Yerkes Works for Vacaville!
Jay Yerkes Vacaville Unified School District
Board Member
Jay Yerkes Vacaville Unified School District
Board Member
Thanks to Ryan Wold (www.afomi.com) for website redesign and cleanup!
August 22, 4 - 10 PM, Interview Panel: Solano County Teacher of the Year, Cordelia
September 4, 7:30 PM, VUSD Board meeting, City Council chambers, on Ch. 26
September 7, 11 AM, Monthly Vaca Pug Club play date
September 8, 6:30 PM, Library Commission meeting, Cultural Center
September 18, 7:30 PM, VUSD Board meeting, City Council chambers, on Ch. 26
October 2, 7:30 PM, VUSD Board meeting, City Council chambers, on Ch. 26
October 5, 11 AM, Monthly Vaca Pug Club play date
October 6, 5 PM, annual Vacaville Chamber Education Mixer
100% of children enter Kindergarten at grade level. Sounds like a fantasy, right? This is the reality at the inner-city Harlem Children’s Zone in New York.
With this statement, Geoffrey Canada, this school’s principal, who’s been on Oprah and 60 Minutes, opened the 8th annual National Charter Schools Conference.
At this Harlem school, they don’t just concern themselves with K-12 or Pre-K-12, or even P-14. It’s 0 to 14. Their “baby college” teaches parents of newborns on Saturdays what the education world knows about childhood brain development. Preschool children are enrolled from 8AM to 5:45PM, 11 months of the year, at a 4 to 1 staffing ratio, costing the district about $3500 per child per year – a great investment strategy considering it costs over $36,000 per year for prison.
By age 5, not 90, but 100% enter Kindergarten at grade level and start learning chess. Their high school girls’ chess team is ranked #1 in the country.
This week, I heard one success story like this after another. It’s enough to restore any naysayers’ faith in public education. Yes, public education. Charter schools, such as Vacaville Unified’s own Buckingham High and Fairmont Elementary, are public, tuition-free schools, but with more operational flexibility than their traditional counterparts.
This flexibility is why charter schools are known as the reform and growth side of education today. Nationwide, 1.2 million students attend 4300 charter schools. In California, 250,000 students attend 700 charter schools. Some are independent; some are dependent. Some have unionized and credentialed teachers; some have non-unionized, non-credentialed teachers with degrees or life experience in their content area. Many have learned that a 100% merit pay-based system does not work, but a strategic compensation package works wonders for highly effective teacher recruitment and retention.
At the conference, I was enlightened on other areas. 10-base-T routers – obsolete. Adding extra T1 lines for bandwidth – obsolete. It’s now minimum 30 gigabit fiber lines. As far as operating systems, students today are “OS agnostic” and so their teachers need to be as well. Prohibiting tech gadgets in the classroom is having the same effect as prohibition in the 1920’s – it backfires. We no longer need to be concerned with filtering software (which kids know how to bypass anyway), because the technology already exists for the teacher to see all the screens of their students’ laptops or handhelds, take a screen shot, and email it on the spot to mom & dad at work.
Really though, and this is a recurring theme you’ve heard me say for years, we need to ramp up our rigor, so our graduates have a chance to be successful in this global economy. The school day and the school year need to be longer, much longer. In countries such as China and India, where they go to school 13 more days per year than we do, that basically translates to an entire extra year over 12 years. And in sheer numbers alone – there are more honors students in China than all students in America, and there are more English speakers in India than the population of all of America.
If Sputnik was America’s big wake-up call to increasing math, science and tech education in the 1960’s, then the pure demographics of our world needs to be America’s education wake-up call today.
I’m thrilled that here in Vacaville Unified, we’ve embraced education flexibility
and innovation with Buckingham Charter, now Fairmont Charter, and someday, all
sites will have the educational freedom brought by America’s successful charter
movement.
The 20 minute video clip (275 MB) of this presentation as given at the board meeting is available by email request.
On November 6, 2007, voters in the Vacaville Unified School District elected Jay Yerkes to a 4-year term as Governing Board Trustee. Jay received 5272 votes. All 4 incumbents retained their seats, defeating the sole challenger. The official re-swearing in took place Thursday, December 13, 2007, at 7:30 PM, in the Vacaville City Council Chambers.
