Meet Your PUSD Board Candidates: Kimberly Kenne

The one Pasadena Unified race without an incumbent has two Altadena residents as the candidates

is one, and Kimberly Kenne, a mother, a member of various PUSD committees, and an IT consultant with various financing companies, is the other. 

The election will be held on March 8.  Kenne and Stevenson are competing for the seat of incumbent Bob Harrison, who is stepping down.  Incumbent Tom Selinske is facing two challengers for his seat, and incumbent Renatta Cooper is running unopposed.

Kenne's two children have attended various schools in the district, and her daughter currently attends .

Kenne said she's running because she believes the district can quickly improve in a couple of key areas that she has experience in.

First, Kenne said, she believes the district can easily do better to track progress on the various initiatives and newly-introduced district programs that come up over the years.

"There's a tendency to once a year look at scores, and than not look at anything again until next year," Kenne says.

Secondly, the district needs to do a better job tracking where it's money is going, she added.

"If you don't know where the money is going, you don't know what needs to be fixed," Kenne said.

Finally, the district should improve its parent engagement, making sure parents know exactly what kind of progress their kids are making.

So far, Kenne's campaign is almost exclusively funded from personal loans from herself, according to her campaign finance records.

Here are where she stands on some other issues:

On the vote to :

Kenne said that she agreed with the decision to close schools on the basis of the low enrollment many of the schools have.

She said that opponents of the closures often forget that having a school with low enrollment usually means having a school with a small teacher staff.  That often means that after-school programs and other initiatives are short-staffed, she said.

At the same time, she said, she felt the process to pick the schools ended up being somewhat short-sighted, with several schools taken out of the running too soon.

Parcel tax measures:

Kenne supported both the successful 2008 Measure  TT and the failed Measure CC in 2010.

She said she would likely support other measures in the future, but said the school district should let voters know more about what they plan to do with the money.

For example, the district could put out a list of its top ten priorities for the money- a practice the district has avoided in the past for fear of not giving fair consideration to all potential projects that could be done.

Equality of spending across the district:

Gene Stevenson, Kenne's opponent in the race, said one of his priorities would be to see how the district spends it money across the district, to make sure Altadena and other areas are not getting shortchanged.

Kenne said she believes the issue is a little more complicated.

For example, she said some schools have more students who need state and federal subsidized lunches and other programs, which makes total spending at that school appear higher.

Some schools have parents who help support the school's by raising additional funds for it, while others don't, she noted.

In addition, some schools get temporary grants that make it appear they are receiving higher spending than others in the long term, she said.

Police presence in schools:

Kenne noted that Eliot, as the only middle school in Altadena, actually does not have a police presence as the partnership between PUSD and schools is with the Pasadena Police Department.

In that sense, she said, Eliot could use more of a presence to ensure safety and help kids learn about police programs.

However, she said she is also wary of the idea that children could be reported to the police for actions that normally would be dealt with by the school. 

Altadena Patch will be providing a profile of each candidate in the school board races that are being contested.  For our profile of candidate Gene Stevenson, click .