Fifth in a series. 

Re: “What Is Ideal School Board Member?” 

[Editor’s Note: Concluding this portion of his For Great Schools series, Scott McVarish, co-founder of the United Parents of Culver City, interviews School Board member Kathy Paspalis.  On the Board for 5 ½ years, she has two children who are coming into their junior year at the high school. They were at the Culver City Middle School and at El Marino prior to that. Today’s subject is Top Three Priorities. See www.facebook.com/forgreatschools]   

Mr. McVarish: You’re going to be on the School Board for at least 2 ½ years, and then possibly another four-year term. What are the top three priorities for the remainder of your term?

Ms. Paspalis: First, I want to see us make good use of that first chunk of money from the school improvement bond and get working on the priorities. I was a little impatient at our last workshop about what we were talking about and how do we get to talk about the needs and in what order are we going to address them? The construction manager can tell us certain things. It is our job, though, as the School Board, to tell them our priorities. “Fix that first.” Or, “Improve that first.” Second, I really want to be looking at bathrooms, bathrooms, bathrooms. You know, when (Board President) Nancy Goldberg came on, her mantra was water fountains, water fountains, water fountains. Mine is bathrooms, bathrooms. Not quite as pretty but really, really important.

Third, I am going to keep working at improving the various areas of curriculum I can touch on. We have a good opportunity to have a strong K-12 language immersion program. I still have the brochure I received when my kids started at El Marino. It said we have a K-12 program. Well, we no more had a K-12 program when my kids started than I can fly. But now, I can say we have a good K-8 program. We are getting there and we are working on it. It takes committed administrators– which we have– and then the staffing. It is hard to find a teacher who can teach science and Spanish at the same time or teach Japanese and social studies. It is hard enough to find a teacher who can just teach Japanese at the secondary level, much less the ones that we need to fill in at the primary level.