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Gina Lord ShattuckGina Lord Shattuck lives in Lansing with her new husband, Town Councilman Bud Shattuck, and her two children Mairi and Stevie. Since she moved here four years ago she has been active in the school system, serving on numerous committees. She is the Employee Benefits Manager at TST-BOCES. “My job is to help people and to provide them with resources and information that they need where the benefits are concerned,” she says. “So I have what I think is a very unique perspective within the educational system because I work with teachers and support staff, and administrators. I’m not on either side, I’m there for everybody and my role is to hold that balance and to facilitate.”

Shattuck says she is running because she cares deeply about the district and it is an important way to serve. She came to the Star to talk about that and the many issues she wants to tackle if elected to the Board Of Education.

Lansing Star: Why are you running for the school board?

Gina Shattuck: I am running for the school board because I care very deeply about the district and about what happens in our schools, and I think it is an important way to serve. For all of the years I’ve been in the district I have served on various committees and task forces and still do sit on a number of them. This is the next step, a new and additional way to serve.

LS: What are your qualifications or attributes you think would make you a valuable member of the board?

GS: I think first and foremost is that because I’ve served on a variety of committees, I think that I have a very good broad knowledge of the district.  Of the buildings specifically, the strengths, the concerns, the issues that have been happening. So I think having that big picture is helpful. I have had kids in each of the buildings so I’ve done the whole first-hand elementary school piece, middle school, and now the high school. So even in the short time I’ve been here, we’ve got to hit all the buildings.

I think that knowledge and that understanding is helpful. I have background in educational policy, research, and school violence prevention. Again, I participate quite a bit at the schools, and I care. I’m a good listener and a team player and somebody who is solution oriented. Obviously issues need to be identified and addressed. But I think that focusing on what are the solutions is a much more dynamic and better route to go. I think that is an important quality to have in a leadership decision.

LS: What different point of view will you bring to the board, and what do you think the board currently does right, and what they currently don’t?

GS: I don’t think that I would say at this point that the current board doesn’t do something in particular the right way. I think they have been faced with some real challenges over the past few years and I think they have as individuals and as a board done the best that they could do to address particular issues while going on with the day-to-day things. So, that that being said, the good thing that I see at this point in time is that we’re in a place where we have had some consistent leadership for the past year. I believe that the majority of the sitting board members support that leadership in the sense that now we’re all here and let’s plan and move forward.

I think that’s a great thing that will be able to happen now. Time, energy, financial resources over the last few years have had to focus on recruiting, hiring.  It’s a very, very intensive, very emotionally draining for everybody involved. It’s time to move forward.

LS: What do you think the top challenges are that the school board will face over the next three years?

GS: You know the budget is always an issue. Obviously I think that’s the same in every district. The fact that we no longer will be able to use the reserves to cushion the tax levy brings us to a point where we have to stop and we have to think and we have to plan.

So I think that the biggest challenge will be to be creative, to think outside the box, and to figure out how do we maintain as much as we can all of the wonderful things that we love about our district, about our schools, and all of the things we can give to our children without breaking the backs of the taxpayers now.

There’s no more artificially making the budget work. We’re here, we’ve spent our savings. It’s that creativity going forward that we’re going to need.

LS: What would your top goals be as a school board member?

GS: I believe that planning is essential. Long term planning, strategic planning addressing all of the issues - facilities, and maintenance, and program, and budgets, all of that, it all ties together. I think that having a long range strategic plan is the way to see ourselves out of this. We need to know where we are going and then we need to map how to get there. You wouldn’t decided to drive to L.A. and get in the car right now without having thought in some way how you’re going to get there. And I think it’s the same for the district right now.

That being said, the district is on its way to doing that. A number of us spent a great deal of time last year in the long term strategic planning process and it was a wonderful process. It was very dynamic and through that process we did identify goals and prioritized those, and they cover all of the things that we’ve mentioned – program, student achievement, budgetary things, facility issues. And so what I would like is to see that process continued.

LS: Do you think it’s developed enough or has still a ways to go? My sense of it was that it was a work in progress.

