Place 4: Yoram Solomon
What are the top three reasons you want to serve as a Plano ISD School Board Trustee?
First and foremost, because I’m passionate about the education of all 54,813 students in our district
(including my two daughters) and their ability to be successful in life, and want them to live up to their highest, unique potential.
I want us to raise the level of skills we provide our students. We need to prepare our students to be successful in life, regardless of whether they go to college, get a job, or start a business. The class of
2015 will retire in 2062. Teaching them what we know today is not enough. We need to teach our children how to learn, comprehend, apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate what they learned, and then how to be creative. “Give a man a fish, and you fed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish, and you fed him for a lifetime”.
I want to support the hard workers on the front line of education: our teachers. Good teachers inspire students. Inspired students learn better and achieve more. I want to provide opportunities for our teachers to get the training they need and want, and the autonomy to plan and teach in creative and effective ways.
I want to support our legislators in giving our district more local control. We need to control our own curriculum, calendar, and be able to give our students the best education we can offer without being restricted by many of the current government standards. Our students deserve to be taught to their highest potential and not just to standards that create cookie-cutter education and aim to the lowest possible common denominator.
We have just hired a new superintendent, and this is a unique opportunity for change, and to take PISD to the next level.
What do you feel are the most important responsibilities of a trustee?
First, it is to represent the PISD stakeholders, including the students, parents, teachers, all district employees, homeowners, and tax payers. The board is entrusted with their interests, and as such needs to provide governance and oversight (financial and otherwise) to the operation of the district and its top executives. The board hires (and fires) the superintendent. A board member needs to assure that district activities fall within the vision and strategy that are created, that proper procedures are in place, and that taxpayer dollars are spent responsibly. The board should not be a “rubber stamp” for administrative actions, but rather challenge such actions for how they meet the district’s goals, and force the administration to address the issues that arise outside of them. The board is also the ultimate destination of any grievance within the district. The board should not micro-manage the administration, but rather inspire its employees, and then stay out of their way and let them do their job in the best, most creative way.
Second, board members are responsible for setting the vision, mission, and strategy for the district.
They need to carefully assess where the district is now, assess the changing environment, be able to forecast the future of education, set the mission and strategy, and then oversee the implementation of such strategy by the district's administration. Board members need to inspire the administration, and assure that such inspiration trickles to all teachers. Inspired teachers inspire children, and inspired children are successful.
P a g e | 1 of 3

Place 4: Yoram Solomon
Finally, the board interacts with state and federal government entities to assure that the district is getting its fair share of government resources, and affect any legislation that may impact the district’s ability to succeed in meeting its goals. The board serves as an advocate for the district.
What do you see as the top opportunities and challenges in Plano ISD?
CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS: the demographics in the district are changing. With overall population growth, growth in children entitled to free and reduced meals, growth in children with special needs, the board needs to project demographic trends into the future, and plan our education to fit future demographics such that it will prepare any student to be successful in life.
DECLINE IN THE US EDUCATION QUALITY: PISD is a strong district on a national scale. However, the overall US quality of education is declining on a global scale at an alarming rate. As a result—our frame of reference has to change, as our graduates will face global competition. Furthermore, we need to focus more on learning skills and higher level cognitive skills rather than merely knowledge of facts required to pass tests.
LIMITED CAREER PLANNING: not all students have the same potential, passions, or strengths. We need to spend more time counseling students to help them identify their passions, strengths, and weaknesses and help them plan their future in a way that will make them the most successful throughout their career. Not all students will, or have to go to college, and that should not be the sole focus of the district goals. We need to provide students with the discipline of entrepreneurship, not necessarily for the purpose of starting businesses, but to be able to identify opportunities and risks, make plans, and execute on them without being told what to do every day. Our graduates should be prepared to be successful in life regardless of whether it includes college, job, or starting a business.
Why are you qualified to hold the position of trustee?
Everyone who knows me describes me with three words: strategist, innovator, and entrepreneur.
As a STRATEGIST, I took many companies and non-profit organizations through a process of long-term strategic planning that ended up positively changing them forever. The first value that I bring is to challenge the status quo. I can then bring the ability to facilitate a strategic process, ask the right (and tough) questions, and drive to creative solutions. Education has a long-term horizon, beyond the current
PISD strategic plan.
As an ENTREPRENEUR and an executive in a public technology company, I’m painfully familiar with the concept of return on investment. I will help measure every effort we plan to expand against the expected return.
As part of my Ph.D. program, I spent two years researching what makes people more CREATIVE in one environment and less creative in another. I can bring this knowledge to the board and our district, help facilitate an assessment of the climate of the district in support of creativity of the teachers, and identify the opportunities for improvement. In support of my claim of being an innovator, I am a holder of 8 US patents, and 19 pending US and international patents, and a graduate of the Center for Creative
Leadership.
P a g e | 2 of 3

Place 4: Yoram Solomon
Finally, I am very involved with the city of Plano. Of all candidates in this race for Place 4, I am the only graduate of Leadership Plano, the only candidate who attended Plano Legislative Days in Austin this year, a board member in Plano Youth Leadership, a co-founder of the Young Women Incorporated, a former Destination Imagination coach, and many more.
What is the most important thing you want to accomplish if elected?
In the first year, I would like us to complete a new strategic plan with the new superintendent. This strategic plan should include a thorough assessment of the current state of the district, including a creativity and productivity climate assessment, and a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats analysis. I would like us to go through a vision and mission development process that will include processes such as “scenario planning” to forecast the changing environment twenty years into the future. Finally, I would like us to develop a strategy that will get us from where we are today to where we need to be twenty years from now. I have successfully facilitated all of those processes in the past
(and even in present) for multiple companies and organizations.
In the longer term—I would like to assure that our students’ passions, strengths, weaknesses, and preferences are well assessed, and that students are then given choices and opportunities to excel in what they are naturally good at. This will significantly reduce the probability of career “false starts” after graduation, and the probability of students going to college only because “that’s what you do after highschool,” resulting in them returning home after college with no job, tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and still now knowing what they want to do in life.
Finally—I want our graduates to be world renowned for their success in life and not for their high-school graduation rates or acceptance into Ivy League colleges. I want them to be known as Nobel Prize laureates, CEOs of Global Fortune 500 companies, or the creators of businesses and jobs.
P a g e | 3 of 3