Barbara Jean Calhoun
Barbara Jean Calhoun
City: Compton Unified
Position Seeking: Board Member
Question 1: Please share a meaningful experience you had with art (visual, dance, drama, music, media arts) while growing up and its impact on you.
When I was growing up, our family did not have much of anything, what we did have was the radio and a record player. My mother called it fun time, we singed and danced all over the house. When my children were born we did not have much, we had fun time, I would buy coloring books for all of us and we had music. My children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, still dance and have a color book challenge.
Question 2: How can arts education support student outcomes such as English language development, reducing the achievement gap, and preparing youth for college and/or meaningful careers?
Imagine society without the civilising influence of the arts and you'll have to strip out what is most pleasurable in life and much that is educationally vital. Take the collective memory from our museums; remove the bands from our schools and choirs from our communities; lose the empathetic plays and dance from our theaters or the books from our libraries; and all cultures will not survive with imagination. We all need the ARTS!
Question 3: What do you think the role of the School Board should be in ensuring that students have continued access to a broad range of study subjects, including the arts (broadly defined)?
To ensure that there is a strong relationship between arts and culture engagement and educational attainment. We will see an improvement in literacy when young people take part in drama and library activities and better performance in maths and languages when they take part in structured music activities.
Question 4: In light of the Local Control Funding Formula and development of district Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAPs), what are your creative solutions for achieving goals in the eight priority areas?
Stakeholder engagement is a major condition of constructing a district LCAP, a district level parent advisory committee and an English learner parent advisory committee must be formed, I've tried to find out when they meet to no avail. I attend the board meetings and they will talk a little about this but not much or when, where or time of meeting. I have no children or grandchildren in the Compton unified school district anymore, maybe that is why I have not received a survey, since written responses to these groups are not required in the legislation.
Tracy Shawn Wiggins
Tracy Shawn Wiggins
City: Compton Unified
Position Seeking: Board Member
Question 1: Please share a meaningful experience you had with art (visual, dance, drama, music, media arts) while growing up and its impact on you.
I grew up in small rural town named Ellaville Georgia and in middle and high school I participated in sports, home economic and wood shop classes. However, I attended Sunday school and church regularly and had the opportunity experience the Arts through Church plays and it was great! I use to enjoy acting and performing for the church audience, the more response and joy that I received from the audience the more confident I became. I use to love the attention and praise I received from my grandmother and the rest of the church audience and it transferred into the school setting. In addition, to participating in plays we had to memorize and recite speeches doing Easter Sunday which has been extremely helpful throughout my adult life. I often time draw back on my wonderful experiences from childhood acting and preparing for Easter speeches when I preparing to speak to large groups and during undergraduate and graduate college years.
Question 2: How can arts education support student outcomes such as English language development, reducing the achievement gap, and preparing youth for college and/or meaningful careers?
I have worked in many settings with disadvantage youths and other youths that were high functioning. I experience the impact that Arts education can have when dealing with these youths. Many of these youths were able to expressed themselves through the arts even though they might have been struggling in other areas of their lives. I can recalled when I was working with youths who were displaying self injurious behaviors such as, cutting, physical and verbal aggression using the Arts in addition to Cognitive Behavior Therapy was extremely successful when interacting with these youths and assisted with decreasing some of their negative behaviors. I strongly believe that Arts education can improve students outcomes in the academic setting and definitely prepare students for a successful college career and beyond.
Question 3: What do you think the role of the School Board should be in ensuring that students have continued access to a broad range of study subjects, including the arts (broadly defined)?
I believe the School Board roles should be to support and push the use of Arts in our schools, it is a great tools to enhance the student's academic achievement and minimizes some of the negative behaviors that often times become challenges for many of our students. When using Arts in the school, faculty can track how successful Arts are in improving students performance by requiring vendors to use evidence based practice. This evidence can be presented to the Board to determine what is working or may not working. This approach would ensure that our schools are maximizing the use of Arts to improve the outcomes for our students and consequently prepare our students productive and constructive lives.
Question 4: In light of the Local Control Funding Formula and development of district Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAPs), what are your creative solutions for achieving goals in the eight priority areas?
