Josh Newman
Questionnaire by the GrowSF Endorsement Team, responses by Candidate
- Office: State Superintendent of Public Instruction
- Election Date: June 2, 2026
- Candidate: Josh Newman
- Due Date: April 8, 2026
- Printable Version
Thank you for seeking GrowSF's endorsement for the June 2, 2026 primary election! GrowSF believes in a growing, vibrant, healthy, safe, and prosperous city via common sense solutions and effective government.
As a candidate for state office, your day-to-day responsibilities in office will affect not just San Francisco, but California as a whole. As a representative of the people of California and of San Francisco, the policies you bring to Sacramento should reflect the best of what we have to offer.
The GrowSF endorsement committee will review all completed questionnaires and seek consensus on which candidates best align with our vision for San Francisco and have the expertise to enact meaningful policy changes.
We ask that you please complete this questionnaire by April 8, 2026 so we have enough time to adequately review and discuss your answers.
Your Policy Goals
We’d like to get some details about your high-level goals and how you intend to use your elected office to achieve them.
What policies do you hope to change or preserve by running for State Superintendent of Public Instruction? Please be specific, and list them in order of priority.
1. Raise student achievement through evidence-based instruction and early intervention.
California can’t accept a system where only a third of students meet grade-level standards, and the status quo is not an accident. It reflects years of misaligned curriculum, inconsistent teacher preparation, and a state bureaucracy that has been slow to adopt what the research clearly shows works. As Superintendent, I will work to align curriculum and professional development with proven instructional practices, expand early literacy screening so we catch struggling readers before they fall behind, and scale high-dosage tutoring to the students who need it most. In the Senate, I advanced legislation to strengthen early learning and improve instructional quality. As Superintendent, I’ll set clear expectations, publish transparent results, and ensure that CDE is a true implementation partner to districts, and not just a source of mandates or compliance bureaucracy.
2. Strengthen career pathways so every student graduates with a viable plan.
Despite the recent emphasis on increased graduation rates, for too many California students that high school diploma is not pointing them toward either a career or a college education. I helped expand dual enrollment, career technical education, and apprenticeship partnerships as a member of the Legislature and as Chair of the State Senate Committee on Education, including major workforce preparation investments. As Superintendent, I plan to scale high-quality CTE, dual enrollment, and pre-apprenticeship programs aligned with the industries that are actually growing and hiring in California: the building trades, clean energy, health care, and advanced manufacturing. Every student deserves to graduate with a plan and the tools to put them on a path toward productive employment at the end of their educational journey.
3. Modernize statewide governance with transparency, streamlined guidance, and accountability for results.
California's massive, decentralized public education system is too fragmented and too slow to respond to student needs. Districts are drowning in contradictory mandates, duplicative reporting requirements, and guidance that arrives too late to be useful. I authored and negotiated legislation to improve school accountability, strengthen fiscal oversight, and modernize state systems. As Superintendent, I’ll make the California Department of Education a reliable, timely partner to districts, not an obstacle or an adversary. That means a modern public performance dashboard; a statewide focus that identifies high-performing schools and helps other communities replicate their methods and models; and a genuine commitment to measuring outcomes rather than the current reliance on compliance for its own sake.
4. Better align the school day with the work day to support families and reduce absenteeism.
California's school schedules no longer match the realities of working families in a high-cost state. When the school day ends at 2:30 and a parent's shift ends at 6:00, that gap creates real hardship, and it shows up in attendance data. I will work to further expand ELOP and proven before- and after-school programs; improve student transportation options; and build partnerships that keep students engaged on campus longer. This is one of the most practical and high-leverage reforms we can make: it will reduce strain on families, improve attendance, and give students more compelling reasons to stay connected to schooling.
5. Reduce chronic absenteeism with modernized attendance policy and real re-engagement tools.
Absenteeism is now one of the most significant drivers of inequity in California schools, and our policy infrastructure hasn't kept pace. During the pandemic, I served as Chair of something called the Senate Special Committee on Pandemic Emergency Response. In that capacity, and as Chair of the Senate Education Committee, I worked directly with districts struggling to bring students back after the pandemic. The state needs to modernize its tools and provide both better guidance and accountability when it comes to strategies for addressing absenteeism. As SSPI, I will work to update outdated attendance rules, strengthen community-based re-engagement teams, and improve the data systems that allow schools to identify and intervene with at-risk students earlier.
6. Elevate civic education and rebuild California's civic literacy infrastructure.
A democracy cannot function when its citizens lack the ability to evaluate evidence, distinguish credible information from conspiracy, or understand the basic architecture of their own government. This is no longer an abstract notion; it's a fundamental issue for the institutions and ideals that undergird our civil society. As SSPI, I will prioritize strengthening civic learning across all grade levels, expand project-based civic experiences, and promote transparent data on civic-learning access so that successful models can be replicated statewide. California should be leading the nation on civic education; right now, it’s clear that we're not.
Why those policies?
These priorities come from years of watching California's education system up close as a State Senator and during my tenure as Chair of the Senate Education Committee, and were directly informed by oversight hearings, school visits, budget negotiations, and direct conversations with superintendents, teachers, and parents made one thing clear: California's biggest challenges are structural and systemic, and the right Superintendent could create the context, conditions, and leverage to fix them. That's why I'm running. Student achievement has stalled not because educators lack dedication, but because the state has failed to give districts consistent, reliable guidance on what actually works, along with the resources and proactive assistance that is also needed. Too many classrooms are still using instructional approaches the evidence doesn't support, while proven interventions remain unscaled. An energetic, creative, and collaborative Superintendent could re-set the instructional direction for the state, but that position has been underutilized for at least the past eight years.
Career pathways remain uneven despite genuine demand from employers and labor partners who are eager to engage. When CTE and dual enrollment programs are well-designed and aligned with real workforce needs, they transform students' trajectories. The problem is inconsistency: some districts do this well and many don't, and the state hasn't done enough to identify best practices or flag underperforming programs in order to close those gaps.
Governance reform is long overdue because the costs of fragmentation are real and substantial. District administrators are spending enormous energy navigating competing and sometimes contradictory mandates, often waiting on guidance that arrives too late to act on, or in many cases, as I’ve been told by many superintendents, not all. A State Superintendent, leading a reoriented and reenergized CDE, who streamline that and who make the department a genuine partner instead of a compliance machine, would free up a huge amount of organizational capacity that would go directly back to students.
Aligning the school day with the workday isn't just a quality-of-life issue; it's also an attendance and achievement issue. I’ve heard repeatedly from parents across California who are forced to patch together supervision, often making hard choices that adversely impact their kids’ schooling, because the school day ends hours before the workday does. This mismatch has direct consequences in not just absenteeism data but across the board as it relates to the conditions and high levels of duress that are shaping too many students’ experiences. Fixing it is practical, achievable, and overdue.
Chronic absenteeism became a crisis as a result of the pandemic, and the state's policy tools have yet to catch up. Administrators from every region have told me the same thing during committee hearings and in other conversations: without modernized attendance rules and the capacity and tools for early intervention, schools are unlikely to be able to close the gaps that opened during COVID. This is a solvable problem, but it will require statewide leadership and resources, not just local improvisation.
Civic literacy may sound like the softest item on this list, but I’d argue it’s actually one of the most consequential. The erosion of shared civic knowledge isn’t just an education problem; it’s destabilizing institutions and making democratic governance harder. California should be leading on this. Giving students the skills to evaluate evidence, to understand how government works, and to participate constructively isn’t ideological, it’s foundational.
Explain why your #1 goal is your #1 goal.
