Legislators Brownley and Simitian honored
Published: January 1, 2011
Two former school board members were singled out for special recognition at this year’s Annual Conference: Assembly Member Julia Brownley, D-Santa Monica, and state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto.
Each was named CSBA’s Outstanding Legislator of the Year for 2010 in recognition of their work to promote the interests of public schools in the face of devastating budget cuts and purported education reforms that sometimes conflated good intentions with effective governance and accountability.
“It takes courage and unbending commitment to serve on a school board in this environment,” Brownley, who served 12 years on the Santa Monica-Malibu School District board, said in accepting her award at the conference’s Legislative Network Luncheon.
Brownley, who chairs the Assembly Education Committee, and Simitian both said California faces what Brownley called “a very busy year for education” in 2011. Aside from the continuing budget crisis, issues will include teacher effectiveness and evaluations; the expiration of the Standardized Testing and Reporting Program that was established in 1997; the need for enhanced data to track student performance over time; implementation of the common core academic standards that California and most other states adopted in 2010, along with the development of common assessments to measure the standards’ attainment; and continued education reform efforts of uneven merit.
Simitian served on the Palo Alto Unified School District—and as a mayor, county supervisor and Assembly member—before being elected to the state Senate, where he serves on the education and budget commitees.
“The toughest [job] by far was being a local school board member,” Simitian told the luncheon. He vowed to continue his push to lower the threshold for voter approval of parcel taxes for schools from two-thirds to the 55 percent majority that’s available to school bonds.