Name: John Gear

Home address: NE Salem

Age (If your age will change before the May 17 election, please add
your birthdate):

School board zone: Zone 2

Phone numbers
Work: 503-339-7787
Home: unlisted
Cell: unlisted

PART I: BACKGROUND INFORMATION

How the public can reach your campaign (this is for publication):
Mail address: 161 High St SE, Suite 208B, Salem OR 97301

E-mail address: John@JohnGearLaw.com

Web site URL:

Phone:

Fax:

Current occupation/employer (if any): Attorney, John Gear Law

Office, LLC

Previous occupations/employers:
 See candidate filing stmt (Stephanie Knowlton has it)

Colleges attended, degree, graduation date:

See candidate filing stmt (Stephanie Knowlton has it)

High schools attended, graduation date:

See candidate filing stmt (Stephanie Knowlton has it)

Family: Married 27 years.

How long have you lived in the Salem-Keizer School District? Since
January 31, 2007.

If you have children, what public and private schools did they
attend, or are they attending? (If they attend/attended Salem-Keizer
schools, please list any in-district transfers and when they occurred.)
N/a

Have you ever been convicted of a crime, been disciplined by a

professional licensing board/organization or had an ethics violation
filed against you? If so, please give the details.

No

Have you ever filed for bankruptcy, been delinquent on your taxes
or other major accounts, or been sued personally or professionally?
If so, please give the details.

My wife and I settled a suit brought against us in small

claims court in Clark County, Washington, in 2000 over a dispute
with the buyer of our home.
Salem-Keizer School District committees, activities or organizations
you are or have been involved in (Please include approximate years --
such as, “2008-present” -- for this question and the following ones):

None.

Other experience in public and/or private education (please be

specific):

Instructor, US Navy Nuclear Power Training Unit, Ballston Spa

NY, 1979-1980 and 1985-1986. Worked in Quality Assurance training
for Westinghouse Hanford Company, 1989-1990. Volunteered with
Richland Schools Math Standards Panel.
Adjunct faculty, University of Phoenix; taught courses in graduate
and undergraduate statistics and operations management, 1998-2000.
Created and led an Energy Law elective seminar course, Thomas M.
Cooley Law School.

Educational organizations you are, or have been, involved in and

any offices held: none

Please list all public offices to which you’ve been elected, and when:
none

Please list any unsuccessful candidacies for public office, and when:
Ran for Clark County Public Utility District #1 commissioner seat,
1996; ran for Salem-Keizer Transit District board 2009.

Civic, community and cultural organizations you are, or have been,

involved in and any offices held (include service clubs, chamber of
commerce, church/religious organizations, neighborhood associations,
non-profits, unions, etc.):

Board of Directors memberships: Northeast Neighborhood (NEN);

Vancouver Friends of the Library; Friends of Lansing Libraries; Friends
of Salem Public Library; LWV of Clark County; Lansing (MI) ACLU
Chapter director; President and state board representative, SW
Washington ACLU; recently rejoined LWV (Marion Polk LWV).

What is the largest budget you have handled?

$7M (as a board member for organization)

Who encouraged you to run for the school board? Who are your
major supporters (individuals, groups, etc.)?

No one.

How much will your campaign cost?

No spending planned.

If you are elected, how many hours a week do you expect to spend
on Salem-Keizer School District business?

10-20

How many school board meetings have you attended in the past
year?
One (Budget Committee @ McKay).

How many have you watched on CCTV?

None.

What social-media applications do you regularly use?

Linked-In.

Please help us understand your connections to the school district. In

responding to the following questions, if your answer is “yes” please
give complete details.
• Have you ever worked for the Salem-Keizer School District or any
other district? NO

• Have you, or any company or organization in which you were

involved, been a supplier or contractor for the Salem-Keizer district?
NO

• Have any of your family members worked for the school district?
NO

• Have you ever worked in the same company or agency with any
current district administrator and/or member of the central staff? NO

• Other than serving on the school board or district committees, do you

have any personal, business or professional relationship with any
current district administrator and/or member of the central staff? NO

PART II: EDUCATION ISSUES. Please limit your response for

each question to about 75 words.

