CUSD Board Elections – Voter Compass and AMA (Ask-Me-Anything)
CUSD Board Elections Voter Compass and AMA
(AMA: Ask-Me-Anything)
Background
As a service to the parent community, the admins of the CUSD Parents Group on Nextdoor crowd-sourced questions for the upcoming CUSD Board election in November, 2022. Questions were then aggregated, consolidated, and vetted by all the administrators of the group. The admins represent a diverse group of CUSD parents, community leaders, committee members, PTA and PTSA board members, and volunteers.
We reached out to all of the candidates and received responses from all, but Ava Chiao who pointed us to her website. As Ava chose not to engage with the parents of the district and declined a recent High School student-run candidates forum, we are not sure if she should be considered a serious candidate (borrowing an analogy from the Mercury news).
We and on behalf of all parents appreciate the time and effort that Darcy, Satheesh, and Jerry spent in answering parent questions in great detail. These questions are not easy and we do make each candidate choose on a sliding scale where they stand. We hope that this compass and AMA will help you to make a decision and elect the representatives that will have the best interest of our children.
Election Details
Three seats on the Cupertino Union School District school board are up for general election on November 8, 2022. See the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters (ROV) website for details. There are 4 candidates total for 3 positions. 2 candidates are incumbents and 2 are new.
Candidate Information
| Question | Darcy Paul | Satheesh Madhathil (Incumbent) | Jerry Liu (Incumbent) | Ava Chiao |
| Photo |  |  |  |  |
| Age | 46 | 53 | ||
| Education | Harvard College, 1999 (A.B.); Harvard Law School, 2003 (J.D.) | Cornell University, Master of Engineering ’92, Bachelor of Science ’91 | UC Santa Cruz, Masters of Arts in Education, Bachelor of Science in Biology | |
| Occupation | Attorney; Currently Councilmember and Mayor in Cupertino | Engineering Leader | Director of Software Engineering | High School Teacher (East San Jose) |
| Connection with CUSD | We have an eight-year-old (second grade) and a ten-year-old (fifth grade) in CUSD | Board member, Volunteer, Faria and Kennedy PTA President | Two daughters attended Lincoln Elementary, Kennedy Middle from Kindergarten to eighth grade; Volunteered in classroom and computer labs, organized activities such as Book Fair and Science Fair; Served on Lincoln PTA Board in various roles including President; Served on Lincoln School Site Council as Chair; Served on Kennedy Middle PTA Board as Executive VP; Prior to joining the board in 2018, served on District Advisory Committee, Parent Advisory Committee, Superintendent Search Advisory Committee | No children and no connection to CUSD |
| Experience in public office | Currently on the Cupertino City Council and serving as Mayor. | Board member since 2018 | Currently serving on CUSD Board of Education; Cupertino Library Commission, including two terms as Chair; Cupertino Planning Commission | No experience |
| Experience managing large organizations | I’ve been Mayor of Cupertino in 2018, 2021 and currently in 2022. Prior to this, I was Board President of the Cupertino Chamber of Commerce, where my priorities were stabilizing the organization following a recession (I joined in 2010), and outreach to the community. | Over 15 years in Technology companies | Professionally, I work at a large tech company managing an organization of over 150 software engineers located across four continents, with multiple levels of management reporting into me. | No experience |
| Endorsements | Link | Link | Link | Link |
| Campaign website (link) | darcypaul.org | satheesh4cusd.com | jerryliu.com | avachiao.org |
Candidate Questionnaire
Below are the responses of the candidates. As noted above, the 4th candidate, Ava Chiao declined participation.
CUSD should measure parent satisfaction with the district and the schools on a regular basis and the Superintendent’s performance should be linked to it.
I agree with this, and I think that effective community outreach is also very important. By effective, I mean thoughtful and respectful. Please see my answer to “What do you see as the primary responsibility of the school board?” in the link here: https://www.darcypaul.org/faqs
Parent’s feedback is critical for the success of district. It is good to hear from parents periodically their perspective about school and issues if any.
I support more frequent survey of the parent community to guide site policies and district operations. These results should be considered in both superintendent and board evaluations. The measures to represent “satisfaction” should be carefully considered to ensure they’re aligned with our primary mission of educating students.
CUSD should invest more in support and creation of alternative schools catering to the diverse needs of the parents in the district.
We should figure out what schools are desired and supported by the community, and we should work on a plan to deliver those schools while preserving and optimizing the current opportunities. Schools should be opening, not closing.
My view is to bring every school to high achieving on all front.
My preference for serving our parents’ needs is to empower the site leadership at our neighborhood schools to develop distinct identities and offerings for their neighborhood schools, coupled with a district enrollment policy that provides parents with options beyond their current neighborhood school and alternative programs.
