How many years have you lived in Maine?: 42 years

What experiences,  motivations, and leadership styles will make you an effective School Committee representative?:
My job as an engineer and project manager provide strong planning, fiscal and organizational skills.  My experience as a member and former chair of the Planning Board provide context for how the schools fit into the overall fabric of our city as well as a good working relationship with the council and city staff.  Lastly, I am a parent with two children at Lyseth so getting education right is very important to me.

If elected, what would your top three priorities be?  How do they affect young people in Portland?:
1) Restore the public's faith in the leadership and managment of the school district.  2) Make the budgeting process reflect our educational goals and therefore more transparent and understandable to the public and 3) improve communication with the public on school related matters.  A strong school system is a magnet that attracts people and business - the lifeblood of any community - to the city.  A weak school systems drives people from the city and leads to urban decay.  At that point, what's left would not be very desirable for anyone, young or old.

Please share one positive change you have seen in our schools and in the School Committee over the last year?:
The School Ground Greening Project supported by Portland Trails.  A number of schools are taking advantage of this wonderful program.  Not only is the physical environment improved, the bond between the schools and the community is strengthened and the students get a great learning experience.

Please share one frustrating change you have seen in our schools and in School Committee over the last year?:
The deterioration of our fiscal oversight.

What competing responsibilities do you have: professionally and personally?:
I am on the board of directors for the North Deering Neighborhood Association and Portland Trails.  The workload associated with those groups should not interfere with my responsibilities on the school committee.

How would you make Portland schools more effective and cost efficient?:
Change from a reactive to a proactive approach to dealing with our problems, fiscal or otherwise.  We need a more transparent educational plan that spells out what we want to achive in education, the resources we need to implement it and the benchmarks we are going to use to demonstrate its effectiveness.  Without it, we will continue to make poor short term decisions that make it difficult to sustain the public schools over the long term.

Where do you see Gov. Baldacci's consolidation plan or school closings fitting into your measures to increase cost effectiveness?:
Gov. Baldacci's plan will have a larger impact on the more rural school districts in Maine.  In Portland, the biggest impact will be the requirement to recieve voter approval for the budget next spring.  For the budget to pass, the school committee and the administration must be able to explain to voters what the money will be used for and whether we are getting the results we expect.

What is the role of School Committee in determing the school budget?  What ways would you improve the process of school budgetting?:
In my view, the School Committee's responsiblitlity is to set educational priorities  based on the feedback they recieve from their constituents and the professional analysis and recommendations they recieve from the superintendant.  From this, the superintendant can develop a budget to implement our educational objectives.  Once the educational program has been defined and the budget has been approved, the superintendant is responsible to administer the finances of the school district consist with the budget and our overall educational goals.  The superintendant should provide regular finacial reports that, among other things, forecasts where we will be at the end of the fiscal year.  Based on this reporting, the school committee and the superintendant can make adjusts as required to keep our final costs within the appropriated budget.

With the current reality of Portland's school budget, cuts seem likely.  What would you cut and why?:
The best way to answer this question is to use an example.  Consider the Casco Bay High School.  Many people feel it is to expensive to operate and isn't meeting our expectations.  Just as many say that students and teachers are thriving there and the cost is less than at the other high schools.  So who is right.  The fact is there is a lot of conflicting data on the actual cost required to run the Casco Bay High school.  When you stop to consider that we still are not sure where to house it, let alone the cost associated with that decision, its not surprising that the public is confused about its value.  Until we can define our educational goals clearly and concisely, it is difficult to determine what our budget ought to be, let alone whether or where we should cut.

What priority in funding would you give Portland's new Expeditionary Learning High School?:
The question suggests that there should be winners and losers in the process of determining where we spend our educational dollars.  In my view, we need to identify our educational objectives, of which expeditionary learning is one option to consider, and determine the resources required to implement them.  As a model, expeditionary learning should stand on its own two feet when compared to other educational models.  In the end, those programs we choose to offer our students should be adeqately funded to achieve our goals.  If there are not enough students to sustain a particular learning model, or if we decide that the students are not achiving the standards we set for ourselves, the program should be cut - not partially funded.

How do we increase the number of graduates that go on to pursue post-secondary education?  What benchmarks would inform Portland schools towards reaching these goals?:
The best thing we can do is to get the community as a whole more involved in the schools.  In too many cases, there are barriers that limit the interaction between schools and the rest of the community.  Teachers and curriculum can only go so far in this area.  Parents and the larger community need to be more active in preparing students for adulthood, whether they go on to post secondary education or not.  And to the extent the school system inhibits this interaction, the school committee should work to remove those barriers.

Data shows enrollment is declining in Portland schools.  Why do you think this is?  What, if anything, should be done about it?:
My gut feeling is that our culture and demographics are working against us.  Family units are smaller than they were a generation ago and since Portland's population is relatively flat, the number of students entering the system is down.  But the relative cost of housing and property taxes means some middle class famalies are electing to move to communities surrounding Portland.  In either case, the best we can do is to make sure Portland is an attractive alternative for people considering southern Maine and educational excellence is certainly a component of that.

Do students for whom English is a second language have access to a quality education?:
Portland works very hard to make sure that they recieve a quality education.  So much so that we bear a disproporationate cost of assimilating those families into our culture.  The cost should be more evenly shared on a regional or statewide basis.

Do you think student transportation needs any changes?  Why or why not?:
Student transportation is a significant portion of the budget and should be among the many areas that get greater review.  However, it needs to be reviewed in conjunction with our evaluation of consolidation and/or redistricting.  How many buildings we have and where they are located will go a long ways towards defining our transportation needs.

Do you have children and where did/do they attend school?  If they were schooled privately, what was the single biggest factor in removing them from public education?:
I have two sons who attend Lyseth School.  Tyler is a fourth grader and Kyle is a second grader.