Raising student achievement is my #1 goal because every other goal we have for California, to include a thriving workforce, a functioning democracy, a sustainable economy, depends on students mastering the fundamentals. If a child can’t read proficiently, reason mathematically, or think critically, no program, pathway, or initiative downstream will fully compensate for that. Student achievement isn't one priority among many; it's the foundation that everything else builds upon.
What made this viscerally clear to me wasn't any single report or series of reports; it was years of oversight hearings, school visits, and direct conversations with teachers, principals, and families as Chair of Senate Education. California has built one of the most complicated education systems in the world, and that complexity has come to obscure the basics: strong instruction, consistent attendance, meaningful engagement. And in California, when the core isn't working, our tendency has been to respond with more programs, more initiatives, and more guidance, when what's truly needed is a relentless focus on what actually moves outcomes.
The scale of this challenge is both real and increasingly urgent: California’s sprawling public education system contains more than 5.8 million students across 58 counties, nearly 1,000 public school districts and more than 10,000 schools. It’s a clear indictment of the status quo that fewer than half of California’s students are currently meeting grade-level standards in reading, and even fewer in math. That's a structural failure that will continue compounding over time. Students who fall behind in early literacy rarely catch up without intervention, and students who can't do grade-level math in middle school will arrive at high school already foreclosed out of STEM pathways. Gaps that we don't close early become the inequities we can't fix later.
Raising achievement is also the most direct path toward success for every other goal on my list. Students who are reading at grade level are far more likely to graduate. Students who master core skills will be better prepared for college, apprenticeships, and careers. Students who can evaluate evidence and reason through complexity will be better equipped for civic life. A focus on raising achievement isn't in competition with those goals, it's the prerequisite for them. I'm running for Superintendent because I believe this is fixable. California has the research, the resources, and enough high-performing schools to know what educational excellence looks like. What we've lacked is leadership at the state level willing and able to say clearly: this is the standard, this is what works, and here's how we're going to get there. That's what I intend to do as SSPI.
How will you build the coalition and political capital to enact your #1 goal? What obstacles will you face, and how will you overcome them? Will the power of the office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction be enough to achieve this goal?
Raising student achievement at scale will require building a coalition around the simple but often contested idea that every child can meet high standards, and that the state's job is to make sure schools have the tools to get them there. I'll build that coalition the way I built coalitions while in the Legislature, by convening the people who actually make schools work: teachers, classified staff, principals, county superintendents, families and students ( a constituency which, almost ironically, seems to be least consulted in these kinds of discussions), and aligning them around aspirational goals that are also clear and measurable, rather than rooted in the language of process, as is too often the case. When I chaired the Senate Education Committee, I helped shape major reforms by insisting on evidence, transparency, and accountability, and I'll bring that same mindset and discipline to the office of SSPI.
It's also important to be direct about where the obstacles are: the biggest resistance to evidence-based instruction reform hasn't actually come from teachers; most teachers want the tools to succeed. It comes from a combination of interest group jousting abetted by a legislative environment that discourages thoughtful discussion and rewards zero-sum competition among stakeholders in California’s noisy educational ecosystem. Overcoming will require leadership, clarity of argument, and public transparency centered on clear goals pegged to clear data on what's working and what isn't; identifying high-performing districts and helping others learn from them; and making it harder to defend the status quo when the (lack of) results are visible to everyone.
The governance structure is also a genuine obstacle in other ways. California's education system is extraordinarily fragmented, nearly 1,000 school districts, multiple state agencies, fiercely competing interest groups, and a funding structure that diffuses accountability. The State Superintendent can’t unilaterally rewrite state law or compel districts to change instructional materials, but the office does have more leverage than it has recently used. It sets statewide expectations and publishes the data families and policymakers rely on. It controls the department's technical assistance and professional development infrastructure. And, perhaps more important than anything, it has a “bully pulpit” that, deployed effectively, could sustain and advance a public focus on a small number of non-negotiable priorities.
Families are also an underutilized part of this coalition. The research is unequivocal: children who are read to early and often, who grow up in homes where literacy is valued and practiced, have stronger long-term academic trajectories. A Superintendent who elevates that message and gives families concrete tools isn't doing outreach, they're doing student achievement work.
Clearly, the office alone won't be enough (especially in the event that the recently proposed change to the role and responsibilities of the SSPI are codified by the Legislature later this year). But a State Superintendent who can build public demand for results, who is transparent about the gap between California's potential and its current performance, and who is willing to use every lever available (data, standards, technical assistance, and political capital), could turn a diffuse system into a focused one. That's my goal.
Will the power of the office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction be enough to achieve the other goals?
The honest answer is: not alone, and it would be misleading to pretend otherwise. California's education system is too large, too decentralized, and too structurally complex for any single office to drive change in isolation. The Governor and Legislature hold substantially more direct leverage over education policy and funding than the Superintendent does. Real progress requires genuine alignment with the State Board of Education, a productive working relationship with the next governor, and close coordination with the Legislature, which ultimately controls both policy and the budget.
What the office of SSPI can provide, and what it has lacked for too long, is clarity and coherence. The right Superintendent will convene, coordinate, and align a system that too often pulls in contradictory directions. That's where my background matters in ways that I believe are directly relevant. As Chair of the Senate Education Committee, I've already developed the relationships required to move complex policy and secure major investments. I've worked with governors, legislative leaders, unions, county offices, and district superintendents to translate ideas into enacted law and funded programs. I know how Sacramento works, how, as they say, “the sausage is made;” not in theory, but from having done it.
It’s probably also necessary to be direct about a set of proposed changes to the office of SSPI that's currently moving through the Legislature: a proposal that would strip the Superintendent's administrative authority over the California Department of Education and reassign it to a commissioner under the direct control of the State Board of Education. I oppose this restructuring, not because I think the current arrangement is optimal, but because this particular change is, in my view, a half-measure that is likely to produce worse outcomes than either the status quo or genuine reform.
I've actually argued publicly, including in a piece I wrote for the Los Angeles Times last year (https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2025-05-27/california-state-superintendent-of-public-instruction), that there’s a legitimate case for a more fundamental rethinking of how California governs education. Most states vest education authority in a cabinet-level Secretary of Education who serves at the direction of the governor, creating cleaner lines of accountability, tighter policy alignment, and a direct connection between education priorities and the broader agenda of the state's chief executive. That's a serious structural argument worth having, but it would require a constitutional amendment passed by California voters, which is exactly the right bar for a change of that magnitude.
What the current legislative proposal does is something far less coherent. It doesn't move California toward a secretary model. It doesn't strengthen democratic accountability. It simply inserts an appointed commissioner between the elected Superintendent and the department they’ve historically led, diffusing responsibility without clarifying authority. That's not streamlining, it's fragmentation with extra steps, and I believe it will make it easier to insulate policy decisions from public scrutiny while giving the appearance of reform.
If California is going to restructure education governance, it should do so honestly, through a transparent public debate and a vote of the people. What's currently proposed doesn't meet that standard. And in the absence of genuine structural reform, the most important variable in how effective this office can be is the person in it; ideally someone who’s knowledgeable, deeply engaged, and relentlessly focused on systemic change and higher standards.
That's the case I'm making for why this election matters. The office of SSPI is more limited than generally acknowledged, but with the right leadership it can still punch well above its weight. My focus as SSPI will be to use every lever available, the bully pulpit, the data infrastructure, the technical assistance apparatus, and the relationships I've spent a career building, to align the system around clear priorities and ensure that what gets decided in Sacramento actually reaches classrooms. The shorter version of all of this is that the office's power is largely a function of the person in it. I intend to use it fully.
What is an "out there" change that you would make to state/local government policy, if you could? For the purpose of this question, you are not constrained to the office of State Superintendent of Public Instruction.