GS: It’s always a work in progress because you never want your strategic plan to be stagnant. There’s a list -- I believe we came up with 11 goals and then we prioritized which three that we should or could address immediately. And then the next step, the next piece of that was that each building takes that and develops their own plan, because our very general goals at the district level translate differently with each building and each grade level. So buildings have developed their own plans.

And again, it’s a matter of going forward. The goals aren’t the be-all end-all and when we’ve crossed everything off the list we go we did it, we’re done. Not at all, because if something comes off the list, A) we need to maintain achieving that success and then B) we’ve got more to go. It should always be a growing and continuing process but if you don’t have the touchstones to say this is what we’ve decided that we wanted and this is what we needed to look at for the success of our students. If you don’t keep coming back to it, how do you know when you get there?

If you haven’t identified it as you are going along the way how do you know you’re keeping the goal in sight?

LS: Defining benchmarks and then measuring how you meet them?

GS: Exactly. And that was a piece of the strategic planning process. That was one of the things that we looked at. What are the measures that are currently in place for particular things? So for student achievement, what are the various measures? Then what are additional measures that may need to be developed because many or some of the goals that were identified are not as easily quantifiable.

LS: All the data warehousing that is being mandated by the state, do you have a position on that? Do you think that is useful in terms of benchmark or is it intrusive?

GS: You know data in and of itself is rather innocuous. Statistics are numbers, how we use them is a different story. So I think that it’s what we choose to do with that information. But we also need to keep in mind that state ed and the Federal Department of Education are also looking at those statistics.  And while many of us would love to say standardized testing doesn’t necessarily measure well, we don’t like the mandates, the reality is they are what they are.

So first and foremost as a district, as a board, as an administration, we need to meet the mandates and we need to give the numbers, we need to give the information because until or unless there is a legislative change we’re risking our financial backing and ethically we can’t do that to kids. It’s not the right thing to do.

So whether you agree with mandates or not, you got to do it until it changes and I encourage anybody who disagrees with the mandates for whatever reason to contact their legislators and work on that end of it, because until that changes the district can’t do anything differently.

But again, I think that the data warehouse isn’t a bad thing. We’ve always had to report to something. I think it’s a good way to hold schools accountable.

LS: It’s also a good tool for teachers isn’t it? I mean if you can set a benchmark and decide what the measure of your success is with the kids, then you can see how you are doing then come up with new ways to do better in areas where you want to do better.

GS: Yes. I think at the district level in terms of strategic planning and goal setting and in the classroom level it’s one of the tools that a teacher could use. Again the question is always how is it used, how is it interpreted? It’s not always the be-all end-all but I think within a context it can be important additional information.

LS: Do you feel that the district’s difficulty in keeping a permanent superintendent and other administrators has been a serious problem?

GS: Absolutely.

LS: What should school board members be doing to address that problem? With the recent hiring of a permanent elementary school principal the last slot has been filled. So it will be an entirely permanent administration but what should the school board be doing to keep that?

GS: Well, I think that it’s important for the school board to maintain a relationship with administrators so that there is a give and take so that there is a sharing of information and ideas that we can all come together as a piece of the puzzle along with faculty and staff and parents and community members to work together to do what’s best for our kids and our community.

So I think above everything else, maintaining that relationship.

LS: Some people have said that in the vacuum this school board has micromanaged administrative issues which was appropriate when the revolving door was revolving, but do you think that kind of baggage has made it difficult for new administrators to do what they do?

GS: I think that it is always a good thing to ask the questions, and so again I would always encourage and I would always want people, school board members, to ask the questions of the administrators and expect the answers. Now that’s not to say that we should expect them to have the answer off the top of their head. Sometimes the answer is ‘I’m not sure what the answer is, I’ll get back to you.’ And I think that is reasonable and I think that it’s reasonable that sometimes getting back to you may take a period of time because it’s not the only thing that that individual has to do. The rest of their professional life continues, and I would imagine in the wee small hours in the morning our administrators may have personal lives, although I see them at school and at school functions all the time, and all hours of the night the way that they give is just incredible.

