The Ubiquitous They — Dana Dean

How long have you lived in Benicia?  Fourteen years. My cousin lived here with his family…and we came up a couple of times for various family functions and really thought it was lovely. When my daughter was of the age when we started to think about school systems, we looked at a variety of different areas and Benicia just rose to the top in terms of the economics of the decision, but most importantly, in terms of the schools.

What made you decide to run for school board?  When (my daughter) was little, and first started in school, I was able to serve on Parent Teacher Group Board (at ), and with all the various things at the school level: volunteering in classrooms and that kind of stuff. That was my way of giving back to the school community. There’s just no question that this school community, this school district, has really helped me and so many others in raising our children and in providing a safe environment in which they can grow up to be wonderful contributing members to our community. Once I opened my law firm, it got harder and harder to contribute in that way. I was also very involved in politics on a county level and to some extent on the state level, and it just sort of naturally came together that the best way for me to give back to the school district community was to do so on the board.

What was your biggest surprise once you joined the school board?  It wasn’t a surprise exactly, but the thing that took the most time to get used to was the budget process: it’s completely contrary to all the budgeting I’ve ever done in all the businesses I’ve ever run. You have to make your expenditure determinations in advance of knowing how much income you will have. And it’s heartbreaking, as was demonstrated this year, when we gave lay-off notices that hopefully we will be able to retract. It’s a very cruel system. I was surprised by the level of cruelty that our state laws require us to do in budgeting.

Besides the budget, what is the one thing that you would like to impact as a member of the school board? I would expand career technical education in the schools, in particular those things related to what I consider to be 21st century careers, and we are doing that with the .  I would do more. With Eco-Academy, I couldn’t be more thrilled about the direction that it’s going and what we are able to do. There’s hands-on technical learning that can happen, such as solar installations and insulation installations. Those are green careers. There’s also architecture and design. There are multiple layers for kids who are going to take a four-year college track and layers for kids who aren’t.