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SY: So to, it's very creative, the kinds of things that you did as a politician. I mean, a lot of it is just thinking these things through.

GN: And then the other one was the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program. I had a bill to extend it for another -- and my original bill had five years extension on it, and the chair of the education committee, well, one of the staff members, approached me and told me that if you make it two years that they will put it on consent, which means that there won't be any discussion. The only way they could have it on discussion is somebody has to proactively say, "I want this to be discussed, pull from the consent." So I had that choice, you want it as a discussion for five years or have it on consent for two years? So I made the decision to have it on the consent for two years.

SY: And since then, well, and so you were able to fund it for two years.

GN: Yeah. And then in the meantime, I think Wilma Chan worked on it so it would be a line item for the governor and so you don't have to deal with this legislatively anymore.

SY: I see, I see. So it was in place, the legislation was in place when you decided that you were gonna support it for this two year, two year term.

GN: Yeah, because it terminated, it was gonna terminate.

SY: I see, it was gonna terminate.

GN: Yeah, year, was it, year 2000, I think, it was gonna terminate.

SY: I see. So these kinds of, and specifically Asian, they're Asian-specific things that you dealt with as a state assemblyperson, were those the thing that you fought hardest for, or did you feel that you were not just representing Asians? What percentage of your efforts went, would you say, toward doing Asian-specific...

GN: I thought those things were far easier than the much broader issue that you had to deal with. Some of the broader ones -- and I'm disappointed in L.A. City Schools, in particular UTLA. I had three education bills and none of them went through, has no negative impact on L.A. City Schools, it has positive impact for everybody. One of 'em had to do with equalization. The formula that's used how each school district is funded is based on an earlier formula that were, it was a disadvantage to Torrance, so Torrance would get less amount per, eighty-eight compared to, like Redondo Beach, and Redondo Beach's money was over a thousand dollar per student more. It was higher such that --

SY: How was that worked out?

GN: Well, so I had a bill to up the Torrance School District and have no negative impact on other school districts, they remain where they are, and UTLA opposed it. And one of the problems that Torrance was having was that, because you have less money coming in you pay teachers less compared to another school district, and so a lot of teachers would leave Torrance and go to Redondo Beach to teach. And so that got shot down. I had another bill to increase the grade level of twenty-eight per classroom from K through 3 to K to 5, for the entire state, and UTLA opposed that.

SY: Increase money.

GN: Yeah, you'll need more money because you're gonna have smaller class size at the fourth and fifth grade.

SY: I see.

GN: But it demonstrated, I thought, that it had a positive impact in student achievement.

SY: So you were at odds with UTLA and they didn't --

GN: Well, there was one person that represented the L.A. City -- I won't name that person, but she wanted something that benefits UTLA. They didn't care about, I mean, L.A. City Schools, they didn't care about the rest of the school district.

SY: Right.

GN: So that was killed. Now, since that didn't work, and in the meantime the person that's lobbying for these things was, Arnold Plack was the superintendent of Torrance School District, and I have to say that I spent more time with him than any other lobbyist in the state of California. And so the other idea was -- and he did a calculation -- how about allowing the K through 3 where you have twenty per classroom, but going to the fifth grade at twenty-three as an option, providing that you don't have to lay off any teachers? And he worked out within his own district that he will not need additional classrooms, there's sufficient classrooms around, and will not have to eliminate any teaching positions by going from K through fifth at twenty-three per class. But the bill will be an option, not a requirement, providing that they could do this within those constraints, parameters. And they opposed that too. So those were the much more difficult ones for me.

SY: The education ones.

GN: And I have to say, L.A. City Schools also don't have evaluation for teachers. When I left Inglewood we had evaluation for teachers, and when we, you had a choice of using, what learning theory you want to use to evaluate teachers and their teaching method. Of course, both the teacher and the administrator need to be trained and understand that learning theory that you're gonna utilize. And the one that I used was Madeline Hunter's, what is it, clinical supervision, and there're certain elements to teaching. And I don't even deal with the test scores, just with the teaching method and whether they're utilizing those, each step as they teach a particular subject in the classroom.

SY: I see.

GN: And I did well in evaluating teachers. In fact --

SY: Using that model.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.