Tobin has the endorsements listed on his candidates page. He lives in the area for the seat he is representing. However, his children attend GT Schools.
All candidates may send in their posts and they will be included on the blog.
Tobin also emailed the blog months ago and said:
"Who is grandterracenews? The person who is writing/ blogging seems like a hypocrite to demand such levels of openness from Grand Terrace city government but doesn't attach their own name to the e-mail. If you want your opinion to be respected you should be willing to put your name behind it.
Tobin Brinker"
Tobin Brinker also emailed:
"I am NOT a candidate for the Grand Terrace seat on the School Board. I am a candidate for re-election to one of the two Colton seats, NOT the Grand Terrace seat. My home is in the San Bernardino portion of Cooley Ranch. The whole district votes that is why I am campaigning in GT, even though I represent the COLTON trustee area on the school board. My residency has been made an issue by unscrupulous people that are trying to confuse people about how the election works and who they should vote for. I strongly encourage you and all of your readers to look beyond the smoke and mirrors. I have presented you with numerous sources of information about me and my campaign. Please feel free to examine my positions on issues and question me about them." Tobin Brinker
Dear Grand Terrace News,
I am a candidate for re-election to the Colton School Board. Your blog asks many questions about the candidates. I have diligently tried to answer the kinds of questions your readers have asked through several sources. First, my campaign web-site (http://www.votetobin.com/). It provides a detailed biography and clear position statements on past issues, as well as my priorities for the next term. Several, items of note from the web-site: I grew up in Grand Terrace until I was 16 when my parents moved to Reche Canyon. I still attend church in GT and my kids attend school in GT. I am a member of the GT Lions club. I supported the bond four years ago. I am a strong supporter of the High School in GT. Second, I started an on-line newsletter 6 months ago. It is published bi-monthly. I have written numerous articles about local and state education issues. If any of your readers want to subscribe to my newsletter they just need to e-mail me at http://us.f331.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=Tbrin@aol.com. Third, I have completed the League of Women Voters on-line candidate information guide (http://www.smartvoter.org/2005/11/08/ca/sbo/vote/brinker_t/).
All of these sources of information provide a well-rounded and thorough picture of who I am as a school board member. Please feel free to share this information with your readers.
Sincerely,
Tobin Brinker
PS It might be of benefit to your readers to explain how are school board elections work. The district is divided into three trustee areas. Trustee area #3-GT has two representatives, Trustee area #1-Bloomington has two representatives and trustee area #2-Colton has three representatives. In this election one GT seat is up (David Zamora is the current GT rep), Two Colton seats are up (currently held by me- Tobin Brinker and Robert Armenta) and one Bloomington seat is up (held by Marge Mendoza-Ware). The whole district votes for all seats. So even though I am a Colton Rep (because I live in Cooley Ranch), Grand Terrace residents and Bloomington residents get to vote.
There are good and bad points to the current election system. The good point is that all reps regardless of where they live need to be responsive to the needs of all the citizens/ stakeholders throughout the district. The bad point is that smaller communities like GT and Bloomington can basically have Colton choosing their representative (because the majority of voters live in Colton).
High School #3
My TOP priority as a school board member is building High School #3. I was elected four years ago, two months after the successful bond campaign. I was a member of the bond committee and supported passage of the $102 million dollar bond. Building a New High School in Grand Terrace was one of the reasons so many people supported the bond. The school board has worked aggressively to secure the land necessary to build the High School. We recently purchased the final piece of land necessary to begin construction.
However, much has changed in the four years since the bond was passed. I decided to write this article as a way of informing the public about the challenges we have faced in moving this project forward and the steps we will need to take in the immediate future to ensure the successful and timely completion of the project.
In 1999, before I was elected to the board, the district sued by the owners of Montecito cemetery. The lawsuit was a result of the districtÂ’s use of imminent domain in the acquisition of a piece of property at the mouth of Reche Canyon. After hiring numerous expert witnesses and lawyers the district lost the case and the land in 2000. The newspapers at the time reported that it cost the district $1.5 million dollars. The Reche Canyon property was crisscrossed with fault lines and other technical problems.
