ABOUT MADELINE

Growing up in New York, Madeline worked her way through school, moved to California and eventually earned a teaching credential from UC Berkeley.

She taught Adult Education for 30 years, won the Adult Education State Excellence in Teaching Award in 2003, and retired from teaching in 2010.

As a mother of five, Madeline spent 15 years as a parent volunteer in WCCUSD schools. She was actively involved in parent organizations, serving as President, Co-President, and Site Council Chair. In addition, she served on several Districtwide committees, including the Redistricting Committee, the Citizens’ Bond Oversight Committee and the Facilities Subcommittee. In 2005, she was Co-Chair of Measure J, which raised $400 Million to continue upgrading the District’s antiquated schools.

Madeline successfully ran for WCCUSD School Board in 2006 and was re-elected in 2010 and 2014. As a teacher and parent leader, Madeline brought her unique perspective to the School Board. She values the safety and security of our students and staff above all else. She has a thorough understanding of the resources and limitations that face our district.

On the School Board, Madeline has been a hard worker and a consensus builder, with the ability to get things done:

- Led the fight to keep the district solvent during the most difficult budget period in recent history and despite losing state revenue.

- Preserved small class sizes, instructional time and adult education (things many other districts reduced or eliminated).

- Collaborated with cities to find additional funding to keep schools from closing and to develop daytime curfew programs to reduce truancy and drop-outs.

Madeline is an active member of the Contra Costa County School Boards Association and served as its chair in 2013 and is currently Vice President. In addition, she strongly advocated for the Local Control Funding Formula which will bring more revenue to our students.

A strong advocate for rebuilding and refurbishing the District’s badly deteriorated school facilities, Madeline co-chaired the Board’s successful bond measure in 2005 and supported the measures passed in 2010 and 2012 which will brought about the renovation or rebuilding of almost all district schools. She also supported the successful renewals of the District parcel tax to support counselors and librarians in 2012 and 2014.

Madeline’s already done a lot …

Over the last twelve years on the School Board, despite historic state budget cuts to education funding from 2006 through 2012, I’ve led efforts to increase student achievement, rebuild or remodel nearly every school in the district, expand our arts and music programs, raise test scores, and improve high school graduation and college acceptance rates districtwide. I am proud of our accomplishments:

- Improved academic performance
- Increased college acceptance rates
- Increased high school graduation rates
- Increased the rate of English Learner students becoming proficient in English
- Increased our teachers’ (and staff) salaries – to move them from the bottom to the top of Contra Costa school districts – to increase recruitment and retention
- Increased our teachers’ professional development and coaching supports
- Increased our full-service community schools program

… but there is still much more to do!

Increase Student Achievement

WCCUSD has seen an increase in state funding under changes in state education policy, allowing the District to implement more targeted programs to close the achievement gap and invest more money directly into the classroom and school site.
I pushed to ensure this new revenue went toward hiring more counselors, librarians, and support staff and expanding our music, art, and other enrichment programs. We need to put added resources into the classroom and continue improving student achievement.
We have a serious teacher shortage – both nationally and locally. I have pushed to expand our Career Pathways programs to include an Education Academy – focused on “growing our own” to address the local shortage. I believe experienced, committed, caring educators are the key to achieving students.

Closing the Achievement Gap

We need to focus on the whole child - nutrition, health, school safety, before and after school programs, academics, and enrichment programs to truly close the achievement gap.

I want to invest in programs that develop the community school model where students are supported by wrap-around support services available on the school site.

We also have been able to site health clinics in our six high schools. I want to expand this program to include health clinics in our middle schools as well. In addition, we need to

We also need to expand our after-school programs so that students don’t return home to empty houses but stay at school longer and receive more instruction and enrichment opportunities.

Safe, Secure Schools

In 2013 we were able to partner with local police departments to put police officers on all our high school campuses. This allowed us to continue reducing our truancy and absentee rates, while offering more safe and secure school campuses. Through our extensive school bond program, we have been able to rebuild or remodel nearly every school site within the district. These new schools have state of the art facilities with new technology, computers and the internet, and allow our students to have access to more resources and technology at their fingertips.