October 2, 2008

ValleyViewpoints

Thank you Almaden!

An open letter to Almaden residents

Thank you to the community of Almaden for having enough faith and confidence in me to be your school board of education trustee for another four years!

To run for a public office unopposed four years ago was amazing, but to have it happen again is truly a blessing. As your trustee, it is my responsibility to direct the funds and policy of the school district. School board members are entrusted to uphold the Constitution, protect the public interest and ensure that a quality education is provided to each student.

Our California public schools are facing significant demands in meeting higher expectations with dwindling resources from our state legislators. The impacts of meeting accountability goals, closing the achievement gap and increased state and federal mandates are just some of the challenges we face. Together, with the incredible students and amazing army of dedicated parents in Almaden, we are able to keep making improvements to our schools, ranking them at the top of the charts in Santa Clara County.

I have worked hard over the past four years to be involved and connected with the education community and our state and federal legislators. Currently, I am the SJUSD Board vice president and the president of the Santa Clara County School Boards Association. I am a delegate and governmental relations chair to the California School Boards Association, where I serve on an executive committee and am often a presenter at their annual conference.

On a national level, I serve as a federal relations chair, and will be traveling to Washington, D.C. again in February to discuss issues surrounding the No Child Left Behind Act. I am the first and only SJUSD board member to receive my master’s in governance from the California School Boards Association, and I serve on several committees both in the district, county and down at city hall.

Along with my fellow board members and superintendent, we have been fiscally responsible and consistently kept our district solvent, earning a positive credit rating from the County Office of Education. As a result of our conservative foresight, our district has a healthy reserve to weather the current financial strain on our state and overall economy.

While many cities, including San Jose, have all talked about installing solar power, our schools HAVE solar power, and it didn’t cost our district or our tax payers one dime! Through an innovative partnership with Chevron and Bank of America, we were able to install solar panels at Leland, Bret Harte and Castillero. The savings in energy at Leland alone will be $2 million over a few years.

Through our partnership with the city of San Jose, we were able to install artificial turf on our Leland soccer fields and gain a new restroom and snack shack, thus allowing year round safe play for our students and our community. All our schools have been renovated and have state-of-the-art facilities.

Our students are graduating and moving on to Berkeley, Stanford, West Point, Harvard and many other prestigious colleges. All our Almaden schools have either National Blue Ribbon or the California Distinguished Awards or in most cases, both!

Along with continuing to improve the quality of classroom instruction, my personal goal is to ensure good customer service. Earlier this year, my fellow board members and I created and enacted a policy aimed at making sure our students, parents and community members are treated with respect, good communication and accurate information. It is the expectation of this board member and our superintendent that our district become the industry standard for good public service.

While we have made some improvements, we have a lot of hard work ahead of us. As in any relationship, communication is the key, and our Web sites have steadily been improving to provide timely information the community desires. I have always been quick to respond to my community, and remain available for comments, concerns and ideas on making our schools the preferred educational choice for our citizens.

Thank you again for your support.

Leslie Reynolds
San Jose Unified Board of Education
Trustee for Almaden

Reader not a Borowitz fan

Editor,
When is the Borowitz Report going to be dropped from your newspaper? The column, intended to be humorous, is not only lacking in any humor, but is downright insulting to any Republican reader because of its constant belittling of Republican politicians and platforms. I would find more humor if the Peanuts comics cartoon strip replaced the rantings of this liberal nut.

Jay Rangel
Almaden Valley

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The Almaden Times Weekly
1310 Tully Road, Ste. 107,
San Jose, CA 95122