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Raymond White is running for a seat on the Mountain View Whisman school board to bring awareness to objections he has to district policies meant to protect transgender students, as well as to advocate for greater fiscal oversight and improved academic performance.
White told the Voice that what he believes separates himself from other candidates is that he doesn’t think the school district “should promise to keep secrets from parents” and opposes having boys “automatically entered in girls’ sports if they say, ‘I’m a girl.'”
Mountain View Whisman’s nondiscrimination policy prohibits disclosing a student’s gender identity without their consent, unless someone has a “legitimate need” for the information. It also provides that students can participate in sports that are consistent with their gender identity.
White objects to these policies and believes that greater numbers of people identifying as transgender is part of a “social contagion.” A paper he wrote arguing this point is posted on the Santa Clara County chapter of Moms for Liberty’s website.
“It’s coming from social media, TikTok and the schools are being very promotional,” White told the Voice. “All of this is very much one-sided. It’s a disorientation from biological reality.”
A resident of the Monta Loma neighborhood of Mountain View and retired college biology instructor, White said that his top three priorities would be fiscal stability, implementing phonics instruction and drawing attention to the district keeping secrets from parents.
The district’s reading and math scores are a top concern, White said. To increase academic performance, White supports expanding the teaching of phonics to help kids learn to read. The district adopted a new elementary school English curriculum this year that includes explicit phonics instruction and has created an early literacy team that’s focused on providing additional support at the schools with the highest rates of students struggling to read. White wants to see more students receive specialized support.
When it comes to math, White is concerned about the state implementing curriculum that he believes adds “social justice stories” to math classes and convinces kids that “there are evil oppressors out there.” He wants the district to resist this.
The school district has experienced long-standing gaps in academic achievement among student groups, including by race and family income. Asked how the district should address these disparities, White objected to considering race as a factor, and instead said the issue was about “modifying culture” as well as people’s economic circumstances. He went on to say that he believed lower academic performance among Latino students in the school district was tied to cultural differences.
“Different cultural values need to be adopted,” White said. “It might help to advance the idea that we’re all Americans, rather than that we are different ethnic groups.”
White pointed to discipline as another way to improve academic performance. While caveating that he didn’t have evidence that low-income students were more disruptive, White raised concern about what he said was the decreasing ability for schools to discipline students over the past 50 years.
White also praised charter schools as being able to innovate and decrease gaps in academic achievement.
When asked how he would address increasing rates of chronic absenteeism since the pandemic, White suggested changing no-divorce laws. While acknowledging that this wasn’t within the school district’s purview, White said he supported changing the law so that couples are encouraged to stay together and more students live in two-parent homes. Ending no-fault divorce has gained traction among some conservatives in recent months.
When it comes to Mountain View Whisman’s budget, White said that the district had added a lot of administrators and managers over the past several years. He suggested that one way to save money would be to give these upper level employees smaller raises than teachers receive. If budget cuts become necessary, White said he would want to make cuts to district administration first.
White is opposed to the parcel tax measure that the school district has put on the November ballot. The district asking for money presents an opportunity for people to have concerns to exert some leverage, White said.
He pointed to the district’s use of its 2020 bond measure to pay to install fencing around campuses, as an example of spending that proved controversial with the community. In the Monta Loma neighborhood where White lives, residents pushed back particularly strongly and ended up getting a more limited area fenced off.
When it comes to the district’s negotiations with the city of Mountain View in recent months over splitting money from the Shoreline special tax district, White was concerned about signing the three-year agreement that’s on the table, because he believed it could take pressure off the city to negotiate.
The school board ended up approving the three-year agreement at an Oct. 17 meeting, which was after White spoke with the Voice in September.
Asked for his assessment of the effectiveness of the superintendent and other district leaders, White expressed concerns with what he described as the superintendent taking a hands-off approach to overseeing the district’s equity initiatives. At the same time, he said he’s found the superintendent to be forthcoming when he’s asked questions and said he was skeptical the district would find a better leader.
On a Voice questionnaire, White said that he supported the school board’s June decision to give the superintendent a multi-year contract extension and raises.
