Serving Through Crisis: Dianne Jones on COVID, Budgets, and Board Leadership

Dianne Jones, the Vice President of Fremont’s Board of Education, has held her position for seven years. She recently had an interview with the YNO, where she talked about the main issues occurring in Fremont. She explained how to get involved as a community member, the Board’s main focus, as well as other important subjects impacting our city.

Work as a Board Member

Over the years, she has discussed how the most fulfilling experiences are when she gets to interact with students by working with them in events like career days. By interacting with students, she’s been able to make increasingly more informed decisions as a board of education member. However, serving for seven years has come with difficulties and pushbacks. Only a year after being elected, COVID hit, which put her into an extremely unusual experience, causing her to make uncommon decisions. She talked about how any decision that was made caused anger and division in the community, as there was no decision that would satisfy everyone and their needs. An example of this was mask mandates and the community’s opinions on them. The CDC writes that masks offer “an extra layer of protection from respiratory illness.” Despite this, the National Institute for Health conducted a study and stated that 16% of individuals who did not wear masks had a stronger negative attitude towards masks (National Institute for Health). During this time, it became apparent that Jones faced these views as an elected official.

Budget

On top of that, Jones talked about how budget reductions have been impacting schools negatively since they lead to larger class sizes. The issues with larger class sizes are tremendous, as the National Education Association mentions teachers are “overworked and exhausted” and it’s “impossible to meet [students’] individual needs” (NEA). The board of education is currently battling this problem as the student-to-teacher ratio is 24:1, while the state average is 20:1 (US News).

Measure E

On the topic of physical aspects of schools, Jones spoke about Measure E, which was used primarily to renovate middle schools, and Measure M, which is being used primarily to renovate high schools. The district’s total facilities need was $2.6 billion. On top of that, tariffs being placed at the federal level are causing these projects to be more expensive, which has made the Board of Education’s work more difficult. She also speaks about how the money is distributed from top priority to least, with Irvington High School being a top priority due to the numerous physical issues it has. Jones also talked about her vote against adding Hindi as a pilot program due to the achievement gap. The newspaper company, Education Week, defines this as the differences in academic performance between students. Irvington currently offers five world languages, while other schools offer only two. This would increase the achievement gap because these schools do not have the same opportunities as other schools, like Irvington. Jones stresses that she is in favor of Hindi being a world language; however, she would have liked to see it being added in schools with fewer world languages.

Mental Health

On the topic of mental health, she states that it is “absolutely” still a priority for FUSD, but the district is running into a few issues. For example, mental health funding increased after COVID for new counselors, but all of the funds have been used up; however, she strongly emphasized the importance of it and how the district is still working towards fixing it as much as possible.

Hypotheticals

Before ending the interview, she answered a few hypothetical questions to understand more about her priorities as well as the Board’s. First, if FUSD had a $10 million budget increase, she would allocate it by bringing back health benefits for employees. On top of that, she would prioritize bus service since the only ones that are continuing are the legally mandated services. Next, we asked her about the trade-offs she has had to weigh between competing priorities, to which she explained that no budget cuts are beneficial; it’s more about which one is less poor. To understand the impacts better, she encourages hearing more opinions, especially from the families who are directly affected.