When I was elected in 2001 the district had no property for High School #3. By the summer of 2002 we had identified two properties but each had significant drawbacks. The board requested that the district conduct environmental impact studies of each property and simultaneously keep looking for a better option. During this time the director of facilities left the district. It took six months to find a competent replacement. We also hired a new Assistant Superintendent of Business in that time. By the Fall of 2002 we had our Environmental Studies which confirmed that each property had serious drawbacks.
One property (called the Roque Property) was located in an isolated industrial area of south Rialto. All students would have to be bussed to the school and it would be surrounded by trucking and manufacturing companies. The property was also in the “fly zone.” A large portion of our district is in an area where the Del-hi sands flower loving fly (an endangered species) lives. This means we must do a two year long mitigation study before we can build. If the fly is discovered on the land it can cost thousands of dollars and years of time to develop an acceptable development plan. This fly is what caused such long delays in the building of the county hospital.
The second property was on the back side of La Loma Hills. Here we were looking at a much larger property (over 300 acres). If we purchased this property we believed we could build a High School, a middle School and a new maintenance facility and bus yard. Unfortunately, a large portion of the property was granite hill-side and would require extensive blasting and earth moving equipment to make it level and usable. Again, this would add tremendous costs and time to construction. This property also lacked any basic utilities and the district would have to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to build water lines and electric lines and roads.
In the Spring of 2003 after a joint meeting with the Grand Terrace city council we were contacted by the city to discuss city owned property near Pico Park. After initial discussions, we identified that there was indeed enough property to build a High School at that location, a significant number of kids live within walking distance and the city promised to help us financially and materially in the building of High School #3.
It took until the fall of 2003 to work out the initial details as the city repeatedly asked for changes and failed to live up to their initial promises. Specifically, they asked the district to change our location and move our High School Property to the South so that they could develop the Out Door Adventure Center (OAC). So instead of buying all city owned property we would have to deal with 11 private land owners. Next, we discovered that a Water line traversed the site diagonally and would need to be moved to make the land more usable. It can only be moved during the winter months because of peak usage during the summer. Luckily the OAC would also require the water line to be moved so we were able to share the cost with the city.
It has taken the district until just this month to acquire the 40 acres (minimum) needed to build a High School. We will be having a ground breaking soon. In the four years since the bond has passed much has changed to dramatically increase the Cost of the New High School. Some of those changes are:
Booming real-estate market (land prices sky rocket)
Oil prices double, Cement prices double
State matching funds formula hasnÂ’t changed in five years (doesnÂ’t account for increases in oil and cement costs)- state match dollars equal only about 30% instead of 50%
Added costs associated with the specific property
Approx. $1,000,000 to move water line
Approx. $1,500,000 to relocate two lumber yards
How will the district respond? Recently the Bond Over-sight committee met and unanimously agreed to take action. They will be making their formal recommendation to the board at next ThursdayÂ’s special budget work-shop. They will recommend that board immediately sell the remaining bonds that were approved 4 years ago (about $50 million dollars). It will take approximately 90 days to actually sell the bonds and then the district would apply to the state for hardship funds which would bring in an additional $70 million dollars.
Applying for hardship funds is simply a way to maximize our bond dollars. Both San Bernardino and Fontana Unified recently applied for hardship money to help them gain the necessary funds to complete all of their projects. Selling the remaining bonds and applying for hardship are linked because the state requires a certain amount of indebtedness as well as student population growth. After we apply for hardship we will need to wait one year to receive the additional money that is why it is important to begin this process now. If we want to open High School #3 on time in 2008 then we must begin this process right now.
The Bond Oversight Committee will also recommend selling our remaining bonds under the government code versus the education code. This change of procedure will also to reduce the tax implications on the homeowners of the district by spreading the cost of paying back the bonds over 38 years instead of 25. I support the Bond Oversight CommitteeÂ’s recommendations. I believe that these are important and necessary steps that we must take to deal with the population growth in our district.
