Two vie for county’s top education position

While the colleagues have both long worked together under Campbell, who will not seek re-election, they have divergent views regarding the county Office of Education’s future.

A former librarian and teacher turned county administrator, Magee said she hopes to improve the office’s outreach and work more closely with the individual districts throughout the region.

“We have tended to serve our districts in traditional ways and we can do a better job of identifying where our districts need help leveraging resources,” said Magee.

Supporting the individual school districts across the county is a central focus of the superintendent’s work, since the county office holds no authority over establishing policy for those school systems.

For Waddell, a former school counselor and principal before joining the county office, he said offering equitable opportunity for students across the county would be a top priority of his in office.

“We can do better. We can’t do this incrementally. We have to take a bold stance,” he said.

One key initiative Waddell pointed to in his work to address educational inequity is the county’s Zap the Gap initiative, which he founded as a means of identifying best practices for offering improved education opportunities.

Beyond the work locally, he also suggested greater advocacy with lawmakers in Sacramento as a means of smoothing the school funding mechanism which would lessen the disparity between the well-funded and poorer local districts.

Magee agreed fair financing is the key to improving educational opportunities for each local student and advocated for collaboration between the variety of local school officials to apply more pressure for equal funding.

Beyond educational equity, Magee said a central focus for her will be assuring broad access to safe and secure school campuses. To bolster her leadership case on that front, she pointed to her work in developing the Big Five emergency response protocol which has been adopted by school systems across the county.

She said the initiative has developed into a model for public agencies in preparing for a potential threat or natural disaster.

“San Mateo County is a leading example in the nation of how a county can develop capacity and understanding around sharing information to create safe schools,” she said.

Waddell lauded the response efforts, but said an eye must also be kept to offering quality mental health programs which could go far to assuring school campuses are safer places for students and teachers.

“Safe and supportive schools are something we have to have. That is work we have to continue and do really well,” he said.

Learning environments are essential for student safety, but also for an accurate depiction of a school’s quality — as the new state accountability dashboard attempts to quantify.

A central function of the county office is analyzing results from the dashboard, unveiled recently to replaced the former Academic Performance Index, and offer support to district’s showing room for improvement.

The dashboard is a more complex system offering a wider range of metrics detailing academic achievement as well as qualitative measures, such as school climate, in an attempt to offer a fuller vision of a school’s quality.

Waddell said he appreciates the intent of the new system, but believes more work is in order to make it more effective.

“It is a way of contemplating multiple measures but it also presents really unique communication challenges,” said Waddell, referring to the difficulties presented to educators attempting to translate the dashboard results for parents.

Magee agreed the new system presents challenges, but said she also appreciates the opportunities offered such as the chance for county officials to work alongside local districts needing assistance to improve outcomes. That effort should be handled with care though, in recognition that the analysis process is different for many educators.

“The way districts are getting data back is new for them. It’s a little overwhelming. So we are giving them some space to process and develop a few next steps and priorities,” she said.

Regarding her priorities looking ahead, Magee said she believes the office should seek to blaze trails in balancing modern learning opportunities through increased technology in the classroom against proven teaching methods.

“Technology allows teachers to meet students where they are and the success relies on the relationship with the teacher,” she said.

For Waddell, he agreed while suggesting local officials seek to collaborate with the local technology industry for guidance on best implementing technology into the classroom.

“There is no place where there is more of an opportunity to do that than here,” said Waddell.

austin@smdailyjournal.com

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