Provided a large number of immigrant parents in CUSD, the district should advocate to allow non-citizen parents to vote in the board elections.
I need to study this issue from a couple of perspectives before taking a position one way or the other. I’m not sure whether partial enfranchisement makes sense or is possible. My sense of it is that either you can vote or you can’t.
Parents should have an easy way to share their opinion on school related items and to reach District/board with their feedback and concerns .
I believe that voting is a right and responsibility for citizens.
CUSD should convert closed schools into housing to generate additional revenue for the district.
This would be extremely short-sighted. Housing is important but all of the municipalities are currently undergoing jurisdiction-wide exercises in evaluating where housing can go. There is no justification for removing basic educational infrastructure which is needed now and will be needed in the future.
Recommendation from 7/11 committee as well as the board’ direction has been to keep the closed schools for education purpose only.
Given our current and projected financial situation, actions that permanently eliminate CUSD campuses from serving as schools in the future are inconsistent with our primary mission of educating students.
As enrollment continues to decline, CUSD should prepare to close more schools.
There is task force being formed to explore the possibilities for having flexible boundaries for attendance area – This would help to balancing the enrollment while the enrollment is declining.
Closing schools have significant negative impact on the students, families, and the community. Small school environments have their benefits and CUSD parents should have this choice for their children. Students are not well served by being consolidated into small number of large campuses.
As enrollment declines and the district shifts into a basic funding model, our revenue per student increases and we become financially stronger. Closing schools is no longer a matter of avoiding insolvency but rather a choice on where to invest our resources.
The operational saving from closing a school come primarily from eliminating the principal and a handful of staff positions, a saving of a few hundred thousand in the context of a $200+ million annual budget and projected surpluses. The main financial windfall from closing schools comes from leasing unused facilities.
My preference is to lease the unneeded classrooms on some campuses but keep the schools open, with a principal and staff around to support the students and engage with the community. Of course, we should always budget expenditures with a focus on long-term fiscal sustainability. And we should consider closing schools when enrollment drops to a level where learning effectiveness is being impacted.
If more schools need to be closed, CUSD should prioritize saving alternative schools (Faria, Chinese Language Immersion) over neighborhood schools.
I will work to ensure that no more schools are closed.
I hope we’ll not have to close anymore schools.
I don’t see the need to close more schools within the timeframe of our multiyear projection.
CUSD should increase teacher salaries to the level above that of neighboring districts to retain talent in lieu of student programs.
I need to study the data first. I believe that to be truly excellent and competitive, you need to compensate people competitively and well, but I want to see the source data first.
It is important to attract and retain qualified teachers in the district. Salary is one of the factors and there may be other factors which needs to be looked at to retain quality staff. It is important to offer all possible programs to students .
We need to maintain competitive salaries relative to neighboring districts. Although compensation is one of the top factors in staff retention, there are other factors to consider such as school climate or professional development. I would consult with our employee organizations to better understand the tradeoffs that are important to their membership with respect to retention.
School choice is going to make public education stronger and ultimately benefit CUSD.
I do not agree with this approach
I believe that competition within an ecosystem improves the system overall in the long term. Current regulations for charter schools allow them to operate without some of the constraints that public schools must follow. Although charters do introduce competition into the marketplace, I’m not sure there is an even playing field nor do I see it benefiting CUSD.
Except for specific circumstances where the students cannot be properly served by CUSD, my preference to improving the level of education is to invest in our public schools and allow them to innovate and differentiate to serve the needs of our students.
CUSD should invest in a farm-to-table program to improve the quality of the school food, even if that means additional expenses and/or funds taken from other programs.
It is important to serve quality food to every child. Presently we follow strictly the recommended nutrition requirements when the menu is chosen. The above proposal calls for a big infrastructure and logistics modification, which would be really difficult to implement.
I support sustainability efforts and recognize the benefits of locally grown organic food. My current priority for investments in the student dining program is to provide meals that more students will choose to eat, ideally in a comfortable setting. My support for a farm-to-table program would depend on the extent that such a program improves student participation in our food program.
CUSD should reduce the number of administrators in the districts to bring down the admin : student ratio.
I need to study this issue. I hear anecdotally that we are admin-heavy, but I want to evaluate the conditions first-hand before forming and acting upon a researched opinion on this.
I agree that we have to be very sensitive when administrators are added in the system. At the same time it is important to have certain number of administrators to effectively run a large organization like CUSD. It is not just a ratio, rather it should be a need basis appointment and we have to have a convincing justification.
