School board member shows he’s more than just an LGBT spokesman

Kevin Beiser never really promoted himself as the gay candidate when he ran for the San Diego Unified School District Board last year. Instead, he focused on some serious issues facing the local students and faculty: reducing class sizes, expanding arts as well as technical programs, preventing layoffs and creating a strategic plan, just to name a few.

“I believe we must build strong bonds between our children, families and teachers to provide a rigorous curriculum to help all of our children learn and succeed,” he said during his campaign.

He won the District B seat last November – a very conservative district – and has been hard at work to make his campaign promises a reality. In fact, some people have even said he’s done more his first year that most school board members accomplish their entire careers.

“People say I am a great politician,” Beiser told the San Diego LGBT Weekly. “No, I’m just a teacher that wants to try to do everything I can to help improve the schools, and help kids to learn more and have a lot of fun in school at the same time.”

As the new school year is about to begin, Beiser sat down in his Serra Mesa home – where he lives with his partner, Dan Mock, and what seems like a herd of Dachshunds – to talk about some of his achievements from year one and a preview of what he’s planning for the next year.

San Diego LGBT Weekly: Is the job what you expected?

Kevin Beiser: It’s a lot more fun than what I thought it would be, actually. I was a little bit concerned that it would be hard to affect change. If I show the research and the data and build coalitions around what is the right thing to do, I am finding that it’s actually easy to win people over to affect change for the betterment of the kids.

So what changes have you made this year?

The first thing that we did that I am really proud of is that we expanded our solar power program to add several megawatts of electricity to the school district.

We formed a partnership with AMSOLAR and what they are doing is building carports in parking lots with solar panels on top of the carports. (In the middle of the parking lots, it’s easier for maintenance of the solar panels, and you don’t have any problems with trees, debris and things like that.) The up side of doing that, just next year alone we anticipate a saving in our electric bill of about a million dollars.

So what we did is we used that million dollars next year to bring back every single VAPA (Visual and Performing Arts) music teacher, so that we are able to maintain the same music education. That is really important to me because research shows that music helps children do better in all their other subjects and classes. It also makes learning fun and gives kids something they can be creative with and proud of.

One of those teachers can provide education to five elementary schools, and so the impact on the taxpayers’ dollar is magnified wonderfully with this VAPA program.

Speaking of taxpayers’ dollars, the district received more money from the state this year. How is that being utilized?

We’re really happy that Sacramento really fought for public education. It’s not what we would have liked it to have been, but it is better than what we predicted.

What’s that saying? Plan for the worst and hope for the best.

We didn’t get the best, but we did not get the worst budget scenario. As a result of Sacramento standing up for education, we did have a few million dollars more than we anticipated. We used those dollars to restore over 300 positions in kindergarten through third grade to keep those class sizes small.

Small class sizes in kindergarten through third grade are essential to make sure all students are literate. Third grade literacy rates are hyper accurate predictors to future college graduation rates.

Last year, you helped create and pass an historic anti-bullying policy. How is that being implemented?

We are going to continue to ensure that the spirit of that policy is being implemented. We are continuing to have staff development and training, to make sure schools are rolling out student education and diversity programs, and setting a climate in all of our schools – especially for our LGBT students and faculty.

That’s an ongoing process.

Oh yes, it’s definitely an ongoing process. It’s never done. You’re always trying to ensure that staff are aware of what is going on around them, and doing something about it when they overhear or observe bullying in any form. It’s always important to keep this on the front burner, because by doing so we’ll create a climate in all of our schools that let children and families know that we respect the diversity of our community and we’re not going to tolerate bullying and harassment from anyone for any reason.

This was not the only historic policy you helped develop this past year. Tell our readers about the kid’s lunches.

We also passed an historic Styrofoam lunch tray ban. I was surprised to find out that the school district uses 15 million toxic lunch trays that go into our landfill.

So, I partnered with the Sierra Club, San Diego Coast Keeper, San Diego Surfrider Foundation, the EPA and the Green Party of San Diego and some other environmentalists, and we put together a resolution banning Styrofoam lunch trays from all San Diego city schools. That was a proud moment for me, because that was the right thing to do for our kids.

Next year, we are going to be having different prototypes at different schools to find the best alternatives.

So let’s talk a little bit about what you are going to do this next year.

I’m going to continue to be an even stronger advocate in Sacramento for funding. Sacramento decides how much money we get to provide a quality education for our kids. So, I’m going to be a very vocal advocate, and I would encourage everyone to let our representatives in Sacramento know that public education is important to all of us.

With that, I will also be working to continue to reduce class sizes in kindergarten through third grade. My goal is to get those class sizes to 20-to-one (20 students for every teacher), because at that level we receive more class size reduction dollars from Sacramento. There’s an incentive for school districts to do the right thing. We need to maximize that revenue from Sacramento.

Or more solar panels.

(Laughs) Yes, we need to expand our solar panel program in the next couple of years. We also need to explore other alternative energy sources. Whenever we lower our electric bill, that’s more money we can spend on our kids.

Energy is not the only thing on your agenda. What about water conservation?

I am working with a couple of people on a resolution that says whenever we remodel our bathrooms in our schools and do full site modernization, that we replace the urinals with waterless urinals. Just one waterless urinal can save anywhere from 30 to 50 thousand gallons of water a year. When you multiply that over all of the bathrooms that we’ll be remodeling in the next 10 years, the savings in our water bill could be phenomenal.

Any expected layoffs this year?

A really important goal of mine, and my fellow board members, is to really work with all of our stakeholders to realize zero layoffs.

It’s important that we reach across the table to all of our bargaining units and work together to make sure the school district is producing real solid reliable numbers, that we’re advocates for the revenue we deserve from Sacramento, that we’re really pushing student attendance rates and that we’re working together to make sure that everybody has a common goal of zero layoffs. We want to keep our classrooms small, keep all of our music teachers and keep all of our classified/support staff.