If I could make one big structural change to California policy, it would be to update Proposition 98 so that the state’s constitutional funding guarantee for education would also explicitly include children from birth to age four. For nearly four decades, Prop. 98 has protected K–14 funding and provided a stable floor that California's schools depend on. But, almost paradoxically, it has left early childhood education, the period when brain development is most rapid, when language acquisition is most powerful, and when the habits that predict long-term literacy take root, entirely outside our most reliable funding mechanism. That's not a minor oversight. It's a fundamental misalignment between what the science tells us and how the state actually allocates resources.
I'll gladly acknowledge upfront that amending Prop. 98 would be a huge political challenge. It was passed by voters, it's constitutionally embedded, and any change would require going back to the ballot; that's exactly why it qualifies as "out there." But the actual case for it is, in my view, quite straightforward: if we’re serious about raising standards, closing achievement gaps, and building a stronger workforce, we shouldn’t keep treating the first four years of a child's life as optional infrastructure. The research in this area is unambiguous: children who have access to high-quality early learning, and who are read to and encouraged to explore language from the earliest years, have dramatically stronger long-term academic trajectories. Excluding that developmental window from our most stable funding guarantee is a structural mistake we've been living with for decades.
Alongside that, I would pursue a parallel legislative change to make kindergarten mandatory in California. We have invested billions to create universal Transitional Kindergarten while simultaneously leaving a gap in the system by not requiring kindergarten attendance. The children who lose out most under the current policy are exactly those who would benefit most: kids from working-class and immigrant families, for whom inconsistent access to early learning can have consequences that compound for years. Making kindergarten mandatory would close that gap, create a coherent early learning continuum, and ensure that every child enters first grade with the foundational skills they need to succeed.
Together, these changes would do something California's education system has never fully accomplished: align our funding structure and our policy architecture with where child development actually happens. If we want better outcomes in third-grade reading, high school graduation, and college and career readiness, we have to start earlier, with a system that is funded, coherent, and mandatory where it matters most. That's the structural change I'd make.
Your Leadership
We’d like to learn more about your leadership style and plan to execute effectively once you assume office.
Why are you running for State Superintendent of Public Instruction?
I’m running for SSPI because I've spent years learning and watching a system that should be working for California's students continually fall short. Running for SSPI is a natural continuation of the work I was doing as Chair of the Senate Education Committee. In that role, I had what I would describe as a front-row seat to both the promise and the profound dysfunction of California's public education system. I watched talented, dedicated educators work heroically within a structure that too often undermined them, fragmented across agencies, buried in contradictory mandates, and lacking any single leader willing to align the system around clear, honest priorities. I advanced legislation, secured major investments, and moved policy I'm proud of. Having had the privilege of sitting in that chair, it has become clear to me that the reforms California needs aren't likely to happen in a committee room; they’re going to require someone in the Superintendent's office who is willing to do the hard, unglamorous work of coordination, alignment, and accountability.
That's the job I'm running to do. Not to manage a department (although CDE is clearly in desperate need of better and stronger leadership), but to lead a system, to set a clear agenda, convene the right partners, and create the conditions for real and lasting reform. The office has real limitations, and I've been direct about those. But it also has a platform, a bully pulpit, and an operational base that have been consistently underutilized. I intend to use them fully. I'm running for SSPI because I know how this system works, I know exactly where it breaks down, and I've already demonstrated the ability to bring people together to fix it. California's students deserve a Superintendent who leads with clarity, urgency, and an unrelenting focus on results. That's the work I was doing in the state senate, and it's the work I’d like to be able to continue as SSPI.
In your own words, what are the core constitutional and statutory responsibilities of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction?
The core responsibilities of the Superintendent fall into three interconnected roles: chief advocate, chief implementer, and chief accountability officer for California's public school. Understanding how those roles fit together is essential to understanding what the job actually requires.
The constitutional foundation is straightforward: the Superintendent is the executive officer of the California Department of Education and the only statewide, voter-elected education leader. That electoral accountability matters. It means the Superintendent answers directly to the public, not to the governor, not to an appointed board, and carries a unique obligation to set a clear vision, elevate priorities like literacy and student achievement, and ensure that the needs of students, families, and educators are front and center in state policy. The “bully pulpit” that comes with that mandate is one of the office's most important and most underutilized assets.
On the statutory side, the Superintendent is responsible for implementing the laws and policies enacted by the Legislature and adopted by the State Board of Education. That's a substantial operational portfolio: administering billions in state and federal education funds, issuing guidance and regulations, supporting districts and county offices, and ensuring that statewide initiatives, from curriculum frameworks to accountability systems, are carried out effectively across a vast and decentralized system. Done well, this function transforms policy intent into classroom reality. Done poorly, it produces the kind of contradictory mandates and delayed guidance that have frustrated districts for years.
The third core responsibility is accountability and compliance. The office oversees data reporting, school improvement efforts, special education compliance, civil rights protections, and programs serving English learners, students with disabilities, and other vulnerable populations. The Superintendent doesn’t and shouldn’t direct local districts; local control is a foundational principle of California's education governance, but the office plays a critical role in ensuring that districts understand their obligations, that students' rights are protected, and that the state has honest, transparent data on how schools are actually performing.
Taken together, these responsibilities make the SSPI the system's chief convener and coherence-builder. The role isn’t about issuing top-down mandates or micromanaging close to 1,000 school districts and 1,300 public charter schools across California’s very different 58 counties. It’s about ensuring that state policy translates into real results for students, and about using every tool the office has, from data to technical assistance to public accountability, to keep California focused on what matters most: strong instruction, strong outcomes, and strong support for every child.
What makes you uniquely qualified for this position?
Three things set me apart in this race: the depth of my experience at the scale California's education system requires, the independence to lead without owing political debts to the institutions most resistant to reform, and a demonstrated willingness to take principled stands even when they carry real political cost.
On experience: I’m one of only a few candidates in this race who has worked every day at the intersection of education policy, state budgeting, governance, and implementation at the level this job demands. As Chair of the Senate Education Committee, I passed major legislation, secured significant investments, and built coalitions across unions, administrators, county offices, and community partners. That work gave me a deep, practical understanding of how California's vast and decentralized education system actually functions, and, critically, where and why it breaks down. I won’t need a learning curve as SSPI.
On independence: I am also the only top-tier candidate in this race who is not beholden, by endorsement or by funding, to any of the public-sector labor unions with a direct financial and institutional stake in the outcome of this election. To be clear, this isn't an argument against unions; they represent dedicated professionals and play an important role in our system. But it’s undeniably true that they’ve also been part of the dynamic that has made it difficult to drive the evidence-based instructional reforms, the accountability measures, and the governance changes that California's students urgently need. A Superintendent who owes their election to those organizations faces a structural conflict of interest when it comes to making decisions that put students first. I won't have that conflict, and that matters.
That independence isn't merely theoretical; my legislative record reflects it. I’ve taken hard votes and principled stands even when it was clear they carried genuine political risk. I supported the 2017 transportation funding package knowing it could trigger a recall effort against me, and it did. I voted against the fast-food bill, against expanded unemployment insurance for striking workers, and against a constitutional amendment advanced by UC healthcare workers that would have undermined the University's constitutionally protected autonomy. In each case, I made the decision I believed was right for California, not the one that was easiest politically. That's the kind of Superintendent I’ll be.
Finally, I bring a leadership style that is energetic, strategic, collaborative, and unafraid of hard problems. I don't believe in symbolic leadership or performative reform. I believe in using the full authority of the office, and the relationships and credibility I've spent a career building, to bring coherence to a fragmented system, raise expectations, and ensure that state priorities actually reach classrooms. The Superintendent's office has been underutilized for too long. I know how to change that, and I'm the right person to do it.
