Mark F. Vondracek: Candidate Profile

Note: Answers provided have not been edited for grammar, misspellings or typos. In some instances, candidate claims that could not be immediately verified have been omitted. Jump to:BioKey IssuesQA Bio City: GurneeWebsite: http://vondracekforwoodland.blogspot.comOffice sought: Woodland Elementary D50Age: 42Family: Married, two children, both attend Woodland.Occupation: Physics TeacherEducation: Doctorate in Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1995 (also B.S. and M.S. degrees in physics, also from UIUC)Teacher certification from DePaul University, 1995Civic involvement: Warren Youth Baseball, Adventure GuidesElected offices held: Woodland District 50 School Board, 2007-2011Have you ever been arrested for or convicted of a crime? If yes, please explain: NoCandidate's Key Issues Key Issue 1 The district budget has been and will continue to be the primary issue. Because of delays in state payments (Woodland is still waiting for money from the last fiscal year), state cuts in education funding (nearly $1 million in transportation funds, for example), the end of federal stimulus funds, and a rather unique situation of having about two-thirds of Woodland's general state aid going to Prairie Crossing Charter School, our district still has a $4 million deficit despite last year's $4 million in budget reductions and revenue enhancements (such as increased fees). The next Board will need to continue to trim the budget, as state funding will continue to be flat or decrease for education for the next 2-5 years. In addition, although some parents and community members have brought up the notion of a referendum, I suspect this option is off the table for most, if not all, districts in the state after the income tax increase. People cannot afford more taxes.My goal is to help do everything possible to reach a balanced budget while keeping reductions from negatively impacting the classroom. This includes continuing an intergovernmental process Woodland helped begin this past fall by working with surrounding districts' Boards and superintendents to meet with, make suggestions,and lobby our state reps and senator, and in our case, looking into any options for changing the funding mechanism for Prairie Crossing, which is presently out of the Board's hands.Key Issue 2 I want to help lead the district into a new era of education. There is a catch-phrase politicians like to use, that being '21st Century Education.' Many people I know use this in regard to making sure children are learning how to use computers and popular types of software, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Internet browsers, and so on. But this means much more than people realize - it means we need to 'do school' differently than any adults are used to, including teachers. The skills our children need for their world are different than what their parents needed for our world. I envision classrooms where students are working collaboratively on projects that may involve open-ended problems, and require creative solutions. I want them communicating not only with a friend sitting in the next seat, but also putting work on a class web page or blog, and communicating with project partners at another school in Lake County or even another country. I envision students learning how to not just find information online, but reliable information. I also envision students working on not just one subject at a time, with no connections being shown between subjects, but rather in a multi- and inter-disciplinary approach. Within budgetary restrictions, this will require a carefully crafted, multi-year strategic plan. I'd like to see Woodland begin this process immediately, as we have built up the technology infrastructure the past three years to pursue a 21st Century education model.Key Issue 3 It is tempting to put the ever popular (and necessary) transparency issue in this list. While transparency is terribly important, this is something that is strived for and practiced every meeting we have. And in nearly four years, I have not yet met anyone who has not been able to gain access to any information they have looked for. We will continue to do this if I am re-elected, especially now tht we have just brought online a new web site capable of handling much more information.Instead, for Woodland, an issue that we have been reluctant to look at seriously because of the recession and budget crisis in recent years is what to do with our South Campus, that being our Primary School and Elementary Schools. These are older buildings, there have been continuous space issues for students and programs, a lack of storage space, repair work every summer, no air conditioning, and so on. I think the next Board needs to look at this seriously and work with the community to decide a longer-term plan. Do we keep what we have and make capital investments to improve the existing structures, or do we begin the process of working to build new schools?Questions Answers Do you have concerns about staffing being too high considering fewer children are in the system? Explain your answer.In an ideal world with unlimited funding, we would be able to staff schools so that classes would have on order of 15-20 students. As a teacher, this is a size that works very well. Realistically, however, teachers are used to working with class sizes in a range of 20-30 in most districts. Having said that, and having worked with classes of 30 and higher, there is certainly a decline in academic achievement as class size gets too high, as well as increases in disciplinary issues. As long as I am on the Board, we will not get to that point where we see 30 or more students.We have been constantly concerned with this question the past two years. As our enrollment has been and continues