LS: I want to ask about population projections a little bit. Do you think anyone really knows? The County is saying that there will be a lot of growth and we know the growth is going to be happening in Lansing, but the County is saying that it’s not going to be people with school age kids for the most part. If they are wrong, if there was an influx of families with school age kids, how would you see planning for it given the slowness of government? What could Lansing do?

GS: That’s a very good question. I don’t have the crystal ball more than anybody else does. Whoever has it is on to bigger and better things and making more money!

How do you plan? I think that’s a really, really good question. It has to be considered. Right now, it feels that we are in such a place that we have some real needs right now and we have more limited resources then we’ve had over the last few years. Now that the reserves are gone, our savings account is gone, the bill has come due. That being said, the question feels so immediate but the answer isn’t a quick answer that looking at the larger question of what you are saying.

LS: Let me go to kind of a related question. One of the things that struck me about the capital project was that I didn’t have the sense that our school board had a plan B. Given the tax environment or whatever you want to call it -- tax revolt, tax sentiments -- it seems to me part of the process as I sat through those committee meetings was identifying issues that needed to be addressed and then part of it was then suggesting solutions for addressing those.

Once it comes to a vote, it’s all or nothing. But nobody has said well if it’s nothing then how will we address those things?  Do you think the school board is proactive or reactive?

GS: I think that just in general over the last few years that I’ve been here, not just the board, but all of us have been reactive and that’s the reason that I think having a plan in place and having dynamic conversations on an ongoing basis is essential. And it seems that every year to get to this couple of months before the budget process and everything comes to a head and the response to the current vote becomes a reaction to last year’s process or experience. In that sense just kind of reactive in chasing the super ball as it bounces around the room.

LS: What lessons if any should the school board take from last year’s budget vote and from the failed capital project vote the beginning of this year?

GS: The lesson is that the majority of the community feels stretched to the limit in terms of their personal and family finances and while everybody wants our school district to be strong and we want to give our children as much as we can, we need to balance that. Again, that’s why the planning is important because once we identify and prioritize our goals the question about expenditures becomes does this help us to meet one of our goals? And if it doesn’t then maybe that expenditure is out or different.


The touchstones that help us to have a framework and to move forward in a planned phased forward moving process. It doesn’t happen overnight and it can’t happen overnight. We didn’t get here overnight. This was set in motion more than a year ago and I think that the folks who are currently administrators or school board members have been working hard to reign this in, to get a sense of what is going on, where do we go, and we need to work together. We’re all in this together.

It’s not us vs. them -- this is all about what do we do, a teachable moment, and I think as adults we have the responsibility to not hide this from the kids and not argue over who gets which penny. We’re all here, and how do we work together?

We’re coming upon hard times potentially and we know that it’s there. We’re not there, I don’t mean to sound like Henny Penny, the sky is not falling. But we can see that things need to change, and we need to work together to do that for the benefit of everybody.

LS: Is high school taxes a real or a perceived problem? School taxes certainly are the highest chunk that we pay. Last year I looked at the County figures and I was surprised that we weren’t really that out of line with our neighbors. To hear people talk you would think we are paying so much more. On the other hand there’s that real dollar number so maybe everybody’s paying too much. Is it real or perceived?

GS: I think that it’s both and if you’re talking about comparing tax rate with our surrounding communities, we may be in line with that. Of course the difference happens with how that tax rate translates to our wallets. So the tax rate based upon our assessments and that is what artificially inflates, well no it’s a real inflation. I think our assessments are artificially inflated but that’s a different soap box.

So on the one hand our tax rates look comparable, and they are. That’s a reality. The way that they affect people’s family budgets may be different, and usually is different, then our surrounding communities or surrounding school districts because their assessment is lower. So dollar for dollar we’re paying more in general. If you compare what Lansing pays with other rural school districts, we’re paying a lot more.

LS: You mean over New York State?

GS: Right, just in general because we are classified as a rural school district. Many of us don’t think about that. We think of ourselves as at least suburban but our school is not classified that way. So I think the answer to your question is a little bit both, but the perceived piece may be what other people or how formulas and concepts play out is the perceived piece of it but we live it and it’s real.

