Two vie for seat on school board

Sisters School Board Position 4 Candidates

Andrew Gorayeb

Raised in New York and most recently from the San Francisco area, Andrew Gorayeb moved his family to Sisters four years ago. The Gorayebs have two children, 14 and 17, in the Sisters schools.

Gorayeb, an investor and real estate developer, has been playing lacrosse since he was six, earning some national recognition. He brought his passion to coaching lacrosse to Sisters, where he assists head coach Bill Rexford. He has also served on the budget committee of Sisters Park & Recreation District (SPRD) where he is now a board member, and for three years on the budget committee for the Sisters School District.

Gorayeb says he sees no conflict in serving on both the SPRD board and the school board. He indicates that he would recuse himself from any vote that involved both

organizations.

Gorayeb also served briefly on the planning commission and as a technical advisor in the revision of the 2010 Sisters Development Code. He is also proud of his work as an ASPIRE mentor at Sisters High School, where he has helped students plan for and secure financial aid for their post-high school education.

"As elected officials, board members should be the conduit for what taxpayers want from the schools," Gorayeb told The Nugget. "The board members should work with the professional staff to identify the opportunities and challenges. The board should bring this information back to the people and get input on how they would like to proceed.

"Board members need to work," he said. "They need to put in the hours. They need to avoid simplistic solutions for complex problems."

In approaching the current budget crisis in the school system, Gorayeb sees the often-used concept of eliminating the "low hanging fruit" as an indication of institutional thinking, in that it always results in cutting the same things.

Gorayeb indicates that he is looking to build "...real-time solutions by building a business model that is sustainable - a model that will leverage the dollars available to produce the most useful result."

On the subject of teacher evaluations Gorayeb said, "It is unfair to attempt to evaluate performance without first clearly discussing expectations."

He indicated support of Superintendent Jim Golden's newly adopted method of teacher evaluation that involves up to 20 "observations with feedback" per year as opposed to the traditional one per year observation.

Gorayeb also indicates some concern with the way union negotiations are currently handled and with how the current reduction in force (RIF) list is determined.

"I want to find a way to reward excellence," he said.

Cort Horner

A native Oregonian, Cort Horner and his family moved to Central Oregon in February of last year to be closer to his wife's family. They selected Sisters as their home because of the reputation of the local schools. Married 16 years, the Horners have three children in the Sisters schools.

Horner served on the School Site Council in West Linn for several years. He has always coached, and this year he was the voice of boys and girls basketball as an announcer. His wife is currently the girls varsity basketball coach at Sisters High School.

"It is all about how do you make a positive impact" said Horner.

He sees the school board position as a non-political opportunity to make a contribution.

Horner was trained as a crypto-linguist in Chinese in the Air Force. He made extensive use of his language skills as a field service engineer in Asia for the silicon chip manufacturing industry. He spent a great deal of time in Taipei, Japan, and the Philippines. He moved to a career as a wholesale mortgage broker to spend more time at home as his family grew.

As a mortgage broker for over 10 years, he managed a sales crew that grew to 42 brokers - until October 2007 when the industry collapsed. Horner believes the mortgage market has started to turn and that now is the time to "plant the seeds" for his new business venture as regional sales manager for Westcorp Mortgage Group.

Horner wants to bring his business acumen to bear on the budget and academic challenges the Sisters schools face as they weather the financial crisis. He believes his success in building teams and consensus would be a valuable asset. Horner is convinced that, through innovation and thinking outside the box, there are more school budget savings to be realized, even after the deep budget cuts of the last several years.

Horner expresses a strong interest in working toward high school course offerings and programs that both strongly challenge the top academic performers, and allow for an equally aggressive track for those that are not interested in college or the professions.

"We have a fantastically talented and highly tenured teaching staff," said Horner. "This level of commitment and experience offers huge benefits to our students."

At the same time, he believes that the very "difficult and tricky" task of merit-based evaluation must be addressed. To make merit evaluations more objective, Horner suggests including data points that would include the internal test results on the growth in individual students performance for the year, performance on standards-based state and national tests for like schools, feedback from surveys of how well Sisters graduates perform beyond school, peer teacher reviews, and parent/student teacher reviews.