What three measurable outcomes should Californians use to evaluate your success after your first two years in office?
For Californians to judge whether my first two years have made a real difference, I'd point them to three indicators, and I'd ask them to hold me accountable to all three.
The first would be early literacy. Raising reading proficiency in grades K-3 is the foundation for everything else on my agenda, and it’s the metric I care most about. Within two years, Californians should see measurable gains in early literacy rates across all student groups as measured by the state's existing assessment tools, with particular progress among the students who have historically been most underserved. If we’re not moving that number, nothing else we’d be doing will be working at the level it needs to be.
The second would be chronic absenteeism. California can’t improve student achievement if students aren't in school, and absenteeism has reached crisis levels, particularly in working-class and immigrant communities. Within two years, Californians should see a meaningful, statewide decline in absenteeism rates, driven by better data systems, stronger family engagement, and targeted support for the districts and student populations most affected. This is a metric where the state has clear baseline data and no excuse for not showing progress.
The third metric would be participation in college and career readiness pathways. By the end of year two, Californians should see more students completing A-G coursework, enrolling in dual enrollment classes, and participating in high-quality career technical education and pre-apprenticeship programs. These numbers tell us whether we are actually preparing students for life after high school, whether they choose college, a career, or both, or whether we continue to simply move them through a system that leaves their futures to chance.
Taken together, these three metrics, early literacy, attendance, and readiness, represent the clearest possible signals as to whether the Superintendent's office is doing its job. I'm committing to them publicly because I believe accountability has to start at the top.
The Issues
Next, we will cover the issues that voters tell us they care about. We hope to gain a better understanding of your policy positions, and we hope that you use this opportunity to communicate with voters.
What specific actions will you take through the Department of Education’s oversight and technical-assistance powers to accelerate learning recovery statewide? How will you measure whether those supports are improving outcomes across districts?
California’s public-school students aren’t going to recover academically unless the state uses its oversight and technical-assistance powers far more aggressively and strategically than it has in recent years. The Department of Education has real tools available, guidance authority, data infrastructure, technical assistance capacity, and targeted intervention powers, that have been consistently underutilized. My approach as SSPI would center on three concrete actions, each with clear metrics for accountability.
The first is establishing a statewide early literacy and foundational math implementation plan with required district action. The Department would issue clear, evidence-based guidance on early literacy and math instruction, including curriculum expectations, universal screening protocols, and intervention models, and every district will be required to submit a short, public implementation plan aligned to that guidance. CDE would provide robust technical assistance, but it would also monitor fidelity, not just compliance paperwork. Progress would be measured by year-over-year gains in K-3 reading and math proficiency, increased adoption of universal screening and evidence-based interventions, and public dashboards showing district-level implementation status. The goal would be to make it impossible for a district to quietly continue using instructional approaches that evidence no longer supports.
The second is deploying regional rapid-response support teams to the districts with the largest learning-loss gaps. CDE has the authority to provide targeted assistance but has rarely used it to drive real instructional improvement. As SSPI, I will build regional teams of literacy and math coaches, data specialists, and attendance experts who can work directly with districts facing the steepest recovery challenges, helping them adopt high-quality materials, strengthen classroom instruction, and build systems for continuous improvement. Success here will be measured by a reduction in the number of districts flagged for persistent low performance, documented improvements in instructional materials and coaching systems, and faster gains among the lowest-performing districts and student groups. The districts that need the most help should be getting the most support, not the most paperwork. It’s probably worth noting that there are best-practice examples in other states from which to draw on here.
The third is using the state's data and accountability infrastructure to drive transparency and urgency. Learning recovery cannot be managed in the dark. I would task CDE with publishing clear, accessible statewide dashboards showing progress on early literacy, math proficiency, chronic absenteeism, and participation in college and career readiness pathways. Districts which are improving would be highlighted as models; districts that aren’t would receive targeted support, and public scrutiny. The metrics that matter here are a statewide reduction in chronic absenteeism, increased participation in dual enrollment, CTE pathways, and A-G coursework, and publicly reported district-by-district progress on learning recovery indicators. Transparency, when properly deployed, can be one of the most powerful tools a Superintendent has for creating the conditions that make reform possible.
Taken together, these three actions reflect a simple philosophy: that the state should set clear expectations, provide genuine support, measure results honestly, and make those results visible to everyone. That combination– of guidance, assistance, transparency, and accountability is how the Superintendent's office can drive learning recovery at scale.
Many have identified Mississippi as an example for meaningful and durable reforms that have boosted student achievement across racial, economic, and geographical lines. What is your understanding of their reforms and how will you bring those reforms to bear on California to improve student achievement?
Mississippi's success story is one of the most important in American education right now, as well as perhaps one of the most misunderstood. It didn't come from a single program or a favorable demographic tailwind; it came from a coherent, sustained strategy built around early literacy, high-quality instruction, and real support for teachers, maintained with bi-partisan consistency over more than a decade, and understanding why it worked is essential to understanding what California needs to do differently.
The foundation of Mississippi's approach was a clear, uncompromising statewide commitment to evidence-based reading instruction. Mississippi’s educators didn't adopt the science of reading as a talking point; they implemented it with fidelity, aligning curriculum, teacher preparation, assessment, and intervention around a coherent instructional framework. That alignment is quite a bit rarer than it sounds. California actually does have pockets of excellent literacy instruction; but those examples unfortunately stand alongside the widespread use of approaches that the research doesn't support. Mississippi eliminated that inconsistency at scale.
The operational backbone of Mississippi’s reforms was their “Literacy Coaching Corps,” a statewide network of deeply trained instructional coaches embedded in schools to support real classroom change. This wasn't professional development as a standalone event, something that is too often the case. It was sustained, school-based coaching that helped teachers translate evidence-based practices into daily instruction. By combining that with universal early screening and a requirement that struggling readers receive timely, structured intervention, Mississippi has built a system where problems are identified early and addressed before they compounded.
What made all of this durable enough to succeed was a sustained political alignment. The state’s governors, legislators, and state education leaders stayed committed to the same priorities across multiple administrations and election cycles across more than a decade. That kind of consistency is rare in American education policy, and rarer still in California; it's a significant part of why Mississippi's gains have held.
The reflexive objection tends to be that Mississippi is small and California is huge, that what works in a state with roughly 450,000 public school students cannot scale to one with 5.8 million. I'd push back on that directly; California already has regional infrastructure in the form of its County Offices of Education that could serve the same function as Mississippi's state apparatus did for them. What we lack is the statewide coherence and political will to use it. As Superintendent, I would use CDE's guidance authority to align curriculum and instructional materials around evidence-based reading practices statewide; build out a California Literacy Coaching Corps modeled explicitly on Mississippi's; require universal early screening in every district; and ensure publishing of transparent data on implementation and outcomes so that progress, or the lack of it, is visible to everyone. Mississippi’s strategy has worked because it’s grounded in how children actually learn to read. That same science applies equally to California’s students.
Enrollment declines and expiring federal funds are straining district budgets. How will you use the Department’s fiscal oversight and data systems to help districts plan for enrollment loss and financial stability?
Enrollment declines and the termination of federal relief funds are creating real fiscal stresses across California's school districts, and the state has failed to give them the clarity or predictability they need to respond responsibly and with an eye on the long term. Too often, CDE's fiscal oversight function has been reactive, stepping in only when districts are already in crisis rather than helping them avoid it. My approach would reorient that posture fundamentally, using the Department's data systems and oversight authority as tools for early action rather than late intervention.
