent’s job performance and have those opinion valued.
“If they feel like we’re not doing the job or the superintendent is not doing his job, we really need to listen to why they have this feeling and then go from there,” Murkison said.
Blanco agreed that the superintendent, like employees at all levels, should receive regular performance evaluations.
“It’s the only way to maintain accountability,” said Blanco, a retired teacher and athletic trainer.
Casey also called for defined goals that serve as a measurement for the evaluation, saying it’s a key component for communication and transparency.
“As a board member, I would be pushing tremendously for our superintendent to be living in our town and out visiting all the schools and getting to know all the teachers. That would help build a lot of trust,” Casey said.
Ways to improve student achievement brought various opinions, including suggestions for early intervention and mental health services.
“To improve student outcomes, I think the district needs to get out of the way of teachers and trust that they know what’s best for their students and classes,” Casey said, adding that the district needs to equip teachers with tools.
Blanco, who had Internet issues that interrupted his answers, called for early intervention — for kindergartners through second-graders — to focus on teaching students to read as a way to support them in succeeding.
Heath added that the district needs to focus on “English and math, those basic skills, and not get distracted from different learning programs that kind of just kill time. That we let the teachers choose what’s best for the students in their classroom and utilize the resources they have.”
As a retired teacher, Blevins said the question of how to improve student achievement does not have a single answer.
“All students do not respond to the same reading method, so you cannot adopt a reading curriculum and expect all the students to learn from it,” she said.
The district’s students had low achievement scores for English and math, Froemming said.
“I think the school board needs to recognize that’s an issue and make sure it’s a priority, not only in management’s evaluation or a metric to judge their success, but also the superintendent’s contract because we can’t ignore it,” she added.
Cox called for English immersion for kindergartners through fourth-graders.
“If they don’t grasp the English language at an early age, then they’re not going to continue in their success, so we do more English and math, especially English in the first few years,” Cox added.
Murkison spoke often about a need to focus on students’ mental health, contending that it ultimately will lead to higher achievement.
He agreed with Heath’s belief that students learn more when they have good relationships with teachers.
“The other end of that is they learn more when they have a good relationship with themselves,” Murkison said.
The top three vote-getters will win the four-year terms and join board president Steve Straight and member Nancy Schuler Jones. Incumbents Dick Barrett and Jeff Carlovsky did not file for re-election.
The forum was presented in English and Spanish thanks to a grant from The Fund for Santa Barbara.
The AAUW branch last week hosted a forum for the Lompoc City Council and mayor candidates.
— Noozhawk North County editor Janene Scully can be reached at jscully@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.