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(1) Q: What are some of your ideas about working across the District?
      A: My ideas about working across the District include personally and psychologically expanding my mind to think about what's best for all the kids in our District (vs. a narrower focus of Bubb or my own family). Tools I will employ for that purpose will be lots of school site visits and talking with parents and reps. from all the schools, plus going to District functions and gathering research from that level. I'll also solicit comments from the teachers and staff of our District. Of course we are all affected by what the County and State do re education and funding, so I will keep up with those entities as well. I also would use my background as a teacher, attorney, and mediator to research issues, listen impartially, discuss choices, and then eventually make what I believe is the best call for our District. I expect that this is what the Board currently does (research, listen, discuss, and decide).

(2) Q: How would your background as an attorney and mediator help you as a school trustee?
      A: I can think of at least 3 ways my background as an attorney and mediator would help me as a school trustee:
          1. I am used to talking and dealing with people who are in great conflict, be it from divorce, child custody issues, child support, or adoptions, and talking to me about death and their hopes and plans for their loved ones. I need to be empathetic to their feelings and desires, but I also need to be able to help them with professional answers and a professional attitude. I think those qualities (empathy, listening respectfully to people in conflict, being professional) are what we want to see in a school trustee.
          2. A choice I made as an attorney was to take the training to become a mediator and to employ those techniques in my dealings with clients. I believe that listening to people, helping them to see other viewpoints and to respect the viewpoints of others, honoring their feelings, and leading people to a "win-win" solution is much better in the long term for everyone. I didn't want to be the type of lawyer that dismissively tells people what to do and is a "shark" in the courtroom. I believe this mediation style is the most effective and humane way of working with people in work, school, and personal settings, and I'd like to see the mediation philosophy used in our school board work.
         3. I took the following courses in law school which are particularly relevant to school board work: Education Law; Poverty Law; Conflict of Laws; Federal Taxation; Employment Discrimination; and Statutory Analysis. (The legal term for a law written by legislators, like a congressperson, senator, assemblyperson, etc., is "statute." Statutory analysis involves tracing how such a law evolved and what is the rationale for it.) Parents probably know that MVWSD employs a law firm to give them legal advice about various issues that arise in the course of the running a school district. As an attorney on the Board I would be particularly sensitive to possible legal issues (the term used in law school, the California Bar Exam, and day-to-day law work for this is "issue spotting"). I hope my background would enhance my usefulness to the Board and to the district law firm.

(3) Q: What is your business experience?
      A: I have been a small business owner of my own solo practice law firm for 10 years. In that capacity I talk with potential clients, determine whether I think I should take their case, refer some potential clients to other excellent attorneys on the referral list I have developed, and do the work myself for those clients I accept. I primarily practice in the fields of family law and simple wills and trusts. I work part-time, as most of my time is devoted to doing volunteer work at my son's school, etc., plus being a mom and a wife.
          I get all my work from referrals from friends, former clients, other lawyers, and law school friends. I do not advertise.
          In order to practice law in the state of California I am required to pay annual dues to the California State Bar and go to law classes. (These law classes are called "Continuing Education of the Bar." We lawyers have to take 24 hours of classes every 3 years.) I am responsible for making sure I am current on my Bar dues and my continuing ed. courses.
          As a solo practitioner I am responsible for my own billing and my own taxes. I complete and file a Schedule "C" (Income and Loss from a Business) on my income tax form every year.
          In the normal course of my business I interact with business people on a regular basis. Additionally, I attend conferences for lawyers and other professionals. For example, I have registered to attend an all-day forum sponsored by Joint Venture Silicon Valley called "Taxes and our Communities - Is Our System Sustainable?" on 9/26/02, will attend the State Bar Convention in Monterey 10/10 & 10/12, and the Fall Hoffman Awards Dinner on 10/23/02 sponsored by Santa Clara County School Boards Association. On 10/11/02 I will be attending the 1st of my year-long "Leadership Mountain View" classes (and yes, driving back from Monterey late 10/10 and back late 10/11!).

