Candidate name: Tommy Le

Place of residence: Silver Spring

Date of birth: June 15, 1942

Place of birth: South Vietnam

Current occupation: Engineer

Education: B.S., M.S.⁄Ph.D., Engineering Program

Community associations, involvement: Instructor, Department of Defense Language School; teacher, Chattanooga (Tenn.) Area Vocational School, 1972-1980; former real estate agent; instructor, engineering technology, Montgomery College, 1983-1987; volunteer soccer coach, MSI, 1985-1990; PTA at children's schools, 1981-1993; member, community liaison, Montgomery County Public Schools, 1987-1992; chairman, cultural minority community liaison, MCPS, 1988-1997; member, MCPS and Montgomery College's Committee on Education Technology, Vocational and Technical Education Advisory Committee,1992-1997; Upcounty Citizen Advisory Board, 1994-1997; vice chairman, Board of Electrical Examiners, 1999-2005; other school-related committees, etc.

Professional associations: Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers Inc.; Maryland Society of Professional Engineers Order of the Engineers

Family: Two adult children

Campaign office address and telephone: None

Web site: www.TommyLe4Boe.org

Link to state Board of Elections campaign finance database

(1) to provide a more critical oversight of the School Superintendent's performance and MCPS system operational activities in educating our children. We want MCPS to provide our teachers with adequate tool and more training opportunities so that they can teach and prepare our children with an adequate knowledge to meet future college requirements and⁄ or to have adequate skills for the world of works. We want our School Principals be delegated with more authority in matters related to the operation of their own schools, including the hiring and training of teachers, and budget ⁄ needs recommendations for improvement of their students' learning and performance,

(2) to hold MCPS more fiscally accountable in this time of economic uncertainty. The future school funding will be tight and thus it is more critical that no tax monies will not be miss-spent. As county citizens who are interested in the best education for our children, we would want MCPS to continue its role in maintaining our public schools academically excellent in reading, writing, math, science, and information technology. to provide the need for our diverse student's population who want to seek a job right after completion of HS level, we will want MCPS to expand its vocational training curriculum and to improve its early childhood education activities and programs.

(3) to hold MCPS accountable in improving our children's character education by including in the elementary school curriculum an added civic, characters learning, and moral value in their daily's reading and writing programs. This would help in making our children the nation's best citizens and great leaders of the future.

How would you rate the performance of the current school board: excellent, good, fair or poor? Why?

Poor. The School board members were elected to reflect and carry out the want and will of the county population. The current school board has often acted in unison as a rubber stamp for the school superintendent. There is no transparency of the Board activities, there were no Board agenda, and there were no Board directions [a contract or list of parental priorities] issued ahead of each annual school term to the School Superintendent.

How would you rate the job performance of Superintendent Jerry Weast: excellent, good, fair or poor? Why?

Fair. The Superintendent has tried his best to steer the school direction the best he can, because the sitting School Board members have no vision for our children future, a future full of new technological challenges and innovations that require knowledge and character from our children. The current board members, for some, are using the Board Chair to launch a new political career; and thus have no clear guidance to the School Superintendent.

Is the county funding for schools too much, about right or too little? If too little, where would you find additional money?

It would be hard for me to quantify if the current level of funding for the school operating budget is excessive, about right, or too little, however, I recognize that the school operating budget has been seen and described using all of these above terms. The school operating budget seems to be an old elephant, and it depends on which side of the elephant are you looking at. I do know, and I am sure that we all do, and that is the school operating budget is almost half of the entire county operating budget on a yearly basis. I do not know where or how the school money is distributed, however, the remain half of the money that the county has collected is for lot of things that will need to be addressed by the County Executive and the County Council: the roads, public libraries, county parks and recreation facilities for our young and elderly populations, health care for the less fortunate and our poor, the pruning of our street trees and our parks, the maintenance of our public facilities, etc.

So if elected to the Board of Education, I will look at how the money had been dispensed in the past and will discuss what I have found with the stake-holders and go from there. I see, for examples: (1) currently, transportation-buses running full routes on half days when they could take a full day off instead and save a day of gas. With the buses, on half days all the buses make all the runs, even though the kids are only in class 3 hours. This is over 1,500 buses on the roads. If instead of doing training on two half days, they just did it in one full day, no buses would need to run that day. The kids would have a full day off and the teachers would have a full day of training. Parents hate the half days anyway. (2) If MCPS works with parents instead of against them there would be a saving in how much of budget goes to handle litigations. MCPS had spent, for example, $800,000 in legal bills for a six-month period of 2003, which is symptomatic of a bureaucracy out of control. MCPS needs to start following its own published procedures⁄ policies and be responsive to inquiries from parents. (3) The MCPS TVs that feature people who are paid by MCPS to go on these TV channels and talk in the different languages with no ones would be listening in...These slotted time are better for rerunning of homework questions and other student-related activities. And beside, if people are willing to live as US citizens, they should be learning our English language. I understand that the Bush administration is now guarding both our north and south borders to making sue that incoming people are English flounced and are ready to work.

