Celeste Winders looks to tackle Sonoma school board challenges ‘head on’

(This is the second in a series of stories featuring candidates running for the Area 2 seat on the Sonoma Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees.)

Celeste Winders has spent the past decade as a parent and community volunteer working to improve equity, access and other issues in Sonoma Valley education, but feels that the time is right to take her involvement to a new level.

“I feel I have done as much as I can do as a member of the public and working from the outside, but I still see a lot that needs to be done in order for our district to get where it needs to be to best serve all students,” she said.

So, Winders — a student advocate for Strategic Education Advocacy, a business that she co-owns — is running for the Area 2 seat on the Sonoma Valley Unified School District (SVUSD) Board of Trustees.

“There was simply no better time than now, when the work is most needed,” she said. “Public education on a national level is going through a massive shift and change, and the needs for students are exponential. At a local level, we have some really specific needs and issues that must be addressed. I tend to be someone who will walk right into something when it is at its most challenging and take the challenge head-on.”

She is very familiar with the district, having attended El Verano and Dunbar elementary schools, Altimira Middle School and Sonoma Valley High School before attending Humboldt State University (renamed Cal Poly Humboldt) in Arcata.

Winders subsequently worked on the district’s Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP) and Equity and Inclusion Task Force, helped to found its Special Education Advisory Council and attended almost every meeting of the Sonoma Valley Unified School District’s Board of Trustees during the past eight years.

She and her husband, Abdul, have raised five children in Sonoma Valley; two of them are current SVUSD students, but are attending nonpublic schools due to their learning needs.

Winders identifies low literacy and math proficiency rates, declining enrollment, staff and teacher retention, special education, and equity and access for protected students as the main issues facing the district, but believes these and other issues need to be addressed as part of an interconnected whole.

“These issues are all interconnected, and we must address them together and not compartmentalize each of them while pretending the other issues do not exist,” Winders said. “The plan must be honest, transparent, equitable and specific, and it must have progress measurement built into it to ensure forward momentum and deliverables for children.”

She says that the district needs to use a science-based reading curriculum with aligned master schedules and provide quality professional development and classroom support to deliver it.

“Math proficiency needs a similar approach, and a big part of that is building classroom support for teachers so they can deliver instruction in the manner in which the curriculum requires for success an so they can feel fully supported in the classroom, she said.”

Winders feels that the declining birthrate and the lack of affordable housing in Sonoma Valley are two of several factors contributing to declining enrollment.

“An additional factor is that families who can afford to do so choose to send their children to schools outside of the district,” she said. “This leaves not only fewer children, but also a disproportionate number of children with higher learning needs.”

She says that teacher retention is connected to declining enrollment.

“Teachers need to have their contract requests honored,” Winders said. “This is not only about cost-of-living wage increases, but also the need to listen to educators when they are specific about how they need their step-and-column salary schedule to operate in order to ensure competitive wage increases that are commensurate with their experience and training.”

Turning to special education, she said, “It has been in a crisis for a really long time and has resulted in the district being out of compliance with the state Department of Education and out of compliance with children’s [individual education plans], resulting in compensatory education costs, learning loss and an increase in nonpublic school placement and settlement agreements — all of which cost the district financially and cause harm to children.”

Winders contends that the school district first needs to address the needs of general education so that it can fully meet its mandates and gain compliance in special education, and thereby better serve students with disabilities.

Reach the reporter, Dan Johnson, at daniel.johnson@sonomanews.com.