First Board Meeting with new Superintendent Dr. Anne Staffieri
On July 20, 2023, the SDUHSD held its regularly scheduled Board Meeting.
The meeting was notable as it was the first meeting under the leadership of our new Superintendent, Dr. Anne Staffieri (pronounced “sta-FAIRY”). I am absolutely thrilled that our Board unanimously elected her as our new leader, and we all look forward to working with her in the years ahead.
The meeting agenda was relatively light, with a few items deferred until the August meeting to allow Superintendent Staffieri to be fully briefed on issues facing our District.
For example, potential revisions to certain Board Policies were deferred until August. One proposed change that I noted, and Trustee Anderson asked about concerned patriotic observances. As we know, we start the school day by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the American Flag. For some reason it was recommended that we change our policy so that the pledge is not required, and that we not ensure that we have an American Flag in each classroom. Not only is the recitation the right thing to do, California Ed Code 52720 states: In every public secondary school there shall be conducted daily appropriate patriotic exercises. The giving of the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America shall satisfy such requirement. Such patriotic exercises for secondary schools shall be conducted in accordance with the regulations which shall be adopted by the governing board of the district maintaining the secondary school.
You may recall that I requested that the subject of swimming pools be added to the agenda for this meeting so that our current Board can reaffirm the prior Board’s decision to build two swimming pools in our District, with the first one to be located at Torrey Pines High School. To give Superintendent Staffieri time to be more fully prepared, I agreed to defer this item to a future meeting. I remain convinced that we do need a formal vote of our Board to move forward, and the sooner the better. There are community members who are pressuring our Board to cancel the swimming pools, and I believe it is appropriate to recommit to this project. Substantial construction projects require our Facilities staff to devote countless hours and resources, so they hit the milestones necessary to keep projects on track. Recent uncertainty around the Board’s commitment has caused anxiety to our families and unneeded stress to staff. We need to reaffirm our Board’s commitment to building pools. In the meantime, District staff continues to work on pools at full steam.