The first and most immediate change would be requiring CDE to produce standardized, multi-year enrollment and revenue projections for every district, not just compliance monitoring. The Department already has access to the demographic trends, birth-rate data, and historical enrollment patterns needed to give districts a credible forward-looking picture. One problem is that this data hasn't been used strategically. I’d make those projections public and easy to understand so that school boards, labor partners, and communities can plan responsibly, rather than react in crisis. The measure of success here would be straightforward: more districts adopting multi-year fiscal plans, and fewer districts entering fiscal distress or requiring county intervention.
The second change would be using CDE's fiscal oversight powers earlier and more constructively. Those powers have historically been deployed only when districts are already in serious trouble, at which point the options are limited and the disruption to students and communities is significant. As SSPI, I’d ensure they were deployed more proactively, helping districts plan for enrollment loss through staffing stabilization strategies, school consolidation planning, and long-term facilities use before a crisis arrives. Emergency layoffs and mid-year cuts shouldn’t be inevitable consequences of enrollment decline; more accurately, they’re the consequence of planning failures that the state should help prevent.
Third, I’m on record in supporting a shift from average daily attendance-based funding to enrollment-based funding, and I would use the Superintendent's platform to advance that change. The current ADA model punishes districts for factors they cannot fully control (student illness, transportation barriers, unstable housing), and it creates the kind of year-to-year revenue volatility that makes responsible long-term planning nearly impossible. An enrollment-based model would better reflect districts' fixed costs and give them the predictability they need to make sound decisions about staffing, programs, and facilities. This is a legislative and State Board fight as much as a CDE one, but the Superintendent can and should lead it.
Finally, as SSPI would direct the implementation of a statewide “fiscal health” dashboard that makes enrollment trends, reserve levels, structural deficits, and early risk indicators visible to every community in California. Transparency is one of the most powerful tools available to the Superintendent, and it has been consistently underused. If communities can see fiscal risks clearly and early, they’ll be better positioned to engage their school boards, support difficult decisions, and hold both local and state leaders accountable. Fewer districts should be reaching the point of requiring state loans or emergency oversight, and public visibility into fiscal health data would be one of the most effective ways to create the conditions that make that possible.
The through-line across all four of these actions is the same: districts can’t plan responsibly when the state provides unclear data, volatile funding, and last-minute directives. My goal would be to use the Superintendent's fiscal oversight and data infrastructure to give districts what they’ve lacked for too long: predictability, clarity, and a more collaborative partnership with the state.
Some say California schools struggle due to lack of money, others highlight widening inequality in household income, and others point out many districts are doing well in spite of these issues. According to the literature, what are the primary determinants of a successful school and how can you ensure each school has what it needs to succeed?
I would submit that the debate the question describes, money versus inequality versus district-level factors, is real, but the research offers a more useful answer than any of those three framings alone. Funding matters, and California's persistent resource inequities are genuine. Poverty and household income are powerful headwinds, and we shouldn't pretend otherwise. But decades of research, from the “effective schools” literature of the 1970s through modern studies on instructional quality, point consistently to something more actionable: schools that succeed, including in high-poverty communities, tend to share a set of organizational and instructional characteristics that are directly within the state's power to influence. The question isn't whether money and inequality matter. It's what the state can actually do about student outcomes, and the literature is remarkably clear on that.
The strongest predictor of school success is the quality of teaching. High-quality, evidence-based instruction, grounded in strong curriculum, consistent coaching, and well-supported teachers, is the single most powerful in-school lever for improving student outcomes. This isn’t an especially controversial finding; it’s actually one of the most replicated results in education research, and it’s the reason that curriculum adoption and instructional coaching have been at the center of every serious school improvement effort in the country, including Mississippi's.
Closely related is school leadership. Effective school principals create cultures of high expectations, use data well, protect instructional time, and support teachers in ways that compound over time. Research on principal quality consistently shows that leadership is one of the highest-leverage variables at the school level, as well as one of the most neglected when it comes to state policies. A school with a strong principal can overcome a lot; a school without one rarely does.
The third determinant is school climate: safe, orderly, and supportive environments where expectations are clear, relationships are strong, and learning is an unambiguous priority. Even controlling for demographics, schools with strong climates have better attendance, lower chronic absenteeism, and stronger academic outcomes. The research on belonging and student engagement is unambiguous: students who feel connected to their school show up, and students who show up learn.
Which leads directly to the fourth factor: consistent attendance and engaged families. Even the best instruction doesn't reach students who aren't in school. Schools that consistently outperform their demographic expectations tend to have strong attendance systems, proactive family engagement, and early intervention when students begin to disengage. Absenteeism isn’t solely a symptom of other problems, it is itself a cause of achievement gaps that compound over time.
California's challenge isn’t that we lack this knowledge. It's that we haven't built a system capable of implementing it at scale or with consistency. As Superintendent, I would use every lever available to change that. I’d issue clear, evidence-based guidance on curriculum and instruction in literacy and math, and require districts to align their implementation plans accordingly. I would build a statewide coaching corps modeled on what Mississippi deployed to bring trained literacy and math coaches to the districts with the greatest needs. I’d partner with county offices and universities to strengthen principal preparation and ongoing leadership development, because strong principals are not optional infrastructure. I’d direct the creation of accessible, district-level dashboards on literacy, math, attendance, and school climate so that struggling schools are visible early and receive targeted support rather than judgment. And I’d require districts to adopt evidence-based attendance plans, backed by regional support teams for the schools with the highest chronic absenteeism rates.
The literature is clear, and the path forward is knowable: successful schools are built on strong instruction, strong leadership, strong climate, and strong attendance. My job as Superintendent will be to bring coherence to a fragmented system; to ensure that every school has genuine access to those conditions regardless of zip code; and to make progress transparent enough that Californians can hold all of us, including me, accountable for delivering it. It’s worth noting that California also has its own proof points to build on. Well-designed Expanded Learning Opportunity Programs (ELOP), before- and after-school models that extend the learning day with structured, engaging programming, have generated measurable improvements in attendance, student engagement, and academic achievement in communities across the state. These programs work precisely because they address the gap between when the school day ends and when the workday ends, keeping students connected to school and giving families the stability they need. Scaling what works here at home, alongside the lessons from high-performing states like Mississippi, is how California can build a system that works for every student in every community.
California faces persistent teacher shortages in key subjects. What partnerships or incentives would you champion — within the Department’s existing authority — to strengthen the educator pipeline, especially in high-need regions?
California's teacher shortages are not new, but they’re getting progressively worse in the subjects and regions that can least afford it. This is an area where I come to the Superintendent's office with direct, recent experience. As Chair of the Senate Education Committee, I held a statewide hearing on the educator workforce in 2023, and in 2024 I authored legislation to eliminate the Teacher Performance Assessment, a duplicative, expensive requirement that the evidence shows disproportionately drives out candidates of color and male candidates. That work gave me a clear and detailed picture of what is driving shortages and, more importantly, what levers the Superintendent can use right now within existing authority.
My approach as SSPI would focus on four areas: building regional pipelines, scaling residencies, removing unnecessary barriers, and using data to target incentives where they will have the greatest impact.
The most reliable way to staff high-need regions is to recruit people who already live there. I would use CDE's convening authority to build regional "grow your own" pipelines that connect community colleges to CSU teacher preparation programs to local districts, support classified staff in entering teacher residencies, and expand high school career pathways into early childhood and education programs. These partnerships have been shown to work because they reduce cost, reduce travel, and keep candidates rooted in the communities where schools need them most. Success looks like increased enrollment in local preparation pathways, more classified staff transitioning into the classroom, and higher retention rates in rural and high-poverty districts.
