School Candidate Tells Position

" - ■ - rf ■' } ' I 'f ■ Mrs. Marcia Péderbush, the head of a committee which just released a report on alleged sexual discrimination in the public schools, today announced her candidacy for the Ann Arbor Board of Education. Mrs. Federbush heads the Committee to Elimínate Sexual Discrimination in the Public Schools, a group of city women. She made the following statement: "I want to help ease the tensión, fear, and distrust that are pulling our schools apart. We must solve this problem before there can be "business as usual" in the schools. Every school child, every teacher, and every parent must put his full effort into breaking this dreadful cycle of panic by extending a hand of friendship each time he has an impulse to wield a bludgeon. "I want to help the board to hear and to understand what students are saying and acting out - black students, angry students, students who feel oppressed in one way or another by the school system, and together with them, I want to work out creative solutions for their dissatisfactions. As I see it, the whole purpose of the board is to ensure that the more than 20,000 young people in our schools receive the most meaningful, most enlightening education we can provide for them. "The law says they must attend school until they are 16. They have no choice. But if great numbers feel that their whole school experience is irrelevant to their interests and needs, then we are not educating them at all. Time is too valuable and tensions in the world are too great to require students to sit through courses that have little meaning for their lives. If we teach them anything at all, it may be to be disdainful and scornful of education. It is certainly better to have students helping to design courses that will involve them than to - -r v - r % I l v ra - %- ' have them roaming the halls or the streets aimlessly or mischievously. "I want to help gear our school programs not to industry, not to college admittance, not to union membership, not to distant future lives that some students feel they may never see, but instead to the students themselves- to their yearnings, their aspirations, and their capabilities. Students who develop personal competence in high school will be secure later in seeking courses of action that interest them. "I want to help the board to become sensitive to the need for humaneness in education for all of our school community - for blacks, for Indians, for girls, for non-college-oriented youngsters, for handicapped children- before each group feels so oppressed that it must rise up and disrupt school operations. "I want to help the board to know and to remedy the problems which teachers as individuals are experiencing, in addition to the concerns which are mentioned by their bargaining agent. "I want to influence the board to join with the parents and students of a school district to select the best possible personnel to meet the needs and preferences of the particular área they are serving. We must strive to match students and teachers so that the best can be brought out in both. "I intend to spend time each day visiting schools, talking with students and teachers, in order to help identify and solve the problems of our school system. They are clearly solvable if we approach them with perseverance, ingenuity, and compassion. Right now, the board is composed only of men with full-time jobs who have little time even to set foot in our school buildings. For this reason it is essential that women, who are able to devote full time to school board service, be elected in June. "This year, I have personally worked effectively to help bring about a comprehensive school lunch program, to have the Attorney General review the state's unfair school busing laws (which he unfortunately decided were constitutional), and to elimínate sex discrimination in our schools. I trust that as a Board of Education member, I may be even more productive by helping achieve a harmonious school community." Mrs. Federbush lives at 1000 Cedar Bend Dr. Her husband, Paul, is an associate professor of mathematics at the University. They have two children, Jasen and Laurel, who are in the first grade and kindergarten at Northside School. The deadline for candidates for the Ann Arbor Board of Education to file petitions for the June 14 school election is 4 p.m. Monday.