Meet Julie Russell, one of the three candidates running for the two full term positions on the Coronado Unified School District’s school board. (The other two candidates for the two full term positions are Helen E. Anderson-Cruz and Maria V. Simon.)
Julie grew up in Northern and Central California, and after graduating from high school she attended the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut. Upon completion of the Coast Guard Academy, Julie received a bachelors of science degree as well as a commission in the United States Coast Guard as an ensign.
Julie’s first assignment as a junior officer was in Hawaii, where she had various operational, training, and internal consulting roles. “After seven years of serving active duty in various capacities (search and rescue, sea duty, training, and internal consulting), I decided to leave the service to attend business school,” she says.
After leaving the Coast Guard, Julie attended the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where she earned her graduate degree. From there she worked as a consultant at Deloitte.
Julie says that once she and her husband decided to start a family, “My focus was more on the family.” She and her husband were living in Santa Barbara at the time, and were relocated to the San Diego area. “I remembered from being an ensign on training assignment in San Diego for a few months that Coronado was a town I felt very comfortable with: similar background of people, small town, beach community, good proximity, quality of life basically,” she reflects. The Russells purchased a house in Coronado in 2002, and it is here where they have raised their son and daughter.
After attending Sacred Heart Parish School, both of Julie’s children are currently attending Coronado High School. While Julie’s husband’s job brought them to Japan for three years, Julie took on the role of teacher as they chose to home school. As a parent, she has background knowledge of various educational settings, including home school, private school, and public school. “I’m familiar with the different venues for education,” she remarks, adding, “what is similar with all three, and what are the challenges and the pros and cons.”
As far as her participation in community groups and organizations here in Coronado is concerned, Julie says she “actively participates as a parent in all of the parental groups, whether it’s PTG [parent teacher group] or sports teams, or even attending some of the wonderful educational programs with SAFE [Coronado SAFE].” Julie shares, “There were a couple of community events or concerns of the community that I’ve gotten involved with as well.”
Why do you want to be a member of the Coronado Unified School District School Board?
“Trying to balance responsibilities at home with also giving back to the community, I felt like the timing was right for me to run for a school board position. I’m fully vested in my kids. That’s where I am at this point in time, and given that that’s already my mindshare, my participation on the school board is a good parallel.”
“It is important to have parents [on the board] who are parents of current students. There’s still nothing like hearing the true anecdotal right from the front line.”
[At the most recent board meeting] “There was a student (he was the ASB President), there were one or two anecdotal things that he chatted about during discussions. That feedback gave validity [to the discussions]. You can have an administrator come up, and say, ‘Here’s what we’re doing . . .,’ but you really have to ask the final customer, ‘Hey, what was the impact?’ Again I think everybody in this community, the current school board as well as the administration and the teachers, everybody is trying to do the right thing and doing their job. However, it’s Management 101 to always reach down and talk to the end customer, who is really the student in this case. Just being there, being involved with school, that’s why I really wanted to join the board now versus in a couple years.”
What strengths do you possess that you feel will make you an effective school board member?
“I think I’m a person who can see the big picture, and really be focused on what the goal is, what the processes are, as opposed to getting preconceived biases or hooked emotionally. Being an honest, straight forward person, I try to look at everything objectively and focus on the process and outcomes. Having that kind of mentality, can help address any type of controversial or non-controversial issue that might come to the board. The more information you know, usually, the more you understand what the problem is, the better you can make an assessment.”
What changes, if any, are you hoping to bring about as a school board member?
“I’m always about process improvement. That’s kind of how I live my own life, and that’s how kind of my work experience has been. I also have a small property management company, and every day, every event, if it goes great or if it doesn’t, I say, ‘How can we make this better, or do we need to keep it the same?’ I would have that same approach to the school board.”
“My idea is to understand what decisions have been made in the past, understand what’s happening, and always to just have that critical eye of, ‘Can we do it better?’ and ‘Is it right to continue to be the way it is?’ Just because it’s always been done that way, doesn’t mean that it needs to be. But, on the other hand, saying, ‘We’re going to change everything,’ doesn’t work because obviously everything has a history; there’s a reason why things are the way they are.”
What changes, if any, do you feel need to be made to the way special education services are provided in the district?
“I need to get a little more educated with past decisions and current situations to be able to fully say. However, having said that, I do have a close relative who is in special education (not in Coronado, but in a different location). I understand that special education services is part of the board’s responsibility because every child needs to get the education that they need and deserve and that is required by law. I feel like this community needs to do that as well, if not even be an example.”
“I do have some personal understanding of that need as opposed to being completely outside of the experience. It’s easy to just think, ‘This is taking up resources’ or ‘Why is this the focus?’ It’s just one of those things where the closer you are to the needs and situation, the better you can understand it.”
“The other thing is that special education has a huge, wide range. It could be something where one needs a lot of resources and another doesn’t, but I think it’s something that should never be ignored. Statistically it’s always 8 to 12 percent (of the student population), and that number’s never going to change unless they start designing babies. There’s good to be celebrated from that as well, people’s diversity. I know California is trying to introduce more inclusion. I think that’s really great. Just having diversity within the classroom is a very normal thing that everyone can benefit from. When the district special ed. teacher chatted about this at the last board meeting, she alluded to a few of those benefits for all. So I think it’s just very incumbent upon this community to be at the top of its game with regards to addressing our students’ needs for all people involved.”
Tell me your thoughts about Common Core. In your opinion, what are the advantages and/or disadvantages of Common Core?
“I think the whole concept of Common Core is to get some accountability and some uniform in standards in schools. For any organization, measure is kind of difficult to figure out; not only what is the right measure, but how to properly measure. Numbers can easily be misread, and that’s why they have people pay a lot of money to be analysts. I think that it is definitely something that the government has tried to gets its arms around, from the federal government and the state and so forth. I think that there’s value in that.”
“Measures should always be constantly at the top of people’s mindsets on a personal level as well as administrative. I think every teacher should be thinking, ‘Hey! This year went well. How do I make next year even better?’ Just that constant, constant improvement is good. If everybody is doing that, from the student to the parent to the teacher to the administrator to the board, I think we’re headed in the right direction.”
Additional Information:
Julie is hosting a “Meet and Greet” on September 28, 2016 at 6:30 pm. On her website Julie states, “I would like to personally meet you and discuss any concerns you may have in relation to the school board. I would also like to hear your suggestions and questions!” To RSVP click here.