Jay thanks his supporters for their votes of confidence. There was no campaign run this time around. The Committee to Elect Jay Yerkes spent ZERO dollars on this successful reelection bid (besides the 200 word Ballot Statement fee of $607). This proves that local elections have nothing to do with signage, mailers, endorsements, monies, ads, or letters.
The community is applauded for their recognition of what is truly important in holding an elected office: passion, dedication, accountability, and visibility.
I had the honor of representing our district at the 14th annual California Charter Schools Conference last week. I was very impressed to see how the charter movement has seriously reformed public education. Since the early 1990’s, the number of charter schools has grown to over 600, with over 220,000 students, representing 4% of the entire statewide public school enrollment.
But quantity isn’t the story here – it’s about quality. Charter schools are simply outperforming their non-charter counterparts. One of the main reasons is choice – when kids choose their school, they feel a sense of belonging and ownership and safety, which provides a basis for higher student achievement. I applaud our secondary schools for exploring ways to continue to bring this feeling of community to their sites.
While Buckingham Charter Magnet High School only represents 4% of Vacaville Unified’s enrollment, their achievement has reached record-setting levels. So it was great to be part of the Buckingham delegation that attended the charter conference – Principal Bob Hampton, Vice Principal Taryn Carter, teachers Carrie Rausch and Ryan Price, and Foundation President Tim Kruse.
Unfortunately, there’s a pervasive myth that charters are a financial drain on the greater district. Well, that’s simply not true here. With the Memos of Understanding being put into place, Buckingham is cost-neutral. I’d take it one step further and say that Buckingham is actually revenue-enhancing for our district, since a sizable portion of their enrollment and thus their revenue comes from out-of-district or private school students which we otherwise would not be getting. It’s a win-win situation for Vacaville Unified and Buckingham.
It was quite apparent that facilities are a huge issue with charter schools, and here too. I’d love to see Buckingham with a real school site and potential for enrollment growth, but their achievement levels, which I got to recite every time someone asked me about “my” charter school, really tell the story of their success, in spite of their location in an industrial park.
10 / 10 / 832 / 6 / Certified / Distinguished.
The 10’s represent the top 10th decile as compared to similar
schools and statewide ranking.
This is HUGE, as it’s the first school in Solano County to
have a 10-10 ranking.
832 is their API score – the highest of any of our high schools.
6 is the number of years of WASC reaccreditation.
Certified represents a charter school in the top 10% of all charters
in the state.
Distinguished – Buckingham is Vacaville Unified’s newest
California Distinguished School – congratulations Knights!
I’d like to begin my comments with a joke told by the Executive Director of the National School Boards Association.
A school board member, a reporter, and God are sitting in a boat, when suddenly a gust of wind comes up and blows God’s hat into the water. The reporter immediately jumps in and starts swimming after God’s hat. But just as the reporter is about to reach the hat, another wind gust blows it away further. This keeps happening. Exasperated, the reporter returns to the boat, empty-handed. The school board member decides to try. Jumping in, the trustee finds that God has now made the water walkable. Along the water the trustee skips, picks up the hat, and returns to the boat. The next day, the headline in the newspaper reads, “School board member can’t swim.”
With that, the 66th annual National School Boards Association conference began. The joke was made to illustrate the point that the media does not always relay the story as we would like, sometimes omitting the great things that are happening in public schools across our country. As a result, a new website has been launched to provide accurate and timely information about public education and its importance to the well being of our nation. The site is: centerforpubliceducation.org.
For our local media, I implore you: check out the facts on this website and report a balanced story before publishing an Associated Press article and attempting to infer its local relevance, as was unfortunately done 2 days ago with the front page article here, “Vacaville Unified School District does the right thing and ignores federal loophole.” Well, that’s what the article should have been titled. We are thankful to our Assistant Superintendent for Academic Advancement, Peggy Alexander, who pointed out that the loophole does not exist here, because we’re disaggregating our data by hand, which means that we do look at every child to make sure they have the proper resources to learn, so no child is left behind.
Back to the conference – what’s great about attending a national conference with your colleagues is how it opens your eyes to what else is going on out there with school districts across the country. One district in Kentucky, for example, only has 1 board meeting per month, it’s about 2 hours long, and their stipend is $1200/month. Just an hour away in Sausalito, their entire board is hands-on, they’re working in the schools everyday, they receive no stipend, and they love how successful their decade-old mandatory school uniform program is. The Sausalito district is convinced many problems were solved when they instituted uniforms, and the parents there absolutely love it. Still, we all strive to do what is best for our district.