to decrease, and with our goals of about 24-27 students per class (average), we have already had reductions in force of 46 teachers and staff for the current fiscal year (FY11). We presently are looking at as many as thirty more positions for FY12, where reductions in staff would still result in no increases in class sizes. I have the benefit of understanding what a teacher faces in a classroom with X number of students, and I am determined to ensure we do not get our class sizes higher than what both experience and research suggest promotes high levels of learning and achievement...this is the bottom line. With our budget shortfalls, we need to look at staffing each year and make adjustments to reduce costs while not affecting classroom experiences for children.How should the district approach the next teachers union contract talks? Would you be willing to pursue salary cuts or freezes? Explain your answer.I honestly do not feel I can share details of any strategy we have already laid out since negotiations are imminent (and these are subject to closed session rules). I will generally say I am willing to pursue salary freezes for the union. But this issue gets complicated, because it is not just the salary schedule that one can talk about, it also includes an enormous cost to the district in terms of benefits (such as health insurance). While we have already frozen top administrative salaries and benefits for two years, and will almost certainly do so again with the next Board later in the year, there are many models that will likely come up in negotiations. I would be open to something along the lines of a small increase, say step or less, but if there are concessions on health benefits that lead to a cost-neutral or cost savings outcome, that would be good. Because health insurance costs can increase 5-10% per year, but with our CPI driven tax cap floating at 0.1%, 2.7%, and 1.5% the past three years, we cannot sustain what the Board presently pays for the overall package. We need union help with this, if we want to maintain the staffing numbers to allow us to keep class sizes from rising.Woodland has been cutting its budget and coming up with ideas for more revenue in recent years. What other ideas do you have for strengthening finances?One idea I'd like to continue pursuing is intergovernmental agreements to share costs whenever and wherever possible. We have been able to share diesel costs with Warren Township High School, for instance. We may be able to share expenses on common services like snow plowing and removal with other neighboring governmental entities. We could also create a system where we lend out equipment when a neighboring district needs something they do not have, but we do, and vice versa, to save the expense of buying or renting that equipment. This could be pursued not only with other school districts, but also with the park district, Warren Township, the library, village and city governments, and so on. We also, when applicable, share lawyer fees for common cases.I am open to approaching local businesses and industry for donations, whether monetary, equipment, or employees volunteering time in the schools. In fact, expanding the role of volunteers in classrooms, on playgrounds, in hallways or gymnasiums during assemblies, in tutoring and mentoring for at-risk children, and so on, is something worth pursuing with the next Board. All of this helps in various ways with finances.I'd like to investigate in more detail alternative energy sources, and what those would do to the budget in both the near-term and long-term. For instance, every time I drive past the Middle School, with the enormous angled rooftops facing south, I can see solar panels. I would like the administration to look at any grant RFPs that develop for something like that. In the end, we need to continuously look at budget lines of every school and department to look for costs we can trim or eliminate, as well as survey staff for suggestions of waste they see in the buildings.A Daily Herald analysis found District 50 spent $1,800 a year on car allowances for administrative employees. Do you support continuing that expenditure? Why or why not?This is a feature of some administrative contracts, and it is something that needs to, at a minimum, be reviewed by the next Board to see if the cost matches the actual travel. I do not support continuing an allowance for local travel between buildings.Are current class sizes too large? If so, how would you address the issue, including funding the solution?Our class size averages are not too large. I say this based on my own experience as a teacher, as well as based on achievement data. A number of grade levels, after the last ISAT exams last spring, had record high scores, for instance. Our use of the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP)testing continues to show student growth academically that, on average, is higher than the national average. But there is something to consider here that I find more important than simple class size averages. If you have excellent teachers, you will find classes in the high 20s outperforming classes of 20 or less that have ineffective teachers. We can maintain excellence with our present class sizes if we ensure teachers have what they need to do their jobs, and can grow professionally. We have already cut into staff development in the budget, and the staff has reacted to this by using technology to watch webinars or do online training. If small numbers of staff go to a workshop, they come back and share and teach their colleagues. I will continue to encourage this, and continue to promote our policy of shared decision making to be sure we hear the staff's concerns. A good teacher in a classroom trumps an awful lot of 'noise' that may exist in a school.