4 running for Belmont-Redwood Shores school board

When discussing learning loss and the pandemic’s impact on student behavior, the candidates broadly agreed the district would need to take a holistic approach to uplifting students who have fallen behind while continuing to encourage those who have managed to perform well.

“There is a lot of disparity here so achievement is really about trying to bring the best version of each child and make them reach that. It’s not a set benchmark and some will need more hand-holding, some need less,” Ratnam said. “It takes a village to really nurture a child.”

While agreeing with Ratnam about the need for a team approach to supporting students, Bruno also argued education leaders should redefine excellence to take into consideration a student’s social and emotional well-being in addition to academic success.

Koss said officials also need to work on making school fun for students by developing lessons around the varying ways in which students learn and showing them there is more than one path to success.

“Kids are disconnecting from certain subjects,” Koss said. “Subjects need to be more engaging, fun and relevant to the students.”

He also stressed the importance of getting daily attendance up, fostering partnerships between teachers, parents and district officials and investing in student mental health support. More student-to-student interactions will also be key for helping students reacclimate to the school setting and recover from the pandemic, Koss and Ratnam agreed.

Recognizing the negative effect the pandemic has had on the education system, Northrup said having additional support on campus, especially in the classroom, is vital and lauded the district for bolstering the number of school counselors it has on each of its campuses.

Looking forward, Northrup said she’d like to see officials use data collected before and after the pandemic to better understand how to provide targeted interventions for students struggling the most.

“I think we need to look at the data more and see exactly to what extent, and I definitely believe there has been, an extent of learning loss. And then we need to implement targeted interventions for kids,” Northrup said. “The teachers are amazing and can do that.”

She and Koss also advocated for keeping classrooms small, Northrup as a method for better serving students and Koss as a support measure for teachers. Other measures implemented to help students could also help support staff, the four candidates argued.

For instance, expanding the number of adults on campus would also benefit teachers who cannot serve students alone, Ratnam said. He also said teachers could be better served by disrupting the concept of “one teacher, one school” and allowing teachers to work and collaborate across locations.

He and Koss also advocated for cutting down on stressors like long commutes by addressing the housing crisis in partnership with the city.

Additional professional development would also help empower staff, Koss and Bruno said. While Koss highlighted the value of being cross-trained between grades, Bruno said educators should be encouraged to go out and learn a specialty they can bring back to the district.

“Professional development does happen but not as much as maybe an individual teacher would prefer,” Bruno said. “You want people to be satisfied and happy where they are which I think is a strong business model and it might be uplifting to be like ‘do you want to do more and how can we help that.’”

On budgeting, the candidates found common ground when sharing concerns about the district flipping from being state-funded to community funded, meaning its budget is fully supported by property taxes.

Bruno argued shifting between the two models causes the district to struggle with consistency and stability. Given that the district is currently state-funded, Ratnam said officials need to attract families and keep enrollment up so that enough dollars are rolling in to support operations.

Northrup and Koss both said the district appears to have solid footing at the moment but argued the state should be doing more to support school districts. Koss lauded state initiatives to make school meals and universal transitional kindergarten free to the masses but noted districts often have to fill in funding where the state falls short, pulling resources away from other initiatives.

And Northrup noted the district is one of the lowest funded in the county which she attributed to the district having fewer underserved students, leading her to argue that the state should increase its per-pupil funding to ensure districts can adequately support student programming.

sierra@smdailyjournal.com

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