|
|
|
BERKELEY -- Former advisory committee member Nancy Riddle, along with incumbents Terry Doran and Shirley Issel, won the three open spots on the five-member Board of Education in Tuesday's election. Updated Nov. 6, 1:30 am
"I think this is a board that will be able to work together," said Issel, the current school board president.
Riddle, who has spent eleven years working on district advisory committees, is confident in her ability to work with the incumbents, citing her work with the board in the past.
"I have a great reputation for working with all sorts of folks," said Riddle, the chief financial officer of audio cable manufacturing company Monster Cable Products. "I'm pretty focused and pretty even."
Trailing behind Issel was recent Berkeley High graduate Sean Dugar, 18, who would have been the youngest person elected to the school board.
But Dugar was not discouraged by the results.
"This is just the beginning," Dugar said. "An eighteen-year-old with 7,000 votes? That's one for youth."
Lance Montauk, an emergency room surgeon, came in fifth, followed by Derick Miller, a business consultant and former PTA president.
"The return of the two incumbents is a validation for the right track," Issel said. "They're [the voters] sending us a new member with the financial skills that we need to fill out the board and be able to continue doing good work."
The board members will begin the new term at the Berkeley Unified School District in times of great financial crisis. The district is $2 million in debt and needs to cut another $2 million from its budget for next year.
Each member has said that getting a grip on BUSD's finances is his or her top priority
"We have not had the capacity to perform a good analysis on where we're spending our money and where we're overspending," said current school board president Shirley Issel. "We're just getting to the place where we're able to perform those analyses."
Issel, a psychotherapist, said continuing assessment in not only finances, but also in the educational system is her main goal.
Riddle agrees that the district needs an organized approach to the financial crisis.
"The district has to put together a multi-year plan," Riddle said. "Public education is a never-ending quest."
This leaves making cutbacks in next year's budget as the biggest challenge for the new board.
"They already cut the obvious last year,'' Riddle said. "It won't be pretty.''
The three new members agreed that cutting teacher salaries is not an option with contract negotiations coming in the next month.
"We really need to keep our teachers at a competitive level salary-wise or we'll lose quality people," said Doran, who has taught in the Berkeley School system for almost thirty years.
He sees working collaboratively with the city as a direct way to consolidate costs.
"I'm committed to setting up joint meetings with the city to see if we can pool our resources and do a better job for the youth of the city," Doran said.
In what originally seemed to be a case of bad political timing, Berkeley voters were asked to approve a proposal to raise board members' salaries. But Measure K was approved by an overwhelming margin.
"I believe public servants should get money," said two year Berkeley resident Max Rorty as she left the polls in downtown Berkeley yesterday.
The measure increases the monthly stipends of the school board members from $875 to $1,500 per month. This money comes out of the city's General Fund, not the BUSD.
Issel, who did not support the measure, insisted that it was inappropriate in the first place considering the $4 million financial crisis.
"It just seems like poor taste," Issel said. "It's not the right time to be asking for a raise."
The $37,500 yearly total will allow board members to hire clerical staff to help with the increasing demands of the board positions said John T. Selawsky, a current school board director who drafted the measure.
"Board members have an unusual burden -- no staff, no office, no computers and no telephones. Anything we do, we do on our own," Selawsky said. "If you want somebody to be a professional you should compensate more."
Doran supported the measure, saying it will improve future school boards.
"Having more money available for people will, I believe, expand the pool of people who would consider running for school board," Doran said. "[The measure] does not affect school district budget."