As mentioned above the district can use evidence base practice approach to assist with the development of the district Local Control Accountability Plan. This will ensure the we taking the right approach for achieving the goals in the eight priority areas. Each school district may require a different approach that's why evidence base practice is extremely important to ensure that our students are receiving the proper support to achieve their academic goals. In addition, it will ensure that administrators are on pace with reaching the goals in the eight priority areas. I have personally witnessed the impact of Arts in the academic settings when used effectively, for this reason I believe an appropriate strategy would be to have an effective tool to track the successful use Arts in improving students academic outcomes.
H. Ernie Nishii
H. Ernie Nishii
City: ABC Unified
Position Seeking: Board Member Trustee Area 3
Question 1: Please share a meaningful experience you had with art (visual, dance, drama, music, media arts) while growing up and its impact on you.
My mom is an artist. I lived art daily. I even had tie died underwear. Art gets to your soul. When the rational doesn’t sink in art passes through our conscious mind to our essence. My mom’s art depicting the incarceration of thousands of innocent Americans of Japanese descent hits us in the primal part of our brain. That is,the most effective way to prevent it from happening again in a country that guarantees freedoms.
Question 2: How can arts education support student outcomes such as English language development, reducing the achievement gap, and preparing youth for college and/or meaningful careers?
Jobs was an Artist. Einstein was an Artist. The future lies with artists and the free concepts of expression. Not necessarily the programmer. If you love to express yourself you will do it through art and through writing. They are not mutually exclusive and come from the same part of the brain. If you love school you will do better. Art helps you express yourself and therefore if you associate school with art and expression you will do better.
Question 3: What do you think the role of the School Board should be in ensuring that students have continued access to a broad range of study subjects, including the arts (broadly defined)?
The board can encourage art through scheduling and through enabling world class artists in our classrooms. We did that at Leal. We got world class Korean dance instructor to teach our kids. We did an rfp to get a great artist to do a project with kids. We used Paul Soldner techniques for elementary kids. We don’t dumb down. We elevate.
Question 4: In light of the Local Control Funding Formula and development of district Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAPs), what are your creative solutions for achieving goals in the eight priority areas?
Parents. We were able to fundraise 100k per year to get extra arts instruction. We got parents to pay the teachers for tutoring and the profits after paying the teacher were used for the kids.
Gregory Pitts
Gregory Pitts
City: Compton Unified
Position Seeking: Board Member
Question 1: Please share a meaningful experience you had with art (visual, dance, drama, music, media arts) while growing up and its impact on you.
One of my most meaningful experiences with the arts growing up has to be when I took drawing in high school. I had never been particularly artistic and couldn’t draw at all. My teacher was very encouraging and thoughtfully guided me through one of my favorite concepts in art, perspective. I really enjoyed the ways in which on could play with scale and show movement. Although much of what you do with perspective requires you to use a ruler, I felt that I became skilled in this area. Because of the teacher I had, I became more confident in what I didn’t know I was capable of.
Question 2: How can arts education support student outcomes such as English language development, reducing the achievement gap, and preparing youth for college and/or meaningful careers?
Arts education has a great influence on improving the educational outcomes of our students. For example, this is why the ‘A,’ was added to the S.T.E.M. acronym bringing about S.T.E.A.M. The influence of the arts on science education is tremendous. Without the arts, we would never have the visually appealing style of some of our most beloved pieces of technology such as the iPhone and many other Apple products. Students need to understand that there is a niche for them in any field of study that they may want to embark upon, and the arts are the common thread. Whether it is drama, graphic arts, music et cetera. The arts can open up many doors to new and untapped abilities within all of our students that they didn’t know where available to them.
Question 3: What do you think the role of the School Board should be in ensuring that students have continued access to a broad range of study subjects, including the arts (broadly defined)?
School boards have a moral obligation to ensure that all students have access to relevant and viable arts programming that will allow them to explore their untapped abilities that will make them more competitive in the post-secondary arena and the world of work.
Question 4: In light of the Local Control Funding Formula and development of district Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAPs), what are your creative solutions for achieving goals in the eight priority areas?
In light of the LCAPs eight goals, my plan would be to partner with as many stakeholders as possible. Including parents, PTSA groups, city and local officials, businesses, and nonprofit organizations that can offer enrichment programming that will help to enhance the experiences of our students and move us toward meeting those goals.