(4) Q: What is your teaching experience? What is your experience with children?
      A: Re teaching, I have a "multiple subjects teaching credential," AKA "elementary teaching credential." This credential allows me to teach K - adult ed. school.
          I have taught preschool through adult ed., and was a long-time (17 years) substitute teacher of grades K - 12, primarily in Santa Clara, though I have subbed a few times at Bubb and Graham.
          When I graduated from high school I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I volunteered as a classroom aide with Project Head Start in my home town of San Bernardino. I was so charged from working with those kids and that staff that I decided to become a teacher myself. (Even though my own dad was a teacher, I didn't want to automatically follow in his footsteps.) At that time there was a program in the USA called the "Teacher Corps." It was similar to VISTA (which was like the Peace Corps for working inside the USA), and trained college graduates to teach in low income areas of the USA, like Appalachia and Native American reservations. I decided I wanted to do that, and set to get my BA at SJSU, planning to get my teaching credential through the Teacher Corps. I think the Teacher Corps was disbanded near the time I got my BA; I also know that fate stepped in for me and I got married after college instead of wanting to go to Appalachia. When I was finally ready to get serious about getting my teaching credential again, fate stepped in again and I got pregnant with my oldest child. I did 1/2 of my credential program while I was pregnant, and finished the other 1/2 when she was one year old (getting much-needed child care help from a good friend).
          I chose not to teach full-time while my children were little, but did lots of substitute teaching, etc. (per above).
          Even though I don't teach full-time I still read voraciously about education and schools. I renew my elementary teaching credential every 5 years so I'm available to help out when MVWSD schools need help with their substitute teaching pool.
          As my favorite subject is reading, I became a reading tutor at Westwood Open in Santa Clara. We tutors were trained in the "Lindamood Method," (originally known as A.D.D. for "auditory discrimination in depth) which is a multisensoral approach to reading. We would teach reading to kids who just weren't "getting it" in a regular classroom environment. That program has a high success rate for children and for adults.
          Re my experience with children, I have 2 adult children, hence have shepherded them throughout their teenage years. (!) I have a 15-year-old stepson who attends MVHS and attended elementary and intermediate school in the Los Altos School District. Lastly I have a 2nd grader at Bubb Elementary School here in MVWSD. We have been "through the mill" with all 4 of these kids, from hospital visits to homework to carpooling to "how do we discipline these kids?" to staying up past midnight waiting for a teenager to come home, to teaching a child how to drive, to thousands of baths and bedtimes. I know hundreds of kids (and now adults) from Santa Clara, Los Altos, and Mountain View.
          I still strongly believe that having kids was the best choice I ever made.

(5) Q: I notice you list endorsements from 2 people from parent participation schools, yet your own son does not attend one. Please explain.
      A: My response here will be in 2 parts - [a] My Mountain View experience (more recent), and [b] My Santa Clara experience (beginning 20+ years ago). This is a long, personal answer, so if you don't like narratives you might want to stop after the "Cliff's Notes" version (below).
          (The "Cliff's Notes" answer to this question is (a) Re Mtn. View, I was on the original committee to try to form a parent participation elementary school in our town. That dream of a school became PACT at Slater. My own youngest child, however, does better in a traditional classroom; (b) Re Santa Clara, my older two children went to parent participation schools there, and I was the participating parent there for most of that time.)

