Putting a Price on schools

Jack Price may not be the most famous name on the school board ballot this November — not to local eyes, anyway. Still, the veteran educator is well-known in some circles.

Or, make that one giant circle, extending all around the Southland.

The 75-year-old Newport Beach resident, who is facing incumbent Judy Franco in the November election, has been an educator of some kind for more than half a century. His career journey, which started in Michigan in the 1950s, has led him to Los Angeles, San Diego, the Inland Empire and elsewhere.

In short, Price has had an eclectic background — and, perhaps fittingly, his main concern as a Newport-Mesa candidate is to improve communication between school leaders. In talking with NewportMesa teachers, he said, he’s perceived an occasional distance between faculty and trustees, and wants to ensure that everyone is on the same page.

“I’d like to see a series of workshops, open workshops with the board and the leadership of teachers, the leadership of classified employees, to discuss what are some of the problems we see and how can we solve them,” Price said.

The candidate has been both a teacher and administrator in the past. Born in Ontario, Canada, Price moved to the United States with his mother at the age of 5 and settled in Michigan. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Eastern Michigan University and his master’s and doctorate degrees at Wayne State University before starting a teaching career in Detroit.

In the early 1970s, he moved to California and took a job as an assistant superintendent in the San Diego Unified School District. From 1976 to 1990, he served as superintendent of the Vista Unified and Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified school districts, then worked as a professor of mathematics education at Cal Poly Pomona. He teaches part-time at Orange Coast College.

As a school board candidate, he faces Franco and two other challengers, retired teacher Sandra Asper and Corona del Mar High School parent Loretta Zimmerman. The race is the tightest in the district this year, and Price said he hopes to win through grass-roots support.

“It’s probably going to be a low-key campaign,” he said. “Hopefully, on the basis of meeting people one-on-one, I can bring a message of being a consensus builder to the people who are going to vote.”