I support efforts to reduce the overhead associated with providing education to students. The key for me is to understand the scope of current workflows and to identify those that can be optimized or eliminated, within the regulatory and contractual constraints that the district operates under. Eliminating administrator positions without eliminating the work may cause work to be done in other ways, commonly by reallocation onto people who already have existing responsibilities. Another outcome may that work gets outsourced to vendors, so whereas the number of positions may drop, overall operational costs may not necessarily decrease. We should strive for operational efficiency but let’s start with aligning current workflows with our strategic plan so we can properly scope the work force needed..
CUSD should reduce the class sizes from the current levels, even if that means raising additional funds from the community.
I need to study this issue to see where we stand on class sizes, but as a general matter I agree that if class sizes are too large, then they should be reduced. With regard to funding, I think that the District needs to improve its outreach and communication before considering further attempts to raise additional funds from taxpayers.
It is good to have smaller classes which gives more attention to each student.
Class Size Reduction (CSR) has been shown as one of the most effective ways to improve student learning.
CUSD needs to substantially improve transparency and quality of communications to restore trust with parents and the community.
I strongly believe in community/stake holder engagement a key factor for the success of the school district. Trust is important to make this engagement fruitful. Communication and transparency are key for building the trust
Building trust is not just about communication but engagement in both directions along with a willingness to take actions aligned with the best interests of the students.
The new CUSD board should make it a policy to continue board meetings and accept public comments in hybrid mode, where both in-person and online attendance is possible.
This will definitely help to have more participation and community engagement
I have supported a culture of being as welcoming as possible to public comments, and I will continue to do so during my next term.
CUSD should introduce health safety requirements above and beyond what the state and the county require (COVID vaccine mandates for all students, mask mandates).
This in my opinion is a topic where we should respect others while being careful generally. At the outset of the pandemic, I strongly supported more PPE and Cupertino as a municipality was first in the County with a mask mandate, and this saved lives. With where we stand now, this is one of those issues that require a balancing of factors which include community sentiment. People have a right either way to wear a mask or not to wear a mask.
CUSD should follow State and county recommendations
Unless there are circumstances specific to the district or one of our sites, my preference is to align as much as possible with federal, state, and local regulations.
CUSD parents should make up the majority of all CUSD committees and task forces.
I need to study this issue. For the most part, I think that parents should probably be in the majority of most committees and task forces, but perhaps with something like community outreach generally, that would not necessarily be the case.
I’m a big supporter of having a strong community/Parents participation in any CUSD committees. It could be combination of current parents or the parents of the graduated students from CUSD. I think we need a balance of all stake holders in each committee to get an effective solution for the purpose for which the committee is formed.
I would like to see a deeper level of parent engagement and oversight within district committees, as our main mission is to serve students and I believe that parents should be the ones to decide what is best for their children. At same time, a main benefit of these advisory committees and task forces is to explore and represent a broad range of perspectives at a level not possible at board meetings, so that the board has a better understanding of the issues and is presented a range of options in policy setting.
In my experience with district committees, one well informed person can be more influential than a larger number of less informed participants, so for me the issue isn’t really about the quantity but the quality of engagement. I think this is an area of improvement for the district – to educate more broadly our community on key district issues.
Also, discussions in some of the committees, such as Budget Advisory, can get technical, and I believe the committee is better served by members with the appropriate background whatever their affiliations may be.
CUSD board should put on the ballot a term limit for board members.
I’m not sure a term limit really matters. More important is the performance of a board member.
I can see merit in both sides of this argument, and this is an issue that the next board should discuss more fully. Most school boards in California do not currently have term limits though there are districts that have done so. For me, the tradeoffs are between reducing the barrier to get new ideas and perspectives into the board versus retaining the experience in managing the superintendent and overseeing district operations.
CUSD schools should increase the amount of homework to improve academic performance.
My understanding is that homework amounts vary by school. Generally I’m not in favor of so much homework that it becomes onerous for students. School should be about learning. To the extent that the homework amounts facilitate that goal, great. If it needs to be adjusted, then adjust it. Just like not every school or classroom is the same, not every student is the same, either. Ideally we would have a situation where sufficient attention can be paid and skill can be applied to determine what each student needs to optimize the educational experience.
I don’t think more homework will help to improve academic performance. A balanced approach is desirable on homework.
Setting aside the issue of whether there is a correlation between the amount of homework and academic performance, I feel this decision on homework should be left to the classroom teachers rather than dictated from the district office.
CUSD should remove some advanced math pathways to make education equitable for all students.
I think this is an opportunity to challenge the ability of the kids
I do not favor eliminating learning options for students for non-academic purposes.
CUSD should promote SEL (social-emotional learning) classes at the expense of the core instructional minutes.
we should have equal priority for both.
