San Ramon Valley Unified School District residents have to make a crucial decision in today’s election with two school board positions available.
Incumbent Shelley Clark and challenger Karin Shumway are vying to represent Area 2, which covers parts of Danville, while Sukriti Sehgal is challenging incumbent Laura Bratt for the Area 3 seat.
Area 3 covers most of Dougherty Valley and parts of southeast Danville.
The candidates addressed the issues facing the district during a school board candidate forum hosted by the League of Women Voters of Diablo Valley on Oct. 15 at Iron Horse Middle School.
Clark was elected to the school board for a four-year term in 2020, while Shumway is running for the first time.
Prior to the debate, Clark posted a chart on Instagram explaining why she’s the better candidate. She compared herself to Shumway in terms of their district volunteering, school board and work experiences.
By doing this, Clark created controversy by describing Shumway’s work experience as being a wife, mom, homemaker and youth sports coach, as well as pointing out that she has no school board experience and limited volunteer experience.
“There was a lot of it that I think was meant to slam me or insult me,” Shumway said after the forum. “I honestly think it backfired and gave me more support in the community.”
At the beginning of the forum, moderator Janet Hoy had to warn Clark and Shumway to avoid personal matters after Clark insinuated that Shumway didn’t have enough experience and Shumway claimed the allegations Clark spread are false.
“We generally ask candidates to refrain from any kind of personal attacks,” Hoy said during the forum. “Warning to you both.”
Candidates were first asked to introduce themselves and talk about their accomplishments. Later, they discussed their policies and views on pressing issues, such as budget constraints, student mental health, diversity and inclusion, school safety, and academic performance.
Clark said one of the biggest issues was the district’s declining budget. She said the state deficit caused negative impact on district funds for schools. She explained that enrollment numbers declined because of recent increase in the cost of living, which leads to less funding.
To mitigate the budget problem, Clark said she plans to optimize the budget.
“I and another board member are on the budget committee, and we are looking hard and very detailed into the budget to find ways to cut it that will not affect the classroom,” she said.
Clark also voiced her support for Measure Q, a renewed parcel tax on district residents that is expected to generate $6.5 million annually for the general fund. The current parcel tax will expire in June. None of the other candidates mentioned Measure Q during the forum.
But Cal High statistics teacher Bob Allen, who attended the forum, said Clark and Bratt are the only candidates he has heard voice support for Measure Q.
Shumway believes the biggest district problem is the declining academic performance.
“Our test scores are dropping the last several years, a couple percent each year,” Shumway said. “Math is down 7%, science is down about 10% and ELA is down 7% as well.”
If re-elected, Bratt hopes to increase the budget to help students achieve higher test scores.
“Budget, budget, budget. We need more money,” Bratt said. “California is not great in terms of test scores, we’re also one of the lowest funded states in public education.”
Shumway believes the decline in student enrollment and teacher retention is due to budget limitations. To combat that, Shumway plans to provide more rigorous academics and safe school environments.
To address mental health and well-being, Clark wants to further expand the peer counseling classes in high schools that she implemented during her recent term.
“It’s been just a really amazing process for me to actually see something come to fruition that was my idea,” Clark said. “ [Monte Vista High School] and Cal High have it this year and I’m hoping that we get it into the other two [high] schools.”
Shumway believes the district is heading in the right direction with social and emotional wellbeing, especially by integrating special needs students into general ed environments.
“It’s really neat for these students to be introduced into mainstream classrooms when possible,” Shumway said. “It’s a benefit to [the] students.”
Allen is concerned about one of Shumway’s policies.
“Ms. Shumway has previously said things that lead me to believe she does not know about how schools are run,” Allen said. “[Maybe] she does not know tenure allows a teacher like me to make comments to a newspaper or a message board without fearing retribution because she said that we should get rid of tenure.”
Allen believes Shumway needs more experience before representing the board.
“It’s lovely [that Ms. Shumway] raised a family,” Allen said. “Being a mom is one of the hardest jobs on the planet, [but] it does not qualify you to run a half-billion dollar budget.”
On the other hand, former Cal High math teacher Kara Moore, who attended the forum, believes the district needs to focus on increasing passion relating to school curriculum with both teachers and students. She believes Shumway is the better candidate to solve the problem.
“The best way to get kids to be passionate about what they’re learning, whether it’s something they’re interested in or not, is to have teachers who are passionate about their subjects,” Moore said.
Moore believes the constant change in curriculum prevents teachers from being able to be passionate about what they teach. Sehgal, who was born in India, said the curriculum taught in America needs to improve.
“While [students in other countries] are doing experiments to measure the refractive index of glass,” Sehgal said. “Our children are making TikTok videos.”
Prior to her school board term, Bratt was an online teacher for the Academy of Arts during the online learning period, helping her understand the students behavior and needs.
“That helped in terms of how I helped us navigate COVID and getting the students back in the classroom,” Bratt said.
Bratt advocated for students by implementing the student senate, which is a group of appointed students that are meant to voice the general wants and needs of their peers.