The Ubiquitous They — Rosie Switzer

What was your background prior to your service on the BUSD board of trustees? I taught at three different elementary schools in Benicia (Mills, Robert Semple and Henderson)…primarily fourth and fifth grades. At that level you don’t really have to hold their hands through everything, and you can use humor and they sometimes get it. Those were really favorite years for me from when I was a student. I retired after 35 years in 2004.

What made you run for the BUSD board? My children were grown, I’d been married for 40 years, I felt like I could give my first priority to the school district. I was retired; I didn’t have to worry about earning money.  So that was really freeing as far as what I thought I could do, plus I always felt I had a good relationship with employees in the district. It really bugged me that no one on the school board nor in the superintendency (at that time) had taught or had been an educator.

As a former educator what do you think you bring to the board of trustees? I understand the reality besides the philosophy of what makes a good school, what makes a good teacher or how students learn. I can embrace the reality of how hard that is to make that happen. And I feel that I have a lot of empathy for kids, and for parents, having been one (in the district).

Besides the budget, what’s your biggest priority? We can always do things better. There’s always more efficiency or a different approach, or trying something a different way, or mixing people up a little bit to have them work on things from a different perspective. It seems to me that regardless of the financial thing, we can move forward. We don’t have to just throw up our hands in the air and give up and file bankruptcy or whatever.

Do you think that this ebb and flow of budget cuts and restoration is the new normal that members of the board of trustees have to be prepared to deal with?  They certainly do. Lots of people say that they want to be on the school board, but they don’t want to make the cuts. If you can’t make the tough decisions, if you’re not willing to make the tough decisions, and sometimes it’s pink slipping somebody that’s a friend of yours, then I don’t think you should run. It’s really not fair to the district to come in when there’s a crisis going on and then constantly vote 'no' on cuts because it’s against your philosophy. You may have the most wonderful philosophy in the world, but the job you’re supposed to be doing is to help the school district survive and it can’t do that based on how we would like to see the district be. You have to look at it from where it really is and how we can make it better.