This is an Op-Ed article that Tobin Brinker wrote for the Sun Newspaper Fiddling with Education
Should teachers in California teach two years before they are tenured or should they teach five years first? What are the likely outcomes of changing the tenure law? Will changing the law make our schools better or worse? These are just a few of the important questions voters need to be asking as we approach the November 8th special election.
As a teacher and a school board member I have some insight into the issue of teacher tenure. I have been teaching for ten years. I started my career at Colton High School as a special education teacher. I had an emergency credential and by today's standards I was not highly qualified when I started. I wasn't on tenure track until I switched to an intern credential in my third year. When I cleared my credential at the end of that year I was officially tenured. At the end of my fifth year of teaching I left the Colton School District and got a job in Rialto at Frisbie Middle School. I was untenured again for two more years.
I have been untenured for five of the ten years I have been teaching. I have been evaluated seven of the ten years during that time by numerous administrators. I have had six different principals in those ten years and many more different assistant principals. Two of those principals were exceptional leaders and two were hacks. The hacks viewed evaluations as a club to beat new teachers into submission and the official paperwork as a way to cover their own back sides. The exceptional principals approached evaluations as a tool to build better teachers and invested time and resources into getting it right.
Besides being a teacher I am a school board member. Every year around March 15th I start getting calls from untenured teachers that have been notified that they will not be asked to return. Most tell the same story about how the principal barely evaluated them twice during the year for 20 minutes each time. They describe a lack of support and want to know what options they have. Unfortunately, I tell them not many. Most resign quietly and the school board never knows that they were asked to leave. Why do they resign quietly? If they want to get a job somewhere else they will need a reference. If they don't resign then the school board will let them go and they will have that on their record.
In my four years on the board we have never denied an administrator who has given us an untenured teacher to terminate. To do so would be the ultimate vote of no confidence in that administrator. It is also difficult to imagine because the school board does not evaluate the teachers, we must rely on our administrators. Technically a teacher that is being terminated could come before the board and make their case but none have.
Since I have been on the school board we have fired teachers for a variety of reasons. Several years ago we fired 90+ teachers because they were not highly qualified under the "No Child Left Behind Act." Recently we terminated teachers that did not obtain CLAD certification (to teach English Language Learners) in a timely manner. However, we have not fired any tenured teachers for poor work performance. Instead we have several programs designed to help poor performing teachers become better.
Our districts lawyers have advised us that it costs about $50,000 dollars to terminate a tenured teacher. The high cost is because teachers almost always fight termination. Many principals do not move forward with termination because it is difficult and risky (no guarantee of success). It has many challenges, such as dividing the staff as teachers take sides; or upsetting the community when children feel their teacher is being attacked; or when the administrator is put on the hot seat as their every move is scrutinized for flaws.
So do we need to have a special election that costs $45 to $80 million dollars to change the tenure law? I don't think so. It is difficult to become a teacher. A person must have four years of college and then a fifth year for their credential program. That is a substantial personal investment before you ever have a job. Once hired the district has two years to decide if you deserve tenure and during that time they can fire you for any reason. If you change school districts you will be untenured again for two years. Part of the reason districts offer tenure is to promote stability at schools. Without tenure, teachers will shop around more for the best pay and that can be a significant difference. As an example, a teacher in the first five years on the pay scale who is in column three for the Colton School District versus a teacher in column three for the Rialto School District will earn $19,219 more over five years by working in Rialto.
I believe that if the governor's reform of the tenure law passes that we will see major instability in the teacher workforce as teachers shop around for better pay. The lowest performing schools in the hardest to teach areas will have an even more difficult time attracting teachers. A bidding war will likely begin and put even more strain on our budgets.
