Part II
Previously, “The Professor and the School Board — A Match, She Says”
[img]686|left|Prof. Patricia Siever||no_popup[/img] Attempting to correct any lingering ambiguity about her candidacy for the School Board, especially since she was the last to file, Prof. Patricia Siever, a first-time office seeker, said:
“I am in this race to win one of the three seats. I am not running just for the experience of it.”
Tonight at 7 at El Marino Language Immersion School, , she will have her first megaphone-style chance to introduce her campaign to the public in a candidates’ forum sponsored by the School Board, of all people. The election is Nov. 3, 6 weeks from Tuesday.
Prof. Siever presents a new kind of profile for recent Board elections.
The intriguing combination of a 34-year teaching veteran at the college level running for the School Board will be a different kind of challenge for voters accustomed to parent or hometown teacher candidates.
The professor is Vice Chair of the History Dept. at West Los Angeles College, about an inch over the Culver City line into Los Angeles, but she has resided in Culver City much of her life.
Here is one more particle of tasty seasoning:
Prof. Siever is one of those rarities in upper academia, a Republican.
Her students, most of whom you can bet are not Republicans, do not know the professor’s affiliation. She stresses that in the classroom she teaches history — possibly the most tempting of all courses — objectively, not subjectively.
In the month since she joined the derby, Prof. Siever has been confronted with a touchy question that has surfaced a few times:
Crossing the Bridge
What does a college professor know about K through12?
Education is one family, the professor tells her skeptics.
“I think they may not understand education is a continuum,” she said. “It doesn’t stop with 12th grade. “We (in community college) see all of the transfers, the A.P. students.
“I have taught over 15,000 students so far. This is stereotyping. We are all in this together. We are trying to prepare our students for a global context, not just a local context.
“We see these students when they leave (high school), so I am asking now, ‘How can we come and help you help our future?’”
No stranger to the rigors of board life, Prof. Siever has served on the most influential community college policy panels.
When people ask her how teaching college has prepared or qualified her for the School Board in Culver City, the professor quickly interjects that “it’s not just teaching I have been involved in. I have been president of 3,000 faculty in this district. Statewide, I have been president of the California Assn. of Community Colleges, a board. I have been on the Board of Governors, and I have been involved in governance for a long time.
“I am also on the Board of Governors at Brotman Medical Center. To me, boards are boards. They make policy. They tell you how to deal with your constituencies. They tell you that you are a servant leader. You are not just making policy without any kind of input.
“I am saying that I am prepared to be on a board. You give me a board. I understand policy. I understand how to get things done.
“I have been (doing board business) in Sacramento for over 10 years.
“I understand that boards have to set priorities. They have to have goals and objectives.
“They have to be accountable. Accountability is one of my key principles, too, throughout the system.
“How can you make policy if you don’t have plans, 3 years or 5 years? Then you figure out your priorities.
“Every year there is a report card on how the board has worked. You do that because the board makes policy, but you do not micromanage.
“This School Board is going to be very interesting for me because it is not foreign to me.”
So, Prof. Siever concluded after reviewing her list of similarites, “I don’t see a problem” in executing a so-called transition.
“I understand how to be part of, or to lead, an effective board.”