LS: Does Lansing school board try to do too much? I compared our school board agendas to those of the district I went to school in, a much larger district, and found ours are a lot longer.

GS: I think first and foremost, well I understand the how and why you came to the comparison piece, we cannot strictly compare from school board to school board for a couple of reasons.

One, because different states have different things that they require or allow school boards to do. Secondly, even within the same state the structure of the school district also has some bearing on what the school board can and has to do. In fact in our metropolitan areas, New York, Syracuse, Rochester, the urban school districts are legally structured differently than ours. So I think that if you were to compare the agendas of our school board with another, you would really have to be careful to make sure that you were comparing apples to apples.

So a similar rural district, and I mean similar in the sense in not only size, but resources, demographics. I also think from what I see on the agendas not that there is necessarily too much, I think that sometimes you’re right there may be three or four pages, but there is a lot of information on them.

For example when you get to the personnel items, there may be 20 sub-items, but they are voted on as a block so it’s information sharing and I like that. I like to see that. I like to be able to know and see which teachers are being granted tenure, to be able to see who is coming on board, to know which teachers are going to be doing some extra curricular pieces with our kids. I like to know that. So yes, the agendas look long sometimes but I don’t see that they are trying to take on too much. I think that is information sharing.

On the other hand, meetings can be long and laborious for those of us who sit in the audience and I’m quite certain for the people sitting around the table as well, not to mention the media. Because of things like going over and over the minutes from the previous meeting verbatim and trying to decide whether in fact to approve them. To me those are things that should be for time saving and just being considerate of other people, that review could happen ahead of time. I don’t necessarily feel the need to watch people go back and forth about which word was or was not said. I’m okay if you have that conversation before the meeting, outside of the meeting, as long as you bring what you want, what you’re going to approve at the meeting and then it’s public information.

LS: I think legally they have to approve it at the meeting, but they don’t have to come to consensus in the meeting.

GS: I think that if there are questions or concerns, why doesn’t that happen ahead of time when those documents are issued to the board members prior to walking into the room?

That’s not the only thing that hangs meetings up. Sometimes meetings get hung up, it’s just the way it is.

LS: What’s your position on class size? Is keeping the class size small more or less important than lowering expenses?

GS: My preference would be to have the smallest class size possible at the lowest price possible. Obviously, as would everybody. I think that class size is an important issue. Once again I don’t think that it’s the only thing that comes to bear on student achievement. So I don’t want to say I always absolutely agree that we should have very small classes because that equals higher levels of student achievement. That is simply not true. It’s one of the factors potentially. I think that to say we’ll never look at class sizes increasing by one or two children because we feel it will negatively effect student achievement and it doesn’t matter how much it costs -- I don’t think that is reasonable.

I also can tell you, and it’s an issue that I look at a lot, so while I certainly can’t say I’ve read all of the research I have been following it for over the years. Again, it’s one of the factors that can positively effect student achievement. The majority of the research bears out the fact that until you get to less than 15 students in a class there is not a really, really strong positive correlation to student achievement. Conversely, until you get to numbers in the mid-20’s there is not a consistently negative correlation, a strongly negative correlation to student achievement.

I think we have some flexibility in terms of where we could go with this. The interesting thing is if you set your limit at a class size of no more than 18 students and one child moves into that grade level, and you now have 19 students in one classroom and because we have policy that we can’t go over 18, now you have to have two sections of really small numbers. Is that reasonable? Is it beneficial enough that we put that much more burden on our taxpayer?

LS: And we don’t actually have that policy. The policy is that the school board will look at it, that it’s a red flag...

GS: Right. They are not policies per se. But again just looking at that framework side I think we have some flexibility and I think these are some things we need to look at to go forward.

LS: What you were saying was that we could use that as a standard or a limbo pole?

GS: Yes, I was just picking that number but again, the class size isn’t the only thing that effects student achievement so I also want to look at professional development, the resources we’re putting into the room both human and textbook, and technological. All of those things come together so it’s a bigger question than just how many kids should be in a class.

