School Board candidate see challenge in growth

Teresa Hinds

Wednesday, Oct. 30, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Candidates in the Clark County School Board District B race agree the Legislature needs to be aggressively lobbied for school construction funding.

Eleanor Chow, who garnered the largest number of votes in the September primary, said the Legislature "needs to take another look at financing public education.

"They also need to look for other sources of funding, possibly developer fees. It's not fair to allow them to come in and develop these massive projects with no consideration for building schools."

Her challenger, Ruth Johnson, believes it is the School Board's responsibility to "encourage the superintendent to be more aggressive with the Legislature."

If the $643 million 1996 school bond does not pass, Johnson said the onus will fall on the School Board to lobby the Legislature to give Clark County more of the dollars already earmarked for education.

Johnson said she doesn't think developer impact fees are wrong, "but they are going to prove to be a very small percentage of what needs to come forward to keep up with growth. That's not a solution to our problems."

Johnson, a 36-year-old mother of four children, three of whom are enrolled in the school district, sees getting back to basics, fiscal accountability, overcrowding and campus safety as the major issues.

On the issue of safety, Johnson cited economically deprived schools in her district, which she said, "tend to have a lot of problems. In schools in those areas, safety is a major concern. As a parent of three children in the school district, I don't want to have to wonder whether my child will be safe in school."

Chow, too, is concerned about student safety. She feels there needs to be more supervision of children before, during and after school, and she advocates hiring more crossing guards and taking advantage of community volunteers to help teachers in the classroom and on the playground.

Chow, who said she was recruited to run for the School Board seat by the Asian community, would like to see the use of the Individual Educational Program, a custom-tailored plan for special-education students, extended to every student.

"The biggest problem is, because of overcrowding and all the attention paid to how to deal with it, we haven't had the opportunity to look at our students needs. If we want to take every student to the top of his potential, we must do IEPs for all students.

"In talking to some youngsters, I find they have a lot to offer but get discouraged because they can't meet all the requirements (for graduation). But they have other skills to offer," Chow said.

If revamping the curriculum is what it takes to discover what each student's potential is, Chow said she would be all for it. "How do you meet the needs of every student unless you do that?" she asked.

Chow also would like to see more schools like VoTech in the school district.

"The needs of the community in the business field are going to be different. The question arises: Are we really preparing the students for the 21st century?

"We also need to direct students who have skills with their hands, who are good auto mechanics, who are good plumbers," Chow said. "Do they necessarily have to take a college prep course?"

Meeting student needs or the lack thereof, according to Johnson, may be tied directly to the soaring dropout rate in Clark County schools.

She advocates programs that will identify exactly who the at-risk students are and why they are dropping out.

"We have to have approaches that are specifically designed to meet those needs of those students that are at risk of dropping out," she said.

"The first thing is to identify what their needs are, why do they feel like they need to drop out?" Johnson asked. "Are we not teaching the curriculum in a way that teaches them how important education is in their lives?"

Johnson is also calling for greater accountability by the board in following up on programs throughout the school district.

"We support a lot of programs, but sometimes we don't go back and evaluate the programs and ensure the dollars are being spent wisely."

As an example, she cited the bilingual program that serves a large portion of the students in District F.

"The bilingual program should be evaluated to be strengthened, and it should not be just assumed that the program is successful," Johnson said. "That particular program is a big issue in my district because a lot of the population are Hispanic students."

Johnson is a homemaker, and Chow is retired. Chow served for 24 years on the Montebello Unified School District board in Montebello, Calif.