I ended last week’s column with this wish, “vote yes on increasing funding for the children in 2011.”  For me the yearning is as serious as life and death. How we treat our children will be correlated with the quality of our lives in the future. And for me the future is now.

In eleven days we celebrate the first day of the new year. For Californians it is the most critical year for our future as a state, at least in my lifetime, in my opinion.

Few can argue that quality public education is the means for us to reduce crime, increase employment, grow the economy and decrease poverty. California schools have $20 billion less than was promised by the legislature three years ago. Therefore, we can no longer continue to slash funds from already under-resourced institutions without peril to our children, their teachers and our future. This insanity must stop in 2011 with the help of Governor-elect Jerry Brown’s leadership.

Thirty-six years ago I began my teaching career at Osborne School at Santa Clara County Juvenile Hall. I was hired by Superintendent Glenn Hoffmann (who served from 1967-84), a charismatic and visionary man, as a first-year teacher for the then-Office of the County Superintendent of Schools.  As of last Wednesday evening, I am the newly elected board president of the same office, which is now the Santa Clara County Office of Education

It’s incredible—I have been writing this weekly column for SJI for two years this week. I went back to my first-ever post after my election to the County School Board on Nov. 4, 2008. Here’s my lead: “ California spends a lot of money on education—more than $65 billion from all funding sources in 2007-08 for K-12 education. Yet nearly 40 percent of Latino and African-American youth drop out of school prior to high school graduation… How disdainful is this in the land of the wealthiest and most educated people on the planet?”

I wrote that while attending the December 2008 California School Boards Association conference in San Diego. Perhaps I underestimated our communal stupidity.

“A rising tide lifts all boats” said Pres. Kennedy.  Will Governor-elect Jerry Brown be the leader that raises the tide for every California student from preschool to college commencement? After all, California—specifically Silicon Valley—was the economic engine that drove the nation’s economy just a few decades ago. Our declining high school graduation rate and achievement gap threaten our very economic and societal survival.

I was correctly quoted by Internal Affairs in the Sunday Merc as saying “we did look like clowns.” I probably should have said our Nov. 17 SCC Office of Education Board meeting was more like bad Kubuki theater, a little dance and a lot of misplaced drama.

Educational policy at times ticks like a metronome, however today the stakes are so vitally high for the efficacy of our country and its people that the pendulum can never swing back. We must be on a collective mission to increase rigor and relevance into the curriculum for each and every child, irrespective of the color of their skin.

In the classic Network, released 34 years ago, Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) is at his anchor desk as the cameras go live and he eloquently unleashes his famous neurotic break with reality: “I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot. I don’t want you to write to your congressman… All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad…I want you to get up right now and go to your window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, ‘I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!!’

Today I feel the same as Beale, not related to his abject disgust with the trajectory of the nation, crime in the streets, depression, dirty air, banks, guns and unemployment, although those complaints still exist today. No; for me it is about the state of affairs with public education

The odds that San Francisco Giants would become World Champions were about as good as those of Jerry Brown being once again elected Governor, Gavin Newsom as Lieutenant Governor, and Larry Aceves as Superintendent of Public Instruction. I proudly advocated through money and mouth in all four of these potentially historic events.

Now I want to turn my attention to building support for an anti-gay bullying policy, while strengthening all anti-bullying efforts in Santa Clara County.

More and more I believe that public education is in grave peril. My seat on the County Board Of Education gives me a perch to view the educational world like no other. I so badly want to feel hope that we can work together to turn the system around so all students can thrive with the skills and knowledge needed for success in the 21st century. However, I am running out of hope and I am not sure enough leaders are paying attention to the game-changing drama for which we are immersed.

On Sept. 21, in a SJI post I said, “…school boards as a systemic cause of school failure did not resonate with me.” My post on my pride in the SCCOE Board was very sincere four weeks ago, but rings hollow today. I sit at my computer ashamed at our collective behavior.  What follows is an excerpt of opening remarks I gave in public session on Oct. 13 prior to the vote on whether to undo the censure vote of August 25 against Member Mann and then revote.

The Pentagon in 2009 employed 27,000 people for recruitment, advertising, and public relations for all branches of the military, at a cost of $4.7 billion. No doubt, fulfilling military recruitment quotas is critical for our national security. But there is nothing more important to our homeland security than employing a quality teacher in every classroom.

The unionized education hourglass has a few minutes of sand left before its upper glass chamber loses its last speck. Race to the Top and the Charter School movement have quickened the pace of the draining granules of sand. Unions can flip the hourglass to gain some time for dialogue, but only if they heed some advice.

It feels like madness. China continues to fund our debt, launches major initiatives to improve their future—particularly in green technologies—and their education system is outsmarting us. Concurrently, with the rising drop-out rate and decreasing graduation rate of our 18 year olds, we are spending trillions of U.S. tax dollars nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 1970 the U.S. produced 30 percent of the world’s college graduates…today only 15 percent. This is madness. We need nation building here beginning with public education now.

I vividly remember being an invited guest at the San Jose Downtown Rotary meeting last year listening to the luncheon speaker Reed Hastings, Netflix’s founder, blaming the ills of American public education on local elected school boards. I believe there is much blame to go around as we have discussed on this site—parents, administrators, tenure, etc.—but school boards as a systemic cause of school failure did not resonate with me.

Should we be celebrating Silicon Valley’s small educational gains this week? Are these gains scalable? Are we beginning to turn the educational tide? My answer to all these questions is a resounding “maybe.”