I shared with Superintendent Aycock today some practical ideas from the conference that could work well for us, like a potential savings in special education legal fees by working with Lindamood Bell in-house, and a savvy ID and volunteer check-in system for our schools that prints out high tech badges like this.
I was moved by the profound keynote speech by ex-school board president Colin Powell. The motivational wellness speech by Richard Simmons was even more powerful. Here’s a guy who weighed 200 pounds in 8th grade, 260 in 12th grade, lost 137 pounds in 3 months – almost dying as a result, and now teaches 400 classes a year at age 58. What did he say we should do about the childhood obesity epidemic? Get rid of soft drinks, turn off the tv and talk at dinnertime, and do some exercise every day; it’s outlined in our own wellness strategic plan already.
Dealing with this epidemic is a challenge for us, but so are a lot of things we are confronted with on a daily basis in the classroom. As Colin Powell stated, “So what? The opportunities outweigh the challenges.”
We all have incredible opportunities in education. I’m excited to be part of such a dynamic district that embraces the same reasons for hope as expressed by another keynote speaker, Jane Goodall: the indomitable human spirit, our amazing, advancing brain, and the commitment of young people inspired to act. Thank you.
After many public meetings, several board meetings
and a box full of documentation, I’m happy to see how all
the revisions have brought us to this current package of recommendations.
So as not to reiterate, here briefly are the major points as I see
them:
We need to adjust our remaining projects at Fairmont, Vaca Pena,
Callison, Orchard, Will C Wood, Cooper, and Browns Valley to current
dollars.
We need to build a gym at Vaca Pena.
We need to improve Zunino stadium.
And, we need to modernize Will C Wood.
Remember, all of these items WERE in fact approved by Vacaville
voters, as they were all included in the original scope of Measure
V.
Again, Measure V was never intended to cover all of our needs, and
I am sorry that we simply cannot make everyone happy with the finite
dollars that remain. But I know my job, and if you were here in
my shoes, you would know that your job is to review ALL of the available
information objectively and make the absolute BEST decision for
our ENTIRE school district, without any further delay.
I believe the plan we’ve seen tonight will accomplish getting
the best bang for our Measure V buck, and I look forward to the
time when additional funding will be available through our Master
Planning process to meet more of our district’s needs.
We have many schools and long after the uproar of this issue dies
down, we will still be working towards fostering excellence in education.
Thank you. :)
Quick final note to staff: I appreciate everything you have done and gone through
during this process. You are all professionals and we are lucky to have you!
When I went outside this morning and did not see my shadow, I thought, “Another
6 weeks to talk about Measure V.” Happy Groundhog Day, everybody!
But seriously, I want to thank Leigh and her Facilities team for putting together
another in-depth presentation for us to consider.
At this point, I’m leaning towards Plan A. First, it’s vital that
we adjust our Phase 3 and 4 projects to cover as much of their original scope
as we can, given the rampant construction inflation we’ve been experiencing,
and will continue to bear.
Second, Vaca Pena desperately needs a gym – and the staff there has been
telling us this since way before Measure V. It’s just not right for 1000
students to have to juggle eating their lunches while PE classes are going on
in the same multi-purpose room. In fact, Vaca Pena’s cohort on the north
side of town, Willis Jepson, has both a multi-purpose room and a gym, because
Vacaville voters almost 30 years ago understood that middle schools need both.
Third, for years, we’ve been hearing how Vaca High needs to improve Zunino
stadium, and given the thousands of people who utilize that facility throughout
the year, this is a very valid expenditure.
And fourth, we need to do some serious modernizing at Will C Wood. Over the
past few decades, there have been piecemeal improvements and changes, but nothing
as comprehensive as what’s really required there for properly educating
Wood’s 1800+ students.
Granted, funds from Measure V were never meant to cover ALL of the facilities
needs of our school district, and there are many items we simply will not be
able to tackle with this finite bucket of money. Just off the top of my head,
I can come up with $50, maybe $60 – heck, even $100 million worth of projects
that will have to come from future facilities bonds and parcel taxes as we roll
with the demographic changes of our wonderful city.
But our job 2 weeks from now will be to give a final direction to staff as to
how to divvy up the remaining Measure V funds. What’s proposed in Plan
A sure has a lot of bang for our buck, and our charge here as trustees is to
do what’s best, not necessarily for one set of stakeholders, but for the
greater good of our entire school district. Thank you.