LS: Should the fifth grade be in the elementary school or the middle school?

GS: I think that’s one of the things that needs to be looked at in terms of our space and what we do with our facilities. You asked the question about trying to project population growth and/or decline, however it’s going to spike up or down and we have to think outside the box. I know that there are a number of people who feel strongly that the fifth grade stay in middle school and I understand it’s been like that for a number of years.  Making a change moves some people out of their comfort zone. But if that’s what’s the best use of our current space or if somehow utilizing space in the elementary school to meet another space need we have in the district, then let’s think about that. We just need to think outside the box.

One thing that I do know is that kids are flexible and whatever we as grownups decide they will be okay if we tell them it will be okay.

LS: As a small district, High School Principal Michelle Stone has said that there’s no fat to cut in the programs that we have now if we’re to keep our students competitive with those from larger schools. Do you feel that our programs are adequate, too much, not enough? Is this something that the school board members should be addressing relative to budget concerns?

GS: That’s a very complex question and a very good one. I don’t know whether there is ‘fat’ to be cut out of the budget or not simply because I am not privy to every single expenditure in the school district. I don’t know that I want or expect the school board to be privy to every single expenditure. I think that we have experienced and talented building administrators who we have to trust. We chose them, we put them in these positions because we believe they can make decisions about what happens in their buildings.

That being said, these are all questions to look at. Do we have too much? Well, giving things to our children is never too much. Give them the earth, the moon, and the sky. Yeah, there’s never such a thing as giving our kids too much opportunity.

On the other hand, we can only give them what we can afford to give them. And I always bring it back to our family budgets. So we need to be creative, we need to look at things, we need to think about how things have been done and how do we make it different. It may be reallocation of resources that needs to be done over a period of time.

LS: To maintain the programs in creative ways?

GS: Right.

LS: When the capital project failed the problems it was meant to address didn’t go away. We touched on this before, but specifically, what do you think the board should do next to address these issues?

GS: I think that it needs to continue to be looked at. The maintenance needs, the upgrades needs, the things that have to do with the safety and security of our children have not gone away. Safety and security is absolutely paramount. I think over the next few years until we can get a handle on what’s going on, looking at the wishes and wants may be something that has to be put on the back burner right now, but we definitely have to continue looking at what has to be done in terms of upgrades, repairs, and safety and security.

Now, while we are doing those things that have to be done, the wishes and wants aren’t all that much more on top of it, so as long as you’re bonding you may as well bond. So I think the conversation has to continue.

LS: What else would you want the voters to know about your candidacy that we haven't discussed?

GS: In the past I sat on the Cass Task Force creating a safe school program. I also serve on the district shared decision making team. I serve on the policy board committee of the teacher resource center.

I think being on each of those has given me a broad perspective, as well as participating in the district long range strategic planning process. So I have had the opportunity to interact with teachers, administrators, and other parents and community members in a number of venues and hear their thoughts and ideas and concerns. One thing that I am always thrilled by is the passion and the talent and the caring that comes around each of those tables in every single venue, but we’ve got in this community in terms of people and their various roles as teachers, parents, it is just incredible to me. The way that people really care about our kids is exciting to me.

So bringing that broad perspective because I’m able to hear that, not just I’m able to listen. So I have a good understanding and I think that a piece of one thing we didn’t talk about was continuing to improve communication in the district. At every single one of those committees all of those pieces, one of the things that we’ve talked about for years and all kinds of people coming together to talk about improving communication and again, just wonderful ideas people continuing to brainstorm. We made it better, we need to continue to make it better in whatever way we can so that’s something that I think it behooves the Board of Education to be aware of and continue to support those efforts because I think that communication is important.

LS: What are you looking forward to the most if you’re elected?

GS: The opportunity to be part of what I now will be a creative and exciting process of figuring out where we go from here. Again, I have sat in groups with these people. I know how creative they are. I know how passionate they are, and I believe that as a community and as a school district we can do this, we just need to do it together.

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