 [a] MY MOUNTAIN VIEW EXPERIENCE: When I was pregnant with my younger son (almost 9 years ago), a friend from Westwood Open who had moved to Mountain View herself asked me to help create a parent participation elementary school in our town. I said yes, as I was looking forward to a maximal school experience for my baby. I went to a meeting with her 3 friends in someone's living room. Ginnie Hauser was my Westwood Open friend, and the other 3 were Kim Smith-Nilsson, Bonnie Maloof, and another mom from Los Altos who later dropped out of our group. Those 4 moms had school age children and were very interested in getting their school started ASAP.
          We met many times in someone's living room, brainstorming about what a parent participation school should be like, and trying to figure out how to make it happen. As I was pregnant and later taking care of a newborn (and my need for such a school wasn't nearly so immediate), I was not as involved as Ginnie, Kim, and Bonnie, but I was involved enough that I was given assurance that when my baby was ready for kindergarten he would be given automatic admission into the new school that would be created out of our living room meetings. I remember going to a meeting at Kim's church at Hope and Mercy Streets toting my nursing baby along, and exclaiming over how our new school committee had grown. Soon after that I went to a meeting that had to be held in the Graham Middle School library because so many people were interested in this new school concept. That is the night that Modrite Archibeque came to represent the MVSD and told us that she and the District would do what they could to get our school started.
          The school that arose out of those living room meetings is the PACT program at Slater Elementary School. Later Whisman School District created CEL, their own parent participation program.
          In the meantime my baby grew and we enrolled in Nancy Brown's 3-year-old class at Mountain View Preschool, through Mountain View's Adult Ed. program. That was a class similar to those I attended with my older children in Santa Clara where the parent stays with their child and the teacher leads the class. We then enrolled in the Young 5s program at Mountain View Parent Nursery School, again a parent participation preschool.
          It's here that I can say to you what parents already know - that parenting is an educational and humbling experience. I learned, slowly from my own observations and experiences and partly from the wise leadership from the staff at that school, that Nathan is not a child who does best in a parent participation experience. As enthusiastic as I had always been about these kinds of schools, and as much pre-planning as I had done to get such a school ready for him, Nathan needs more structure than that of a typical parent participation school. I slowly acknowledged that Nathan would be much more successful in a traditional neighborhood school. And so I gave up my dreams and plans of sliding into Slater's PACT program with my automatic admission for Nathan.
          We started kindergarten at our neighborhood school, Bubb Elementary School. And I can tell you that I have loved it there from the 1st day. Nathan is now a happy 2nd grader, and I've been a happy parent volunteer at his school.
          Sherri Nichols, the president of CEL (Monta Loma's parent participation school), endorses me even though I'm not a parent participation school mom anymore because she knows my background and is comfortable with who I am. SEE SHERRI NICHOLS' ENDORSEMENT.

          [b] MY SANTA CLARA EXPERIENCE: When my adult children, Sarah and Owen, were small we lived in Santa Clara. When Sarah was 2 years old, we enrolled in a parent participation preschool through Santa Clara's Adult Ed. program (similar to Mountain View Parent Nursery School). We were in the 2s, 3s, and 4s classes there. While there I became a teacher in the program, teaching 3s, 3s and 4s, and 4s, and Owen was in the 4s class and nursery there.
          Meanwhile it was time for Sarah to start elementary school. I felt strongly that she needed some other type of school than the typical neighborhood elementary school, and searched high and low for an appropriate school. I considered home schooling her, but then found out about Westwood Open (now Washington Open), which was one of 2 alternative programs available to families in the Santa Clara School District. (The other was a "Back to Basics" program at Milliken which was also very popular.) Both programs operated on the lottery system then, which was a "1st come, 1st selected" system. I woke up at 4 AM the day of kindergarten registration, drove down to Westwood School, and got in line with my beach chair and book to wait for registration to open at 8 AM. I was 6th in line in a line that eventually grew to hold more than the number of spaces available in that year's kindergarten class. Luckily for me Westwood Open had a policy of automatically allowing siblings into the program, so Owen got in easily 2 years later.
          I loved Westwood Open. The teachers were great., the program was great, the families were great, the feeling of community and commonality were great, . . . . ! Sarah thrived there, and Owen did well, too. Some of my best friends today are parents that I met at Westwood Open.
          Parents were required to work in their child's classroom 3 hours a week (usually mornings). I worked in Sarah's class and later Owen's class, sometimes splitting that job with my then-husband, Gary. In my 3rd year of law school Gary took over the classroom volunteer work and was a big asset to the kids and school.
         Sarah and Owen both graduated from Westwood Open, went on to a regular middle school in Santa Clara, and then came up to Mountain View to attend MVHS. In the meantime I had had Nathan and was involved with the germ of an idea of starting a parent participation school in Mountain View . . .
         Sherry Ernst, the teacher who endorses me from Washington Open, knows me from when the Open program was at Westwood. Whenever she and I get together we talk a mile a minute about education and books. SEE SHERRY'S ENDORSEMENT

