Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Candidates vie in for seats on college board

By Anne Gelhaus

While five candidates are vying for three seats on the board in one area of the West Valley-Mission Community College District, the incumbent in another area is running unopposed this November.

In Trustee Area 3, which covers the Campbell Union High School District, incumbents Phil Stokes and Joy Atkins are running for reelection. Challenging them for the three at-large seats are Norm Abrahams, Chris Constantin (who didn't return requests for interviews) and Frank Jewett.

Karin Dowdy, the third incumbent in that trustee area, is leaving the board to run for the 22nd District seat in the Assembly.

There is no contest for Brian Sloan's Trustee Area 2 seat, which means he'll still be the Santa Clara Unified High School District's representative to the board after the Nov. 5 elections.

Sloan, a controller for a courier company, was first elected to the board in 1992. He has an associate degree in liberal studies from Mission College and has studied early childhood education at West Valley College, and he served as a student trustee to the board.

Sloan, along with Dowdy and Assemblyman Jim Cunneen, is backing Jewett in his bid for a Trustee Area 3 seat. Jewett, a banker, says he could be another business resource for the district, in that he would foster ties with local corporations and try to establish endowment funds for Mission and West Valley colleges.

"I want to be a trustee who's known as an ambassador," Jewett adds. "We need to look at where we're going to be [financially] three, five and seven years out."

Jewett says he would consider serving on the board an extension of his community service work. He currently serves on San Jose's Community Development Block Grant Commission, the San Jose Medical Center Charitable Foundation and the board for NextDoor/Solutions to Domestic Violence.

Jewett favors term limits for school board trustees.

"After you've served for two terms," he says, "it's time for other people to get involved."

Ironically, incumbent Phil Stokes, who was first elected in 1983, says he was approached to run 13 years ago by trustees who wanted fresh faces on the board.

"They said they wanted someone who knew and valued education," says Stokes, an English teacher at De Anza College.

The district has made do with flat funding levels from the state for the last three years, but these monies are due to increase in the current fiscal year. If he's reelected, Stokes says he's looking forward to putting the increased funding to good use.

"State funding is much better this year," he adds. "We have additional money for deferred maintenance and high tech. This will allow us to catch up.

"We don't have a computer on every faculty member's desk yet," Stokes continues. "That's one of our goals."

Stokes says he hopes the additional funds will also allow for overdue raises for faculty and staff.

"It's a lot more comfortable having to decide where you're going to spend instead of where you're going to cut," he adds.

Challenger Abrahams, who served on the board of trustees from 1983-1992, questions some of the cuts that have been made.

"One thing I'm really interested in is finding out the real reason why the journalism program [at West Valley] was discontinued when so many people in the community said they wanted to keep it," Abrahams says.

Another thing Abrahams wants to keep an eye on is a 6.5-acre parcel on the Mission College campus, which was recently leased to real-estate developers. During his previous tenure on the board, Abrahams helped create the foundation that eventually worked out this lease agreement. A portion of the revenues generated will go toward completing the construction of the Mission campus.

"Since I was in on the beginning, I want to make sure that the funds are used the way they're mandated to be," Abrahams says. "We have to set up appropriate bookkeeping procedures to monitor these funds."

Incumbent Atkins agrees that overseeing this new revenue stream will be of primary concern to the board.

"Our first priority is to finish Mission but also to make sure that the aging West Valley campus has its needs met," Atkins says. "To balance the needs of the two campuses is the main objective."