Top three reasons I was running for the School Board:

1.  To enhance safety, excellence and accountability in our district. I will use my backgound in education as a heart researcher and programmer for UCLA to promote science and math and increase our use of the web.

2. I believe the economic decision two years ago to close two schools did not benefit the district.  It resulted in one charter and now we have a second charter starting this year and there are talks of a third.  I will bring back dialogue and support for those and all schools as well as for those students who are homeschooled or private schooled.
 
3.  I believe we need to change the complicated high school tracks for college and vocational bound students so that it becomes the envy of every other district in California. 

2008 Scott Lamp Teacher's Union Interview Responses.pdf
Unified Association of Conejo Teachers (UACT) Questionaire given to all candidates when I ran for school board in 2008
2008 Scott Lamp Responses to Mike Dunn's Questions.pdf
Questionaire given to all candidates when I ran for school board in 2008.

The three top things I will accomplish if elected:

1.   Bring back dialogue and support for our two charter schools and all schools considering converting to charter.    I will vote to help make the current charter schools welcomed back into the district and instill an enviroment where parents have a voice in their schools so that they don't have to resort to converting their schools to a charter.  The decision to close University and Meadows Elementary schools two years ago continues to divide our community.  Closing schools will not save us money in the long run and it may actually end up costing us more money.  The district does not get money for educating charter school students.  I will vote to keep neighborhood elementary schools open.
2.   Unify our district by reaching out to the city council, teachers, parents, students, community members, and businesses.  Give these interested parties more access to information and resources.  Find ways of collecting information about their needs and wants.  I will strive to make it safer for children to walk to school, by increasing school guards and increasing police patrols.  I will work with parents to help watch our neighborhoods while children are going to and from school.  I will rid our schools of gangs, and enlist the help of parents and teachers to monitor our children between classes so that they are no longer just a face in the crowd, but someone who knows them.  We need to raise the bar at all of our schools.  We live in area that has the potential to be the best school district in the state.  Let's start to strive for that.  Hold all parties accountable to these high standards. Collect and disseminate more data so that interested parties gain insight into our district challenges; together we can find solutions.   
3.   Raise up our lower performing schools and stop the exodus of homeschooled and private schooled students.  We need both short term and long term strategies to make this district better by reaching out to the parents and local school needs. We need to bring up our middle and high schools so that we stop the exodus of students to other districts and local private schools.  Our schools need to be better at educating our children, so the parents who want to send their children to private schools are doing so for reasons that are not academic.  We should be judging our district, not by the best that we have, but by the poorest performing schools. We must raise these poorer performing schools up to the current level of our highest performing school.  Work on creating smaller, financially-stable schools that have logical tracks for all students.  We need to think of all the children.  I'm sure most of us want our children to attend college, but not all children will and not all want to do so at this stage in their life.  We need to have college-bound tracks that challenge students with more AP and Honors courses, eliminate the confusion and repair the reputation of college prep classes and have non-college bound tracks that give students the qualifications to attend a college if they choose to later, and also give them the vocational skills they need now.