1. Why are you running for the Salem-Keizer School Board?

I want to help provide leadership for the period of extended

economic stress and uncertainty that will dominate the school career of
today’s preschoolers. We must ask whether our centuries old business
model is still suitable today. Today’s graduates (and dropouts) have
fewer opportunities than students did when there was rising prosperity,
but what was once “good enough” for the average grad now falls well
short of what is needed to succeed as a healthy, successful member of
society.

2. What strengths or assets would you bring to serving on the school

board?
 Original thinker with outstanding analytical skills. Hard worker;
clear communicator. My experience as a nuclear submarine officer was
very formative and gave me the habit of insisting on seeing reality as it
is, rather than as we might wish for it to be.

3. What do you see as the strengths of the current school board?

Has managed to build and maintain community support for schools

and preserved a relatively healthy program of offerings. Avoids
micromanaging, concentrates on the policy issues.

4. What do you see as the weaknesses of the current school board?

As is typical of successful organizations, this board has a difficult

time anticipating and preparing for sharp, discontinuous change such as
America will experience in the years to come as the limits to growth
place greater and greater constraints on the resources we have available.
All public institutions will be experience strain and resource limits, few
more so than schools, which are necessarily very long-horizon
investments.

5. What changes would you like to make in the Salem-Keizer School

District?

1) Change the name to Salem-Keizer Board of Education, to

clearly and unmistakably affirm that our overriding purpose
is the education of the young people, not the operation of
schools. Schools are just one means to the end goal of
education; they are not the purpose of our district or even
necessarily the best way to accomplish the objective of
education for all.

2) Direct far more resources to give every child the assets

needed for educational success in life before schooling;
3) Use individual education plans for all students to
challenge each child to the maximum during their learning
years;

4) Leverage family and community resources throughout the

learning years, recognizing that schools are just one of the
settings where learning occurs.

6. How would you describe your philosophy of education?

A blend of W. Edwards Deming, Steven Covey, and Mark Twain.

• Deming for his approach to quality and his profound understanding

of how even the largest, most bureaucratic organization can
transform itself into a constantly learning and self-renewing
organization.
• Steven Covey because the most important thing when thinking
about schools is to begin each day with the end in mind (what we
want students to have at age 25, and 35, and beyond, long after
they have forgotten any particular content) rather than assuming
we should continue to do what we did yesterday.
• Mark Twain because he never let his schooling interfere with his
education, and was smart enough to recognize the difference.

7. What are the three most important issues you would address if
elected to the school board?

A. (75 words): Help children become healthy, successful adults,

even as our financial ability to operate the means at our
disposal -- gigantic comprehensive schools and fleets of
busses -- disappears. We must learn to cope with
significantly fewer resources, and we have to get good at
doing that year after year after year. Maintaining and
improving quality in the face of declining inputs will be
our greatest challenge.
 B. (75 words): Helping students and families cope with the
collapsing higher ed bubble that drowns people with unmanageable debt.
This will mean doing far more to prepare non-college bound students for
a much tougher world. “Job readiness” means little when multitudes of
college graduates compete for even low-skill jobs. We must help
students develop valuable skills and entrepreneurial habits so they can
create their own jobs when the economy will not provide one.

C. (75 words): Helping the district become much more tightly

integrated into the planning and service-delivery operations of the other
local governments and institutions in the area (hospitals, etc.). For just
one example, we will soon be unable to afford all the single-purpose
entities we created in better times, such as a separate mass transit system
just for students.

8. What education-related publications do you regularly read to

keep on the news and on educational issues (magazines, journals,
newspapers, Web sites, etc.)?

Rethinking Schools Online; National Center for Science

Education; Inside Higher Ed.