Jim Stieringer, a retired La Mesa city treasurer, is running for the Area 2 seat on the Grossmont Union High School District board of trustees.
The San Diego Union-Tribune asked all the candidates running for school board in districts around San Diego County about their policies, plans and priorities. Here’s what Stieringer told us about his.
Why are you running for school board? What makes you a good candidate?
I’m running for this office to provide diversity in background. All current members are teachers or the spouse of a teacher. If elected, I will decline any and all fringe benefits offered for service as a board member.
What is the most important issue currently facing your school district?
Our most important issue is to honor the board’s promise to the residents of Alpine to provide a high school experience to its high school-age children who would otherwise be required to commute 15 or 20 miles via Interstate 8 or Harbison Canyon to the GUHSD’s existing Granite Hills and Steele Canyon high schools. The 2022 creation of Liberty Charter High School in Alpine does not excuse GUHSD from its implied obligation to share a portion of its $128 million Proposition BB construction designated proceeds with the charter school that is providing the local education that GUHSD had long promised but failed to deliver.
What are the top three specific things you would seek to accomplish on the school board?
Three specific things: (A) work collegially with the Liberty Charter High School Board, (B) implement new state laws requiring courses in diversity and financial understanding, and (C) provide more active board participation in developing annual budgets and labor agreements.
What would your approach be to district budget planning and spending? What would you do if your district had a budget shortfall?
Planning and spending tasks are specifically the responsibility of the superintendent, who is hired for his/her experience. As a non-educator, I recognize that others are a lot smarter than I.
Since 2013, California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) allocates an unrestricted base grant for each student who comes to school. Districts receive a bonus of 20 percent for each student with high needs such as ESL, poverty and homelessness. More funding goes to districts with even higher needs, such as where more than 70 percent of the students are economically disadvantaged. Those funds are for operations only and not for construction.
How should your school district raise student academic achievement, and what would you do as a school board member to accomplish that?
Academic achievement is directly related to attendance. If necessary, I would approve some form of incentive or reward for those achieving a specific level of attendance.
Do you think anything currently offered in school curricula or libraries should be removed? If yes, what, and why? If no, why not?
Libraries continue to be important. However, I do not join the crazies who advocate book-banning or censorship. During my high school days at Grossmont, I (and most of my classmates) ignored the school library. We were enthusiastically welcomed to use the SDSU library. Perhaps the same accommodation is still possible.
What do you think is driving student absenteeism in your district, and what would you as a school board member do to reduce it?
Absenteeism. The COVID experience has been used to excuse everything from school absence to workplace absence. It has been said that if you want a lot of something, incentivize it. If you want a little of something, tax it. Perhaps a carrot-and-stick approach would work well.
Do you think schools should notify parents if their child’s gender identity or presentation at school changes? Why or why not?
The reduced role of parents seems to have been engendered by the indifference of both the parents and by the hegemony of the staff over all things academic, including gender assignment. Parents should be afforded the opportunity to “opt in” or to “opt out” of such notifications.