(6) Q: What is your opinion of "alternative schools"?
      A: One of the things I like best about MVWSD is the amount of choice it offers parents for schooling their children. I know from my own experience and from my own research in education that MVWSD's commitment to providing parents lots of choices re their child's day-to-day education is unusual. I think it is refreshing, and I applaud MVWSD for it.
          One thing I have learned as a parent and as a teacher is that "one size does not fit all." No classroom setting works best for all kids.
          Many kids do well in a traditional neighborhood classroom. MVWSD expands on that idea by allowing district parents to choose among all its schools. For example, Bubb is made up of almost 50% intradistrict transfer students. These transfer students help make Bubb a more vibrant place, and allows parents to feel like they have more control over what kind of schooling their child gets.
          Some kids and families do better in a parent participation setting. At PACT and CEL parents generally work in their child's classroom, creating a much lower adult/child ratio. This adult help allows for more questions by kids, more interaction with adults, and allows the teacher to do more in the classroom.
          Some families prefer a home schooling alternative. MVWSD acknowledges that, and instead of turning away from those families, it has an Independent Study Program (ISP) that those families can belong to and get curriculum guidance from a credentialed professional. Those families also have their children counted towards MVWSD attendance, which gives us more tax money.
           Finally, MVWSD offers children a dual language alternative, giving our kids the chance to learn Spanish in an intensive, daily, immersion program. Castro School gains intradistrict transfer students from all over the city from parents who are excited to be able to give their children the opportunity to learn a second language in elementary school, while their minds are at their most supple. Native Spanish speakers at Castro also benefit from learning side by side with English speakers.
          While MVWSD doesn't service high school students I'd like to say here that choice is available at that level, too, and I applaud it. Again, many kids do well in a regular high school. But I know from my own 2 post-high school children that lots of their friends questioned whether regular high school was for them. Having the alternative of Middle College, Silicon Valley Charter High School, Alta Vista, and knowledge of the possibility of the GED program keeps a lot of kids from being high school dropouts. Instead, those kids go through an alternative program and can go on to become productive members of our society, whether through college or trade school or a career. (Note: Unfortunately, as of 10/14/02 Silicon Valley charter HS was closed due to a variety of factors.)

(7) Q: On your website's "A Short Autobiography of Ellen Wheeler" you make the following statement: "Now I'm involved in what seems to be the ultimate volunteer position in local schools - running for a seat on the MVWSD School Board."  What do you mean by that?
      A: There are 2 reasons I say that Board service is "the ultimate volunteer position in local schools":

1. $$$$ - MVWSD Trustees receive a stipend of about $250 a month. If any of you have ever been to an attorney you have an idea of how much money I charge. I make more in 2 hours than Board members make in a month. I think when we ask our Board members to work for our schools for $250 a month, instead of working at their professions, we are essentially asking them to volunteer. Please note that I do NOT advocate paying our trustees more money out of our very limited school budget. I do, however, think people should realize that Board members are consciously making a financial sacrifice when they work long hours for our kids. I call this volunteerism, and I have nothing but respect for school board members who do this.

2. It has always been a fascinating political and philosophical question for me whether an elected official is supposed to (a) represent the people who elected him or her and gather input from voters about their opinions on issues, or whether, (b) once they're in office, they vote according to the way they themselves believe and want people to behave. These are what I call traditional leaders.

          I have always believed in (a), a representative leader, with the caveat that that leader should speak up when the people want to pass unjust laws. (As a history buff and student of the law I am well aware of instances in our country's history where unjust laws were passed. Two such examples are when Japanese-Americans were interned in camps during W.W.II and the laws against miscegenation.) Thus, I was thrilled when during our 1st meeting of the year of Leadership Mountain View we had a speaker who eloquently described the difference between the "servant-leader" and a traditional leader. That speaker was Mark Guterman of the Growth and Leadership Center here in Mountain View, and he was citing the work of Larry Spears in "Servant Leadership: Toward an Era of Caring," in Leadership in a New Era.

The 10 characteristics of the Servant-Leader are:
1.  Listening
2.  Empathy
3.  Healing
4.  Awareness
5.  Persuasion
6.  Conceptualization
7.  Foresight
8.  Stewardship
9.  Commitment to the growth of people
10. Building community

          I hope that if I become your Trustee I will be a servant-leader, and not simply a traditional, legislative one. I also think this is what the voters of Mountain View are yearning for after too many years of feeling like their voices were not given adequate consideration by past Boards.
 

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