I support providing social-emotional learning opportunities for our students. SEL learning can take place both within in a classroom as well as through student activities and interaction with peers. Generally, I favor protecting core instructional minutes. Whether we should replace this time with other kinds of learning would come down to the specific tradeoffs to be evaluated.
CUSD should prioritize DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) work and incorporate anti-racist education in the curriculum.
I need to study this more to know the particulars.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are important topics to our community. The district is in the process of forming a DEI committee to solicit community input on this topic. I’d like to better understand community values on this topic.
CUSD should publish supplemental materials used by teachers.
It is a good idea to have transparency on what kids are being taught- if not in detail, it is good to mention about it if anybody wants to know
I support parents having access and knowledge of the supplementary materials used in the classroom. However, I’d like to do so thoughtfully and in consultation with our teachers. I want to ensure we do not increase workload for teachers who make the effort to introduce supplementary material to enrich their students’ learning. I would not want regulations to disincentivize teachers from going above and beyond for their students.
CUSD should offer more Middle School electives such as Computer Science even if that means additional expenses and/or funds are taken from other programs.
I’d prefer that we find a way to offer desired electives without taking from other useful programs but I need to learn about the specifics.
More choices on electives definitely will help kids to explore different areas and eventually it will help them.
I believe elective courses helps to broaden students’ exposures to different fields of studies, help them to take ownership of their learning, and be more engaged at schools. These are all behaviors are in our strategic plan as desired learning outcomes.
CUSD should balance access to electives across all middle schools.
Fairness generally is important. Without looking at the specifics, I don’t form a strong opinion at the moment.
Yes! I’ve advocated for equitable access to elective options and instruction time at all our middle schools during my term. Making this change will be a priority for me during my next term.
To improve access to mental health, CUSD should prioritize funding for counselors, psychologists and mental health therapists and define a specific counselor : student ratio.
I would want to study the mental health issue in the district first. I know that in Cupertino we support teens through groups and teen mental health with events.
This is an area to be looked at and keep the right ratio to support all students
As we transition back into normalcy from the pandemic, we see need for mental wellness resource for students. I am in favor of increasing our investments in this area, though I don’t currently have the data to say what an appropriate counselor to student ratio should be or even if that should be a metric. I am a firm believer of empowering our site leadership and would prefer these decisions to be made at a site rather than the district level.
New CUSD board should raise funds from the community via a new parcel tax and/or new bond measure.
I disagree for now because I think that the District needs to improve communications and outreach first.
I think bond is important for a long term sustenance pf our facilities. We have challenges for our central kitchen and school kitchen facilities and infrastructure which need a major revamping. Technology, security etc to be updated across schools.s also shades for lunch area and few other facility stuff. Parcel tax proposal should be based on the programs what we can offer or to continue the offered program.
The district has facility maintenance and capital improvement needs at an order of magnitude beyond what is possible to be funded through general funds.
CUSD should fund art and music programs in elementary schools from the general fund and not rely on parents’ donations.
I would study the financials first but art and music are very important to one’s education and development.
I agree that we should find ways to allocate funding for art and music as this is equally important as any other offerings
CUSD received a one-time block grant from the State for art, music, and instructional material., In the short term, I’d like to see us use these funds to provide improved and equitable art and music instructions across the district while we develop plans to reduce our reliance on parent donations for these programs for the long term.
CUSD should reduce its expenses by at least 10% without reducing the quality of education.
I would need to study the financials carefully before forming a strong position on this.
This is a hard one. majority of our expenses are on personnel (salaries and other expenses) . Agree that we need to tighten our expenses by prioritizing diligently. Not sure how much we can reduce by keeping same level of service and quality.
But this is an area to be looked at constantly.
CUSD’s projected expenditures this year is over $210 million. I don’t see a path to take $20 million out of the budget without impacting the classrooms, though I am open to suggestions on how to do so.
Any final comments?
My basic position is to restore trust and build the relationship between the District and its constituents in a positive way. The resources of CUSD should be focused on the students and the residents should be treated respectfully. That seems really basic but I’m not so sure that’s the case. To the extent that it is not, we need to fix that. I know from experience that correcting built-in expectations that are not appropriate takes time and subjects one to a lot of pressures. I hope that we can work together to support these kinds of efforts to improve the District for the benefit of everyone.
I appreciate the opportunity to share my thoughts with the parent community. Generally, my starting point for decisions is thinking through how the outcomes impact the children. I believe that good policy making is an iterative process that should involve more than the five board members. We get better results when the broader community engages in civil discourse, and my thanks go to the organizers of this survey in helping the voters make an informed decision for the upcoming election.