Last year there were 306,553 teachers in California and 35,447 were in their first or second year. That means 11% of the teachers in the state are currently untenured. Two years ago over 4,000 teachers statewide were laid off because of budget cuts and only about 1,000 have been rehired as districts continue to balance budgets with personnel cuts. Over those same two years the state's student population has grown by 77,500 students. It seems to me the governor should be thinking about more ways to attract and hire highly qualified teachers then worrying about how to make it easier to fire teachers.
The governor's initiative is not in the best interest of kids. It is attack politics at its core and it is wrong. It is purely an attack on the teacher's union (a major contributor to the Democratic Party) by a Republican governor who wants to weaken the opposition. It does nothing to address the real problems that are facing our schools today. It is the equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns. We must demand better from our governor.
This is an Op-Ed article by Tobin Brinker that ran in the Press Enterprise
On Thursday June 16th the Colton School board took action on two items. Both passed unanimously and both have profound and wide ranging implications for the children of the district. First the board passed a major math reform initiative called, "The Equations Project." In short it fundamentally shifts resources and responsibility for mathematics proficiency downward from the High School to the 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. Second the board passed the 2005-2006 Budget which included $5 million dollars worth of budget cuts. This is significant because the board is simultaneously attempting a major curriculum change.
It is a fine balancing act that will require the support of all stakeholders if the district is to succeed. At the same board meeting the classified employee's union (CSEA) showed up in force to demand a change in contract language that is currently being negotiated. In the past the local teacher's union (ACE) has demanded raises and complained about a lack of respect. This past year much of the community was upset after a student walk out at Colton High and over a thousand community members showed up at a board meeting to demand action. Thankfully as each of these groups has come before the board they pledged loudly to put the needs of the kids first.
Now we as a board must ask them to match their words with action. Soon the board will move to make passing Algebra a promotion requirement for 8th grade (to take effect in 2008). We will ask teachers to attend trainings on evenings and weekends and during the summer so as not to disrupt the school day with substitute teachers. We will ask parents to send their kids to special after school or before school math classes and to special summer school courses. All of this will cost money which will mean tightening our belts in other areas. People will be asked to do more with less.
Why are we doing this? This year the Colton School District was named a Program Improvement district by the federal government. Which means we failed to meet the academic requirements of the "No Child Left Behind" Act. Last year we had over 1200 students taking Algebra in 9th grade, which would be fine except, the state now requires that Algebra be taught in the 8th grade. Also, students must pass Algebra in-order to graduate. Students who take Algebra in 9th grade have their state math Test scores reduced by 20%. Therefore 1200 scores in Colton were penalized last year simply because kids were taking Algebra in the wrong grade. If we are to meet the federal requirement we must act now.
Colton's Assistant Superintendent of Instruction, Angela Wyles, said it best when she said; "This Math Equations Program would be a catalyst for change." Her philosophy is that a rising tide lifts all boats. By providing Math support early and developing our children's Algebra readiness we will be able to offer more advanced Math courses at our High Schools. Since it requires three years of High School Math to go to college many more students will be exposed to Algebra II, Trigonometry, Calculus and Statistics.
To be successful the school board must maintain steadfast in demanding accountability and holding high standards for all children. The community must embrace the changes and support the district in three ways: 1) make sure your children make it to school every day on time, 2) make sure they attend all math support classes even if it means changing the family vacation or missing a sports practice 3) support the policy of retaining kids in 8th grade if they do not pass Algebra.
The Unions also must be willing to do more with less. They must understand that the school board has an immediate obligation to provide an academic program that meets the needs of the community but at the same time meets the financial requirements of the state.
The board unanimously took action on these items because not to do so would be a serious dereliction of our duty. Several of us are up for re-election this fall and we know that talking about failing schools and budget cuts doesn't portray the school district or the board in the best light.
However, we also know that we were elected to improve the schools. Overall our schools have had rising test scores. Unfortunately, the rigorous demands of recent laws have been raising the bar even faster. Please continue to support the district as we make these very important fundamental changes.