Alongside those pipelines, I would work with county offices, CSUs, and districts to scale paid teacher residencies, the most effective preparation model we have, particularly in special education, STEM, bilingual education, and early literacy. Residencies are not yet operating at the scale California needs. CDE can accelerate this by providing technical assistance, helping districts braid funding streams, and prioritizing placements in the regions with the highest vacancy rates. The goal is straightforward: more residents in high-need schools, higher three-year retention rates, and measurable reductions in special education and STEM vacancies.
On barriers to entry, my 2024 bill to eliminate the TPA was grounded in a simple principle: that the state should maintain quality without creating unnecessary hurdles that drive good candidates out of the profession before they ever reach a classroom. As Superintendent, I would continue pushing for the TPA's removal and for broader regulatory relief. Within CDE's existing authority, that means streamlining clinical practice requirements, expanding alternative pathways for paraprofessionals, and providing clearer guidance to preparation programs on evidence-based literacy and math instruction. The measure of success is not just fewer vacancies; it's increased completion rates in teacher preparation programs and reduced attrition among candidates of color.
Finally, CDE already has the data to identify shortage regions and subjects with precision, but it hasn’t been using that data strategically to align incentives. As SSPI, would direct the creation of a statewide Teacher Workforce Dashboard showing vacancy rates, subject-area shortages, preparation program capacity, and regional supply-and-demand gaps. That transparency will allow districts, counties, and higher education partners to align stipends, housing supports, residencies, and loan forgiveness programs where they will actually move the needle.
California's worsening teacher shortage is solvable. But solving it will require leadership that understands the system in detail, removes the barriers that shouldn't exist, and builds the partnerships that connect candidates to the communities where they’re needed most. That is the work I was doing in the State Senate, and it’s what I would bring to the Superintendent's office from Day One.
The State Superintendent of Public Instruction directly oversees the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) and can modernize how districts report and use data. What is your top data-system modernization priority, and what measurable performance goals would you set for CALPADS or related systems during your term?
My top data-system modernization priority is straightforward: to transform CALPADS from a compliance-driven reporting tool into a real-time, user-friendly system that helps districts improve instruction, monitor attendance, and intervene early. Right now, CALPADS is slow, siloed, and backward-looking. Districts often wait months for validated data on the students who have moved on to the next grade by the time it arrives. California won’t improve outcomes at scale if our data infrastructure operates on that kind of delay. As Chair of the Senate Education Committee, I saw firsthand how that fragmentation undermines our ability to act on what we know.
The core upgrade I would drive is in giving districts something much closer to real-time access to the indicators that matter most: attendance and chronic absenteeism, early literacy and math screening results, intervention participation and progress, course enrollment and pathway participation, and teacher assignment and vacancy data. These aren’t exotic capabilities; they’re the basic informational tools that effective school systems require, and California's current infrastructure doesn't reliably provide them. Districts can’t manage what they can’t see, and the state can’t support or improve what it doesn’t properly measure.
As SSPI, I would set three concrete, measurable performance goals for CALPADS modernization during my term. The first would be reducing data reporting lag from months to days; specifically, to no more than seven days for key indicators like attendance, enrollment, and early literacy screening results. This is a foundational requirement for everything else. You can’t reduce chronic absenteeism or accelerate learning recovery with stale data, and no amount of coaching or technical assistance can compensate for a system that tells you what was happening last semester.
The second goal would be launching a public, user-friendly statewide dashboard within eighteen months of taking office. This dashboard would show district-level progress on early literacy, foundational math, chronic absenteeism, college and career readiness indicators, and teacher vacancies. Transparency drives urgency; Mississippi's reform gains accelerated when data became visible to families, communities, and policymakers. California needs the same dynamic. A dashboard that’s genuinely accessible to parents and community members, not just to researchers and administrators, would be one of the highest-leverage investments the Superintendent's office could make.
The third goal would be ensuring that every district in California has access to real-time early warning tools by the end of Year 2. Every district, including small, rural, and under-resourced ones, should be able to flag students at risk of chronic absenteeism, students falling behind in literacy or math, and students who are off track for A-G or pathway completion. Early intervention is only possible when schools can see problems early enough to act on them. Right now, too many schools are identifying struggling students only after the window for effective intervention has already closed.
Modernizing CALPADS is not primarily a technical project; it’s a governance and leadership project. It’s about giving educators the tools they need to act quickly, giving families clear and honest information about how their schools are performing, and giving the state the ability to identify and support struggling districts before problems become crises. By the end of my first term, California should have a data system that’s fast, transparent, and genuinely useful; one that helps us raise literacy, reduce absenteeism, and improve readiness for college and career. That’s the standard to which I would hold myself.
How will you strengthen coordination between schools, counties, and state agencies to expand student mental-health support? What metric would you track to evaluate whether access to services is improving?
California's student mental health needs are bigger than any single system can handle. Schools cannot do this alone, counties cannot do this alone, and the state has not provided the coordination or clarity that districts need. As Superintendent, I would use the office's convening power, oversight authority, and data systems to build a coherent, statewide approach, starting with the basic problem that right now, every district negotiates its own agreements with county behavioral health agencies, leading to massive variation in access and quality. I would establish a model statewide MOU that clarifies what schools are responsible for, what counties are responsible for, how referrals, crisis response, and Medi-Cal billing should work, and how data can be shared legally and efficiently. This will reduce red tape, speed up service delivery, and ensure that every district, and not just the well-resourced ones, can count on a functional partnership.
Many small and rural districts simply can’t afford to hire counselors, social workers, or psychologists, so I would create regional mental health teams housed in county offices of education that districts can tap into for crisis response, short-term counseling, case management, and training for school staff. This reflects my broader philosophy: that the state should proactively and collaboratively help districts implement, not just issue mandates.
Coordination also requires visibility. Right now, California can’t answer basic questions about who is receiving services, how long they wait, or whether needs are being met. I will modernize CALPADS to include referral volume, wait times, service delivery rates, and follow-up and case-closure data, giving the state and families genuine visibility into whether students are actually getting help.
On the policy side, recent reforms to the Mental Health Services Act took an important step toward a more strategic, collaborative approach that includes schools, but the work is far from finished. If California is serious about aligning effort, finding efficiencies, and expanding school-based mental health supports, the Superintendent must be at the table and must insist that schools are treated as core partners and not as afterthoughts or impediments. I would work with CalHHS, DHCS, CDSS, and county mental health plans to ensure that MHSA dollars and Medi-Cal reforms translate into actual services on campuses, not just new administrative structures.
Underlying all of this is a conviction I've held for years: that in most communities, especially those facing the greatest challenges, there is no better nexus than schools for delivering mental health and wraparound supports. Schools are where students are, where families already have relationships, and where early interventions can happen before crises escalate.
As for the metric I would use to evaluate progress: the single most important indicator is the reduction in average wait time from school referral to first mental health service. That’s the real-world metric families feel most directly, and it’s the clearest signal of whether the system is actually working. I would also track the percentage of students receiving services within 30 days of referral, the number of districts with active school-county MOUs aligned to the statewide framework, and the ratio of mental health professionals to students, especially in high-need regions. But the core question is simple: when a student needs help, how long do they wait?
The last thing that California needs is more fragmented programs. What the state does need is coordination, clarity, and capacity, and it needs to treat schools as the central access point for student and family mental health supports.
Should the state encourage, and provide funding for, school districts in high-cost areas to build teacher housing?
Yes, and the state should do so strategically, not symbolically. In many communities, particularly along the coast and in parts of the Bay Area and Los Angeles, housing costs have become one of the most significant barriers to recruiting and retaining teachers and classified staff. Districts cannot solve that problem alone, and pretending otherwise hasn't worked.