Do you think the current system for renovating schools is adequate, or does it needs changing?

Yes

How well are the county's high school consortia working to raise student achievement?

I do not have the data to make a judgment. But as long as the data is collected and trended, it should be made available to the public and corrective measures be implemented.

How well is the middle school consortium working to raise student achievement?

I do not have the data to make a judgment. But as long as the data is collected and trended, it should be made available to the public and corrective measures be implemented.

Are too many students being pushed into advanced placement and honors classes without proper preparation?

Yes, I think that the choice on enrolling into advanced placement and honors classes should be left to the students with input from their parents and guardians. The pushing could be a result of the School Superintendent to prematurely placing the students in more challenging situations than the students themselves can handle. This also is a consequence of the Leave No Child Behind Act.

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA) does have good points and bad points. The letters of the ACT contain requirements with good intention. It's the implementation of the ACT that has bought inequity and impact to the various stake-holders. For examples, the Federal government has required higher and stricter standards but at the same time has given the states and local districts very little money to pay for the required changes. For the children of economic disadvantage families and⁄or lack of English knowledge, these students are falling further behind. For the teachers, there are more administrative and paper work to document the student progress and thus less time to teach the children; at the same tine the NCLBA also requires the teachers to have better skills with no time for training and self-improvement. This has caused teachers burn-out and changed their careers. For the high school students, they are required to have taken algebra for graduation, this requirement has left many school districts unprepared for, and the rush for teaching more content-diluted algebra courses so more students can pass. This has required many colleges to provide remedial courses in sciences and math for newly high school graduates to catch up with their counter parts from other parts of the country. As many other parents, I would like to advocate that each local school district to plan their own requirements in accordance with their own state education requirements and that the federal government to provide more funding to states and school districts with large population of deprived economy and low income, as well as, areas with high non-English speaking children.

Should the school system's health curriculum include discussions of homosexuality and demonstrations of contraception use?

No, the public tax money is use to provide the student with education of sciences, math, English and other academic-related subjects. The discussions of homosexuality and demonstrations of contraception use are part of parental guidance and family value retention responsibility and should be no part of our public school curriculum.

What do you think about the board's relationship with the community?

The board should be sensitive to the want and will of our community. Community inputs should be gathered and fed in to the school improvement programs.

Does the County Council have too much, too little or not enough oversight of the school system?

The County Council should not have any oversight of the school system, but should have more cross communications with the elected school board members to compare notes regarding how the school system should take action to implement the want and will of our citizens and the need for their children. The responsibility of the Council members is too ensure that the yearly financial need is plentifully available to help the school board and the schools system to keep MCPS the best run in the country.

What should the school system do to improve performance by minority students?

To raise expectation to both students and parents and make this known to all stakeholders from the outset. There are too much emphasis on the different between the student populations. Except for students with disabilities, all students should have the same expectation. The so-called minority students are doing poor is because traditionally they have been told they will do poor. This is an area where the county council should be involved in; for students that are from the economic poor or low income, subsistence from the county government to families of these students should be more substantially. Perhaps, there should be a similar “boys⁄ girls town“ established to house these students while they are attending MCPS, and along this road, these students should be guided to vocational type of curriculum so that they can support themselves after their public school days. When these students are firmly footed with a job, they can then pursue their higher education at their own pace.

Do you think the school system is doing enough to meet the needs of special education students?

No. The schools system should work hand-in-hand with families of these students and attend to their needs in an equitable way.

Are the schools safe for students and teachers? If not, what should be done?

The school system should work more closely with our county sheriff department and their local law enforcement authorities. Each school principal should also formulate local security-minded groups that will involve parents and their students and utilize teachers as security-teachers of the day or the week. These so-called security teachers of the day shall work with their upper class students at each school to form a school watch group or platoon and these students be recognized and credited with community service hours as part of their graduation requirements. All these activities should be under the watchful eyes of the assigned police officer assigned to each school cluster.