This PowerPoint Presentation can be viewed here (1160k). Accompaning background music, the Beach Boys' "Be True to Your School," can be heard here (307k). Right-click each here and choose "Save Target As" to save it to your computer, and then play the presentation and music from there.
A man riding the subway and trying to get some work
done was continually bumped into and distracted by a couple of overly
rambunctious children. Finally, he could take it no longer. He approached
the boy’s father, and in no uncertain terms demanded he take
control of his kids. Visibly distraught, the father could barely
look the man in the eyes. “I don’t know what we’re
going to do – we just found out that their mother died.”
The moral: Seek first to understand before seeking to be understood.
And with that, last week, Christopher Reeve – Superman – began the 64th annual National School Board Association’s conference. I want to thank community businessman and benefactor Bill Martindale for his generous contribution so I could attend the conference without it costing our school district one dime. But even if it had, it would have been worth every bit, for the educational innovations I learned will prove to be invaluable for us over the long term.
These innovative ideas come from the preeminent leaders in education today, like Melinda Gates, who, with husband Bill Gates, has given over $20 billion – $20 billion! – to public education; Laura Bush, our First Lady, who’s a librarian and a credentialed teacher; Jim Collins, author of current Top 10 bestseller Good to Great; Jennifer James, renowned cultural anthropologist; Rod Paige, head of the United States’ Department of Education; Betsy Rogers, United States Teacher of the Year; and Terrence Roberts, one of the “Little Rock 9,” who, being black, attempted to attend an all-white high school right after passage of the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education desegregation ruling 50 years ago.
What do the pros say about the future of education? The 3 R’s of reading, writing, and arithmetic, are changing to Rigor, Relationships, and Relevance. It’s the nerds’ time – brain technology in a service world – corporations want responsible employees who can think. Automatic teacher tenure after 3 years will be eliminated, so only great teachers will be in the classroom. Large team combat sports will be phased down and replaced by individual or small team sports. Already today, the percentage of students getting college scholarships for skateboarding and snowboarding is rising faster than the percentage getting football scholarships. Laptops for every secondary school student will be the norm. Waterless urinals. Parental Accountability Requirements. Longer school days. Longer school years. Smaller schools. Cementing the United States as the world’s brainpower leader. Within 10 years, all students will be proficient in science, math, and language arts, and soon thereafter, 100% of students will graduate high school with the aptitude and ability to pursue higher education.
These changes will require all of us to drop our illusions, our
mythologies, our current belief systems of education, just as we
have done throughout time:
500 years ago, the earth was flat.
400 years ago, the sun revolved around the earth.
100 years ago, our government would give you $50 for killing an
Indian.
30 years ago, boys wore shirts and ties to school.
10 years ago, transgender was not in the dictionary.
Today, educational greatness is a measure of self-determination,
not circumstance.
Tomorrow? Hang in there; it’ll be a fun ride.
Please help by attending VPEF (www.vpef.org) functions and contributing whenever you see the "hat" being passed around. The future of public education clearly revolves around the community's financial support for programs which the state no longer can afford to fund. These programs are just about everything in education which is not basic reading / writing / arithmetic: music, libraries, counselors, nurses, sports, custodial staff, and technology. For Vacaville, our need is about $20 per family per month - pretty easy!
Why does it seem that the state's support for education is declining? Actually, legislators largely are pro-education, and devote the biggest chunk (40%) of the state's budget to K-12, but there's a finite amount of dollars to go around. As the CA K-12 population has grown from 4 to 6 million over the past 20 years, Proposition 13 from 1978 has had the unfortunate effect of not allowing us financially to keep up with our growth in students. Prop. 13 limits revenue for education so much so that schools now only have enough funds to provide for basic, constitutionally required education, in spite of parents' overwhelming desires for a well-rounded curriculum. That's why we're fundraising. Our alternatives are a complete re-vamping of Prop. 13 (which I predict will happen within the next couple decades) to help at the state level, or, parcel taxes by individual school districts to help out at the local level (which you may see on our ballot soon - stay tuned).
This isn't party politics; it's just simple math. As one speaker at the "Overhauling School Funding" forum on March 19, 2004, put it, "The solution is to drop a bomb into the entire school funding chassis (Read: eliminate Prop. 13) and then rebuild it from the ground up, because it's not a system you can tinker to utopia."
