[caption id="attachment_228" align="alignright" width="300" caption="David Wilcox, Ernest Koeppen and Neal Millard speak at the LCUSD candidates forum on Oct. 1"]
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Budget, charter school status and STEP were the buzz words at the La Cañada Unified School District Governing Board candidates forum on Thursday night. Three of the six candidates, challengers Neal Millard, David Wilcox and Ernest Koeppen, participated in the question and answer session which drew approximately three dozen La Cañadans to the La Cañada Flintridge Community Center.
Absent were incumbents Susan Boyd, Joel Petersen and Scott Tracy, but that didn't stop the competition from taking digs at the current board's performance.
Wilcox riled against the Student Teacher Enrichment Program, or STEP, suggesting that the acronym should stand for "Simply Terrible Education Program."
Millard, a lawyer and financier who serves on the board of the Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools, a top-performing charter management organization in Los Angeles, said if elected he would push the district to seek out creative sources of funding.
"We spent many, many hours working with foundations, working with government agencies to get money to the schools," Millard said of his work with Alliance. "This is important because I don't think La Cañada Unified has done that."
Koeppen said he feels that the district should be tougher on demanding high teacher performance. External evaluations, he said, can serve as an invaluable tool to determine which teachers are effective and which are falling short of the mark.
"It is highly important that our kids, and us, as parents, have some input," Koeppen said. "It is terribly important that we know what our kids think of the class."
A second candidates forum is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 6 at La Cañada High School. All six candidates have confirmed they will attend.
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