I have some direct and relevant experience here: when I held a statewide hearing on California's educator workforce in 2023 as Chair of the Senate Education Committee, one of the clearest findings was that housing costs, and the long commutes they force on teachers, are a major driver of shortages and turnover, especially in high-need districts. A teacher who can’t afford to live anywhere near the school where they work is far less likely to stay in that community, or in the profession for that matter. That's a retention problem, a recruitment problem, and ultimately a student achievement problem.
My position is that the state should support district-led workforce housing where it makes genuine economic and workforce sense, particularly for districts that own land in high-cost regions where vacancies are persistent and turnover is destabilizing. Done well, educator housing reduces cost pressure on teachers and classified staff, improves retention, strengthens community ties, and makes it possible for educators to live among the families they serve. These are real workforce benefits, not amenities. But projects need to be financially viable, locally supported, and aligned with actual long-term workforce needs, not pursued as political gestures that consume resources without solving the underlying problem.
One of the practical barriers is that large districts are often able to navigate the financing, land-use, and development challenges of workforce housing, while smaller and rural districts often are not. CDE should fill that gap directly, providing model RFPs and development agreements, guidance on available financing tools, support for navigating CEQA and local zoning, and partnerships with affordable housing developers and labor. This is precisely the kind of statewide capacity-building the Superintendent's office should be doing: not mandating, but enabling districts that want to act to actually do so.
One important caveat is that housing alone won’t fix California's teacher shortage. It has to also be paired with competitive wages, strong induction and coaching, streamlined credentialing, and expanded residencies and grow-your-own pathways, the broader workforce strategy I've outlined elsewhere. Educator workforce housing is one piece of a larger puzzle, and it will work best when it's treated as part of a coherent workforce strategy rather than a standalone initiative. This one more reason I support shifting from ADA to enrollment-based funding: districts need stable, predictable revenue to make the kind of long-term workforce investments that educator housing requires.
Should teacher housing be exempt from CEQA, Discretionary Review, and zoning?
Yes, and I'll be direct about why, because CEQA reform is a question where a lot of politicians hedge when they should be leading. California's housing crisis is now an educator workforce crisis. In high-cost regions, teachers are commuting extraordinary distances or leaving the profession entirely because they cannot afford to live anywhere near the schools where they work. If we’re serious about stabilizing the educator workforce, we have to be serious about removing the barriers that make building teacher housing slow, expensive, and in many cases functionally impossible. CEQA, discretionary review, and exclusionary zoning are three of those barriers.
I’ve been public and vocal for years about the need for broad-based CEQA reform. The status quo makes it too hard to build the housing, infrastructure, and public facilities California needs, and educator housing offers one of the clearest examples of why. For workforce housing built on school-owned land, the state should provide predictable, expedited approval pathways that eliminate unnecessary procedural delay. That means targeted CEQA streamlining for projects that meet clear environmental and labor standards, by-right approval for educator housing on existing school property, exemptions from discretionary review when projects meet objective criteria, and zoning flexibility that allows districts to build multi-unit housing where it makes sense. These reforms should also be paired with strong environmental protections and high-road labor standards, while also removing the procedural obstacles that currently allow well-organized opposition to stall or kill projects that communities actually need.
Even with streamlined rules, many districts, particularly smaller and rural ones, will still lack the internal expertise to navigate financing, design, and development. CDE should fill that gap with model agreements, guidance on financing tools, support for navigating local land-use processes, and partnerships with affordable housing developers and labor. Streamlining the rules matters, but so does ensuring that districts have the capacity to actually use them.
I want to be clear about one thing: my position on this isn't complicated by political obligations. Because I'm not beholden to the interest groups and public-sector organizations that have historically resisted the kind of regulatory reform California desperately needs, I can say plainly what the evidence supports, that if a procedural barrier is preventing districts from building housing that would help them recruit and retain the educators their students need, we should remove it. The goal is teachers in classrooms, not process compliance.
Housing reform alone won't solve teacher shortages on its own. It has to be part of a broader workforce strategy that includes competitive wages, strong induction and mentoring, streamlined credentialing, expanded residencies, and stable enrollment-based funding. But on the specific question of whether California should clear the path for educator housing by reforming CEQA, discretionary review, and zoning: yes, unambiguously, and I've been saying so for years.
As a voting member of the State Board of Education, how should the state’s Boards of Education be reformed to ensure accountability and better performance?
California has nearly a thousand locally elected school boards across this immensely diverse state, and their quality varies dramatically. Some boards are focused on student outcomes, aligned with evidence-based practices, and genuinely accountable to their communities. Others have been captured by political agendas, lack basic governance capacity, or operate without clear expectations or meaningful transparency. GrowSF knows this terrain firsthand. It’s also true that the dysfunction that led to the SFUSD board recall wasn't an anomaly. Rather, it was a visible example of a systemic problem that is increasingly playing out in communities across the state, usually with less public attention and less organized response. As a voting member of the State Board of Education, I believe the state should take a more active role in strengthening local governance; not to override local control, but to ensure that every community has a board actually capable of serving its students.
The first and most foundational change would be establishing clear statewide expectations for what effective school boards do, as well as what they don't (or shouldn’t) do. Right now, California has no coherent framework for local board governance. The State Board should adopt explicit standards requiring local boards to focus on student outcomes and instructional quality, use data to guide decisions, maintain fiscal responsibility, and support rather than micromanage their superintendents. Equally important, and worth saying plainly: boards should not be using their platforms to pursue culture-war politics or operational interference that undermines school performance and drives out effective administrators. The absence of clear statewide expectations has allowed that drift to go largely unchecked.
I've already acted on this conviction legislatively. In 2023, I authored SB 494, which created common-sense guardrails around the termination of district superintendents and assistant superintendents by governing boards. The bill was prompted in part by what happened in Orange Unified, where a newly installed board called a special meeting over the winter holiday break with just 24 hours' notice and terminated the district superintendent without cause, immediately appointing an interim replacement, who then resigned five weeks later leaving the district leaderless. SB 494 addressed that kind of destabilizing conduct directly, requiring that terminations without cause go through the regular meeting process with at least 72 hours' public notice, and creating a 30-day cooling-off period after a board election before a newly seated board can terminate senior leadership without cause. These aren’t burdensome requirements; they’re basic transparency and stability protections that give communities a genuine opportunity to participate in consequential decisions about their schools.
Second, local boards should be required to set public, measurable goals aligned to statewide priorities, such as early literacy, foundational math, chronic absenteeism, college and career readiness, and school climate and safety, and report progress annually. This creates coherence across the system and gives communities a genuine, accessible way to evaluate whether their board is doing its job. Right now, too many boards operate without any public accountability framework beyond their immediate local sphere, which makes it easy to avoid hard conversations about performance until a crisis is already underway.
Third, California requires almost no preparation for people who oversee billion-dollar budgets and the education of hundreds of thousands of children. That is an extraordinary gap. I would support mandatory governance training for all new board members, ongoing professional development on data use, fiscal oversight, and instructional improvement, and specialized support for boards in high-need districts. This isn’t about state control; it’s about ensuring that district school boards function effectively for the students they’re supposed to serve.
Fourth, the State Board should require clear, accessible, and standardized public dashboards showing district performance, transparent reporting on board decisions and superintendent evaluations, and public summaries of progress toward district goals. Transparency is the most powerful accountability tool available, and it’s consistently underused at the local level. When communities have clear, honest information about how their district is performing and what their board is doing about it, they’re far better positioned to demand better; or to organize, as San Francisco’s recent experience so vividly demonstrated.
