Vantage Point: Let’s work to put the puzzle together 

Words alone cannot explain how honored I am to serve as your 2008 president. I look forward to working with CSBA’s talented Executive Committee—President-elect Paula Campbell, Immediate Past President Kathy Kinley and newly elected Vice President Frank Pugh—and our wonderful Board of Directors and Delegate Assembly on CSBA’s agenda to ensure that the association’s vision becomes a reality for all of the 6.3 million public schoolchildren in California. I look to everyone at CSBA—including each one of you—to become the “A team” in advocating for a public education system that addresses the needs of all students and leads us towards a time when the futures of all children are driven by their aspirations, not bounded by their circumstances.

I wish to thank each of the 4,000 participants who attended the recent Annual Education Conference and Trade Show. Your willingness to travel to San Diego for three days of training, presentations and discussions with your colleagues from around the state should be applauded as heartily as you applauded the fantastic speakers you heard.

As a member of CSBA, you can be as proud as I am of what this association has done over the years to define and drive the public education agenda in California and the United States. CSBA members have devoted countless hours to serving on our committees and task forces, resulting in valuable publications and resources that have helped shape CSBA’s positions on a vast number of issues. This work, together with our collaboration with other education organizations, has produced volumes of white papers, joint resolutions and resource guides which outline agreed-upon education values.

Being a visual person, I have to ask what our education system would look like if the most substantial recommendations from this wealth of material were accepted and implemented. When I addressed the Delegate Assembly in November, I referred to all of those publications, studies, task force and committee reports and position papers as pieces of a puzzle, with each helping to give form and shape to a picture of what education could look like. The task ahead of us is to fit these pieces together to reveal the true picture of our public education system in California.

I have adopted a lapel pin shaped as a puzzle piece as a symbol of this effort. It shows that the wearer is committed to putting the pieces together to form an image of an education system that is responsive and supportive of the many issues of its students, a system that helps the state achieve the goals outlined in CSBA’s Vision and Mission. I look forward to visiting your local school districts and county boards throughout California. I hope that everyone will join me in our effort to put the puzzle pieces together because together, we—the members of CSBA—must become an even greater part of the picture of California’s 21st century education.