Evergreen School Board

District 1

As of September 3rd we’ve emailed our list of questions 3x with no response

As of September 3rd we’ve emailed our list of questions 3x with no response

District 5

2017 School Director Candidate Question Responses_P.Llafet

Why should people vote for you? 

For the past twenty years I have lived and raised my family here in the Evergreen Public School district.  I have served my neighborhood association, the Vancouver Heights Neighborhood Association, for the past ten years in various positions and am the current chair.  I have had first hand experience as a PTO president for the Ellsworth Elementary board in helping to identify resource shortfalls and funding them through fundraising.  I have leant my leadership skills at Wy’east Middle School as well for the three years and two of those years as president.  I have served my community as well in the areas of fundraising for the both the Evergreen School District Foundation as well the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.  These non profit board experience have allowed me to interface with different people in our community and not just in education.  With these varied opportunities, I believe I can see a much broader landscape of my community and thusly able to give a better understanding of the role of school board director.

What are the three (3) top goals/objectives for you if you are elected to your school board?

1) Developing different pathways to a career and livelihood.  College in one pathway, but we need to expose students to all sorts of different vocational careers within our community.  Enlisting various business through mentorships. hands on experiences, and helping students understand what they might be good in.  2) Charter schools and vouchers equal choice for parents and their children.  Even though we live in a very good district who’s graduation rate is higher than the state average, we can still do better.  Parent’s ultimately have the choice as to what education model will best fit their child, We must be proactive in looking at these different mechanisms of education kids. 3) Better communication with the public.  We will be introducing a building and maintenance bond in the Spring of 2018, it is paramount that we work with the public in informing them of the facility needs as to why we need to build new schools.  I believe that the school board, who represent the stakeholder, must be out the there informing the public and reassuring them that this is the right investment for our community.

Are they any topics you feel passionately about you would like to share wityh our readers? 

As our schools head into the 21st Century, undoubtedly they will do this with the assistance of technology.  Though the iPad, computers for each student the implementation of a digitalized  curriculum is deployed, we cannot neglect the need for emotional iq teaching.  Critical thinking skills are lacking. some would argue that the classical education must be revived.  We must resist the temptation of changing teaching methods overtime there is a new verism available.  STEM teaching and philosophy must incorporate the arts. STEAM is the better term.  It os the arts that teach and grow the improvisational and creative mind.  I believed that as gatekeepers for our children we must keep the gap between the “have’s and hove not from widening.”  A Portland publication just released the Top 25 k-12 schools.  Is is not surprising that over 80% of the schools are private. And even the public schools that made the list, these schools sit in predominately wealthy areas.  The other components that will affect schools is illegal immigration and the rising cost of homes.  Students of Illegal families are fearful of finding members of their families being arrested, detained and ultimately deported.  We are seeing a drop in enrollment due to this fear factor.  Even enrollment declines than teachers and staff are laid off.  Secondly, the rising cost of housing is forcing many renters to have to make difficult decisions.  Thus the children are facing various housing alternatives if not the prospect of homelessness .  We need our school board to work with both local and state legislative lawmakers in protecting our families.  Of course they are many other issues that I see that we need to tackle.

As of September 3rd we’ve emailed our list of questions 3x with no response