AB1506
is yet another unfunded mandate from the state. For our building
and modernization projects, instead of the current practice of having
the Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) ensure we're keeping
in compliance with labor standards, the hundreds of school districts
in California must now each create their own labor compliance program.
This unnecessary layer of bureaucracy will cost us almost $1 million
from our precious Measure V funds. That's right - you, the Vacaville
taxpayer, will fork out a million dollars for this! Don't like it?
Neither do I! Help by calling the people we voted into office who
can write legislation to overturn this: our Assemblywoman Lois Wolk,
707-455-8025, and State Senator Mike Machado, 916-445-2407.
UPDATE:
The Education Coalition is actively working to overturn AB1506.
Even though this idea has been on the books for years, noone has ever pursued it. Now that times are tough, we need to engage local businesses to take an active role here. Ideas: the "Genentech Science Lab at VHS" - the "Mariani Fruit Cafeteria at WCW" - the "Les Schwab Auto Shop" - the "Solano Bank Economics Wing" - the "Hearn Construction Drafting Room" - the "Solano EDC ROP Center" - or "This bus runs smoothly with BC Stocking Lubricants." Do you work for a local company that is looking to become more community involved? Now's their chance - please have them call or email me. They will benefit from increased advertising exposure, and the schools will benefit from their generous revenues. Thank you for being receptive to this idea whose time has come.
On November 4, 2003, voters in the Vacaville Unified School District elected Jay Yerkes to a 4-year term as Governing Board Trustee. Jay received 3635 votes, the 2nd highest of the 10 candidates running for 4 spots.
The official swearing-in took place Thursday, December 11, 2003, at 7:30 PM, in the Vacaville City Council Chambers.
**********
Jay would like to thank all his supporters, friends, and family for their help in the campaign. A special thanks goes to the committee, the precinct walkers, the authors of the letters to the editor, those that sported Yerkes Works lawn signs and/or flyers at their homes and businesses, parents Bob & Ruth Yerkes for hosting the Campaign Kickoff BBQ, Perfect Blend Coffee House for hosting the PTOs-meet-Jay event, and the tireless help and encouragement from Jay's wife, Wendy Nichols.
The Campaign Committee was headed by Wendy Nichols, Paula Martin, Chuck & Sandy Crouse, and Treasurer Ted Beecher.
The precinct walkers were: Jay & Wendy, Chuck & Sandy, Paula, Ted, Susan Garland, Brett & Mimi Johnson, Karen Seiden, Ailene Klotz, Nancy Dunn, and Steve & Ann Phelps.
Letters to the editor were from: Garland Porter, Linda Heber, Rob Wood, Paula Martin, and Dee Patel.
| C.C. & Regina Yin | Phil McCaffrey | Mike Reagan | Mark & Veronica Creffield | Warren & Carolyn Frost |
| Rischa Slade | VeriCard Systems | Tom & Dorothy Kistler | Aanko Technologies, Inc | Bruce & Pirjo Boss |
| Chuck & Sandy Crouse | Ted Beecher | Ken Clark’s Plumbing | Daily Republic | Larry & Linda Heber |
| Bill & Joan Hennig | Brett & Mimi Johnson | Dee Patel | Susan Garland | Paula Martin |
| Steve & Heather Longoria | Leonard J. Cook | Bob & Ruth Yerkes | Wendy Nichols | Kimton & Jenny Zane |
Married to best friend, Wendy Nichols, 6th grade teacher, Cleo Gordon Elementary School, Fairfield
2 pugs, Atticus Finch and Frida Kahlo (the “Give a Hoot” pugs as seen in Vacaville’s Fiesta Days Parade, May 24, 2003) - With their own websites, April 2004! Atticus - Frida
Check out our Vacaville Pug Club, which meets the 1st Sunday of the month at 11AM.
Vaca Pug Club at May 24, 2008 Fiesta Days parade, 1 minute video clip, 25 MB here. (Right-click, Save Target As, then watch after downloaded to your computer.)
Waterskiing
(since age 6, Lake Berryessa & Donner Lake
~ UCLA Waterski Team,
1989 – 1993 – “Most Valuable Skier”)
Snowskiing (since
age 4 – Tahoe Donner, Boreal Ridge, Alpine Meadows, and all-time
favorite Squaw Valley)
Windsurfing (since age 15 – Donner Lake)
Work? Yes. Due to financial industry rules, this website is not allowed to post details.