Beverly A. Goldstein, Ph.D., Beachwood Candidate for State Board of Education (D-11)

Hi, I am Dr. Beverly Goldstein – a candidate for a non-partisan 4-year term on the State Board of Education representing District – 11 in Northeast Ohio. 

This includes 42 cities from Brook Park on the west side of Cleveland, to Painesville Twp in Lake County.  The board has 19 seats:  11 are elected and 8 are appointed by the governor. 

The Patch communities which are part of my district include: Beachwood, Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights, Mentor, Mayfield-Hillcrest, and Lakewood, Ohio.

The SBOE provides leadership, forms policy and evaluates the functions of Ohio schools. 

It has authority over

• hiring the state superintendent of education
• promulgating regulations for curriculum and materials
• buildings and equipment
• student transportation
• setting standards for the administrative responsibilities of schools 
• establishing the state education budget, the finance reporting standards and organization structures of school districts
• de-certifying school personnel for cause
• and state and federal funds for public schools

The statutory board mission is “…to ensure a general education of high quality...”

My education-related accomplishments include

• minoring in K-12 education, and student teaching
• teaching in the Dept. of Defense overseas school system while stationed with my husband on a naval base
• former special education consultant to school systems
• former vice president of the Beachwood Schools Foundation Board
• I have received 5 personal State of Ohio Awards, and accepted a national law-enforcement-agency award on behalf of the Beachwood Schools Foundation for a national security program which I implemented at Beachwood High School.
• With regard to addressing education needs of children, I am the co-author of Ohio legislation that mandates identifying hearing loss by hospitals at birth, so Ohio children can be identified and receive services early in their lives, which benefits them greatly when they enter school.
• I also authored and administered an education grant for educators, where teachers were taught how to focus on the language of their lessons before presenting the lessons, so students would understand the words that were being used to teach the material.

For the past six years, along with other patriotic Americans throughout the country, I have been researching content problems in US social studies textbooks, and I published an article about this problem in a national security journal in 2009. It is available through a link on my website, http://goldstein4education.com/Bev4Ed/Home.html.

I am running for the District - 11 seat on the SBOE because I want

• to improve the social studies curriculum in OH
  1.  to require on-going study of our founders and founding documents,
  2.  to require an annual focus on American and Ohio exceptionalism, and
  3.  to correct inaccurate history in social studies textbooks; textbooks of previous generations were much more accurate than the textbooks of today.

My highest goal is to “put kids first.”  It is time to address the education issues which have remained unsolved on our watch for the past 40+ years. Our students of today will be the Ohio and national leaders of tomorrow, and the education we give them will be the foundation of their decision-making when it counts. We must get it right.

I support

1. Cleveland’s Plan for Transforming Schools, enacted by the OH General Assembly and approved by all stakeholders, to keep our Cleveland school system under local control and to improve its ability to provide students a solid education
2. Transitioning to virtual tablets & textbooks for every student; one superintendent told me his district's texts are eleven years old;  Cleveland’s texts are older, according to Cleveland Schools CEO Eric Gordon; this is not acceptable
3. School choice, including home schooling, which is the law in Ohio; our American way of life supports competition to achieve excellence, so we need to make sure that Ohio parents and children have good schools from which to choose
4. Strengthening charter school credentialing and accountability; we need to ensure that charter schools are teaching students to abide by US and Ohio laws, and not laws of international bodies or specific religions
5. Augmenting high school college prep & vocational curricula by better aligning them with Ohio’s emerging industries so that kids who graduate from Ohio high schools have prepared themselves for jobs that are now available and will be emerging throughout Ohio
6. Eliminating state-level regulations which prevent community talent from entering the schools and partnering with public education for the betterment of the children and their educational process.

For more information about my campaign and goals, and the fun photos we have taken campaigning over the past nine months, please visit my website.  Campaign contributions are welcome and can be made securely through the website.

I am Beverly Goldstein, candidate for the SBOE, and I respectfully request your support and your vote between now and November 6th.

Thank you.