Finally, when a local board repeatedly fails to meet basic governance standards, whether they’re fiscal, instructional, or operational, the state should have clearer and more timely intervention tools. That means a graduated pathway from targeted technical assistance to required governance training to state-appointed advisors in cases of chronic dysfunction. The goal shouldn’t be to take over districts. It should be to prevent the kind of prolonged, board-driven deterioration that can so deeply harm students and destabilize communities for years before any definitive intervention takes place.
Local school boards are essential to California's education system, and I believe in and respect the principle of local control; but local control only works when local boards are functioning. The state has failed for too long to provide the expectations, training, and transparency infrastructure needed to ensure that. As a voting member of the State Board, that’s something that I intend to change.
Personal
Tell us a bit about yourself!
How long have you lived in California? What brought you here and what keeps you here?
I first came to California in 1990, at the end of my service as an officer in the United States Army. I was assigned to the Presidio of San Francisco, still an active military base at the time, for about a week to complete my out-processing. My sister had recently moved to the Bay Area, and a number of my Yale classmates had landed there as well. I remember looking around and thinking: California seems pretty nice. Maybe I'll stay for a couple of months. Thirty-six years later, I'm still here, a dyed-in-the-wool Californian who genuinely cannot imagine living anywhere else.
What brought me here was chance. What kept me here was everything that makes this state extraordinary: its beauty, its diversity, its restless optimism, and the way it has always had a sense that the next chapter is still being written and you're welcome to help write it. Over more than three decades, California has given me a community, a career, and a sense of purpose I didn't expect to find when I walked through the gate at the Presidio with my duffel bag and no particular plan.
It's also where my wife and I are raising our nine-year-old daughter, who attends public school in Fullerton. That's not incidental to why I'm running, it's central to it. I don’t approach this work as an abstract policy exercise; I also come to it as a parent who wants California's public schools to be worthy of every child who walks through their doors, including mine.
I'm clear-eyed about the challenges this state faces. But I also remain genuinely, stubbornly hopeful about its future, and committed to earning the gifts it has given me by doing whatever I can to make sure the next generation gets the same chance at this place that I did.
What do you love most about California and/or your hometown?
What I love most about California is its extraordinary diversity, not just in the demographic sense, though that matters deeply, but in the sheer range of people, places, landscapes, and stories that make up this state. California contains multitudes. You can drive a few hours in any direction and find a completely different world: coastal cities, agricultural valleys, mountain towns, immigrant communities built over generations, innovation hubs that didn't exist a decade ago. That diversity isn't just something we celebrate as an abstraction; it's something that genuinely shapes how Californians see the world and what we believe is possible.
My adopted hometown of Fullerton reflects that spirit in ways that still surprise me. In some ways it reminds me of my actual hometown of Poughkeepsie, New York, a place with deep roots, strong neighborhoods, and a genuine sense of community that you feel when you're there. But Fullerton also has things I wish I'd had growing up: a vibrant food scene, a rich cultural mix, and a public school system that gives my nine-year-old daughter opportunities I never had at her age. It's a place where families put down roots and stay, where the schools are genuinely woven into the community's identity, and where people still largely look out for one another.
That's what California, at its best, has always been; a place where you can arrive with a duffel bag and no particular plan and end up building a life you couldn't have imagined anywhere else. Fullerton is where that happened for me, and I'm glad and proud to call it home.
What do you dislike the most about California and/or your hometown?
What I would say frustrates me most about California, especially having had the opportunity of serving in the Legislature, is the gap between what we know and what we do. This is a state with extraordinary talent, resources, and genuine goodwill, and yet we still manage to make straightforward problems unnecessarily hard to solve. The rising cost of living, the housing shortage, the strain on public schools: these aren’t mysteries and they didn’t sneak up on us suddenly. We understand the causes, we have the resources, and in many cases, we have policy answers. What we seem to lack is a willingness to move past political habits and an institutional inertia that protect the status quo. A state this capable shouldn’t be this slow.
There's also a tendency in California's political culture to reward the gesture over the result, to treat the passage of a bill or the budget, or the announcement of a program as the finish line rather than the starting line. I've sat through enough committee hearings to know how often that dynamic plays out, and it's one of the things that motivated me to run for Superintendent rather than plot a return to the Legislature. The Superintendent's office will be ultimately judged by outcomes, not intentions. I find that clarifying.
As for Fullerton, my honest frustration is the localized version of what I see across California: a community with genuine strengths and real potential that sometimes gets tangled up in the gap between the Fullerton that long-time residents remember and the Fullerton that's emerging, a more diverse, more dynamic medium-sized California city that is still figuring out what it wants to be. That tension isn't unique, and it isn't insurmountable. But it can make basic questions of good governance and civic inclusion harder than they should be, and it occasionally gets in the way of the progress that most people actually want.
None of that diminishes my affection for either place. If anything, the frustrations are a function of how much both California and Fullerton are capable of, and how much it matters to get this right.
Tell us about your current involvement in the community (e.g., volunteer groups, neighborhood associations, civic and professional organizations, etc.)
A friend of mine who used to serve on the Anaheim City Council has a standing rule for evaluating candidates: never vote for someone you haven't bought Girl Scout cookies from. It's a good rule that captures something important about the relationship between public service and genuine community engagement, the idea that the people asking for your trust should actually be present in your community, and not just at election time. I’ve tried to live by that same standard. Community involvement is something I value and enjoy, and mine has connected me more directly to the people and places I care about most.
The most personal is probably the least official: for the past two years I've been the coach for my daughter's co-ed YMCA basketball team, and I'm an active member of the PTA at Beechwood Elementary, where I also volunteer in the production of the school's annual musical. Those aren't obligations, they're genuinely some of my favorite commitments.
Beyond the school community, I've been deeply involved in Fullerton civic life for years. I was the longtime chair of Neighbors United for Fullerton, a local organization focused on improving governance and quality of life in the city, and I remain an active member of the Democrats of North Orange County. Before I was elected to the Legislature, I served as a Court-Appointed Special Advocate for a child in the Orange County foster system, an invaluable experience that shaped how I think about the role public institutions play in the lives of vulnerable kids, and one I'm glad I had before I started making policy that affects them.
I'm a member of the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, reflecting my ongoing connection to the military community and prior service that brought me to California in the first place. I also consult on a pro bono basis to Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Orange County and the Inland Empire, advising them on legislative and advocacy strategy, work I find particularly meaningful given how directly it connects to the young people our public systems are supposed to serve.
This past year I've served as a Senior Fellow at UCI's School of Social Ecology, where I co-taught a course called "California's Future" alongside Dean Jon Gould, covering many of the pressing issues that have come up throughout this questionnaire. I speak regularly to political science and government classes at Fullerton College and Cal State Fullerton, and to local high school groups on civics and financial literacy, which connects directly to my belief that civic education is one of the most underfunded priorities in our public schools.
I also regularly volunteer in support of the Orange County Alzheimer's Association, on whose board my wife serves, and I've maintained close ties to the broader network of non-profits doing important work in Northern Orange County. As a State Senator, I was able to direct nearly $200 million in funding toward local initiatives and organizations, including the acquisition and preservation of the West Coyote Hills nature preserve, the creation of the North Orange County Public Safety Collaborative, the expansion of CSUF's Engineering and Applied Sciences facilities, and the Fullerton Community Museum, among many others. That work is reflective of my applied conviction that a legislator's job isn't just to vote on bills in Sacramento, it's to bring real resources back to the community that sent you there.
Thank you
Thank you for giving us your time and answering our questionnaire. We look forward to reading your answers and considering your candidacy!
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