(DANVILLE, Calif.) -- The election results of San Ramon Valley Unified School District (SRVUSD) Trustee Area 5 and Contra Costa Community College District (4CD) Ward 2 have direct policy implications for local students. The following summarizes how families and students in Danville, San Ramon, and surrounding areas, who are navigating elementary school through to community college, may be impacted by these results.
Rachel Hurd’s election victory in the SRVUSD Trustee Area 5 race signifies a continuity in district leadership for SRVUSD. Her platform outlines several structural changes and priorities for K-12 students such as increased academic support, more focused aid for learning differences, and fiscal stability to protect classroom programs.
Photo Credit: SRVUSD / An image of Rachel Hurd
Hurd’s platform supports completing the district-wide rollout of Multi-Tiered Systems of Support across all campuses. The intended design of MTSS is to provide earlier, targeted interventions when students struggle academically or socially. It is predicated on classroom-wide instructional time, the utilization of analytical metrics of student performance, and the division of students into subgroups if additional supports are necessary.
Additionally, Hurd cites her background of working with educational advocacy groups such as Decoding Dyslexia CA to expand accommodations and classroom practices for students with Special Education needs and potential learning difficulties.
Furthermore, since SRVUSD operates as a Low Local Control Funding Formula District, meaning the state provides minimal to no supplemental funding per student due to a low population of “high needs” students, Hurd wants to emphasize a three-year budgetary plan to manage any deficit spending in order to protect classroom resources and maintain teacher retention.
Photo Credit: SRVUSD Bar graph illustrating the LCFF
In the Contra Costa Community College District, Dr. Raquel Donoso and Becca Barrett won the election. While Becca Barett’s election to the Community College Board representing Ward 3 will directly impact local high school graduates and adults looking to attend Diablo Valley College (DVC San Ramon campus) or other district colleges.
Notably, community colleges in California boast the the TAG Program, a formal agreement guaranteeing admission for community college students at four-year California public universities if they meet certain academic requirements, which has been scaled back over the past few years as schools such as UC Irvine and UC Santa Barbara are gradually excluding more and more majors such as computer science, business, and engineering majors from the program effective within the next few years. This adds to the list of already UC Berkeley and UCLA who have completely pulled out of the TAG program.
While Barrett has not officially claimed transfer pathways as a priority, Donoso outlined it as one of her key three messages in a survey. Both candidates have supported more vocational training educational programs as well as increased financial aid for DVC students.
Correction or Addition? If you would like to add information to this report or suggest a correction, please contact me at alizeh.i@lead4earth.org.
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