INTERVIEWER: What is your background as a Venturan?
ANTONY KRZYWICKI: I’ve lived in Ventura, I bought a house here about two years back, and I have lived here for a total of five years.
INTERVIEWER: At the end of your term, if elected, how will Ventura Unified schools be using technology in ways they aren’t right now? What will be your steps to achieving that result?
KRZYWICKI: I believe that all the schools in Ventura should have equal access to technologies. I believe that we need to provide laptops and computers to all of our students in the middle schools and high schools so that we’re not segregating the schools in between each other. I would develop a financial plan, looking at the budget, working with the other directors and figure out a way to make it happen.
INTERVIEWER: In your opinion, what is the next step to ensuring high school students are prepared for the Common Core curriculum and its standardized testing (SBAC)?
KRZYWICKI: I think that we do an average job, looking at the school report cards, looking at core curriculum, we tend to fall pretty much in the mediocre section. Some of our schools that have a lower socioeconomic status where we’re struggling a lot of those students are struggling to achieve those standards so I would look into ways of improving their education, and the ways that I would look into improving their education would be communication between the teachers, psychologists, parents and therapists, and bring more psychologists on to help to have the communication available where everybody is involved in the student’s life versus one person or two people.
INTERVIEWER: The Ventura Unified budget for this year is around 188 million dollars. If I gave you ten million dollars more today to invest in our school district however you see fit, how would you spend it?
KRZYWICKI: 10 million more dollars. I would, there are a few things I would like to see, one thing I would like to see is our classrooms be of smaller sizes, I would like to see this, and that would probably incur hiring more teachers with that 10 million dollars so we can limit the classroom size. I would like to, obviously, we talked about the technology already, I would like to see technology be brought to all the schools in the district. I would like to see our schools invest in solar panels more so than they already have so we could be self-sufficient of SoCal Edison. That would probably take up most of that money.
INTERVIEWER: What do you think is the most pressing issue facing our schools today and how can it be addressed?
KRZYWICKI: The most pressing issue facing schools today, I think if you go to every single person they’ll tell you something different. I think here in Ventura we’re solely focused on getting our students ready, employed and ready to go into college and I don’t feel that we do enough to let students know that there are trade schools. There are trades we can train and teach in the high school level where some students who might not feel that they want to go to college might want to work on cars, might want to work on woodworking, you know a whole slew of trades you could focus on but really the trades that I would like to see, I would like to see a trade school open up, trade high school which would focus on green technologies, working on solar panels, wind farms those type of technologies. That’s what I would like to see.
INTERVIEWER: Sometimes to students, school board policy decisions seem to come out of nowhere. Most students don’t know their school board members, don’t know when the board meets, and aren’t informed about the decisions the board makes on a regular basis, like for example decisions about curriculum or disciplinary policies. If you are elected, how do you plan to cultivate a closer relationship between the board and the students, ensuring that they get a chance to speak on issues that pertain to them and are informed of decisions once they happen?
KRZYWICKI: That is a really really good question because I feel like a lot of students, to take the time out of your day to go to a school board meeting that happens like twice a month—you got homework to do, you got a lot of stuff going on. I think board members need to bring meetings to the schools. So as a board member I would meet with all the principals across the board in all the schools and get their feedback every three or four months, I would like to set up a time when I can come to each school individually throughout the year and just have a question and answer with board members possibly. I would like to split that with other board members, not saying I would be a solo board member, but I would like to start open communication, open forum for students to contact board members on a one to one basis on an open forum style.
