Doug Ferrell: Keeping a Unique Board Together

Having been on the Glendora Unified School Board for 12 years, Incumbent Doug Ferrell believes in the old adage when it comes to the current board members – If it ain’t broke why fix it? Ferrell and fellow incumbent Doris Blum have made no secret of the fact that they hope to keep the current board intact.

Ferrell, a long time Glendora resident and civil engineer, and his wife Nancy raised four children in Glendora Unified. Ferrell has been involved in various school organizations including PTA’s and the swim booster club even long before he joined the board.

Ferrell talks about running, re-election, dealing with a rollercoaster budget and why voters should stick to experience rather than what’s new.

Why are you running for re-election?

I had previously thought I wasn’t going to run. I had thought I had done what I needed to do and it was time for me to move on. Nothing has gotten better at the state, it just keeps getting worse. All my colleagues were saying this board works really well with each other. We know what we’re doing. Before I made my decision to run, we didn’t see anyone who was rising up in the district -- who served on PTA and knew what was going on with the district . Then I started getting nervous and hearing about someone running and we didn’t know who it was. We were at the FGUS dinner and that night people jammed up on my wife asking why I wasn’t running. Later walking to our car, Nancy turned to me and said, ‘I think you need to run one more time.’

Everyone here is knowledgeable, we know the problems. We have a very unique board. Everyone represents a different constituency. We have people who have kids in elementary school, we have people with kids in secondary, we have one person on the board who is excellent in data. Doris is an icon in Sacramento, everyone in education areas in Sacramento knows who Doris is. She’s very well connected.

We bring all of our specific talents to the table, but more importantly we bring experience.

What are some of the priority projects you believe the district will be tackling in the next few years?

District of Choice is going into play, the new block scheduling, the finish of the Measure G. With Measure G, we should have a million dollars left over. Where is that going to? There are still loose ends that need to be taken care of and I believe this board is better equipped to handle that task.

But I’ll boldly say straight up that this is my last time. I will not run again. If I’m elected, this will be my last term.

As the district faces potentially more cuts that could have drastic impacts, how would you address budget concerns?

The biggest problem we have is not just funding, it’s the lack of predictabiity of the funding. We have to do our budget and show solvency three years out. The problem you have is trying to nail down a target that’s always moving. Will there be a COLA-cost of living increase? Will there be some other item they say they’re going to credit back and take it back? We have the deadline in early spring where we have to notify teachers and give them pink slips, we hate doing that. But we have no choice. We have to be ready for that contingency

It’s so difficult to plan for this rollercoaster budget, but there’s no one on the board who’s radical. Everyone on the board understands the beast and knows how to work within the confines. We have contuity, which is the best thing you can have.

What do you think of District of Choice's current role in the district?

This board jumped onto District of Choice. We’ve been criticized for it somewhat. District of Choice only has efficacy if you’re a district people want to come to, which we are.

But District of Choice came on as enrollment continued to decline and we had to close Williams School, which no one wanted to do. But District of Choice wasn’t here then. When DOC was sunrised, we looked at it and said this is our saving grace to at least keep the schools full. That offers continuity for the teachers, it allows all of our staff – many of who live in Glendora – the opportunity to stay. At least our schools are staying full and at least take that unknown of how many students will come next year is taken out of the budget.

The majority of our District of Choice kids come from private schools because parents can’t afford to pay the private schools.

There is nothing worse than a closed school. We had a small window of time to jump on this and we did.

The thing I like about this board is we make the right decision, not the popular one. We have no political agenda. When you come to the board, you should check your politics at the door. Whether your Republican, Democrat, Tea Party, whatever, you have to do what’s best for the kids.

What would be the difference between yourself when you first ran to a new challenger to the board at this time?

The difference between Cory Ellenson and myself when I first joined the board is experience. I’m not talking about experience in the district, but if you never had a child, or a young person in your home struggling to do homework, or had child who was bullied, or gone to fundraisers for your child’s school or booster club, how would you know what parents are going through? My only reccommendation for Cory was to get some experience. You talk about spending people’s tax dollars, but I have real hard time with that if you haven’t paid any. How can you have any experience if you’ve been in academia your whole life?

When I first ran, I owned my first house and paid taxes for a lot of years. I had four kids in the district. I had been booster president and I flipped more pancakes than I care to remember.