Gibson takes lead of Paso Robles school board
Paso Robles school board president Field Gibson
After winning another term on the Paso Robles Joint Unified School District in November, local insurance agent Field Gibson was selected as the school board’s next president at its December meeting.
Gibson, a resident of Paso Robles since 1980, said he is eager to move forward with changes in the school district. He said the reason he ran for the school board in the first place was because he thought the district could do a better job managing its finances and offer a better academic education to its students. Gibson has a degree in finance and property development from Cal Poly in 1977. His experience and knowledge in finance is something, he said, that sets him apart from the other board members. Gibson has worked with DiBudio & Defendis since 1996 specializing in business insurance, bonding, employee benefits and risk management.
“It’s a good district, but it’s not a great district as far as academics,” Gibson said. “We were facing [when I was sworn in four years ago] — I call it the black abyss — of being taken over by the state because our finances were such a mess.”
He said there have been several years of the school board passing a negative certification for the upcoming budget; this year, however, he said the board passed a positive certification for the upcoming budget.
Gibson said that the school board — over the last four years — has made a shift from being business-minded to student focused. He said that every decision should have the question “How does this decision we’re making affect student success, student achievement?” in mind. He said that mind frame is a shift from what the school district was doing previously.
“We need to develop what we have in regards to people, teachers and curriculum toward student success,” he said.
He said that while the business department had been fully staffed and other departments slashed significantly, the curriculum department is getting more focused and has a department head, when it previously was without. That person — Babette DeCou — is also No. 2 to the superintendent as there is no assistant superintendent.
“To me, that really is a seismic change,” Gibson said.
Additionally, he said that ideally the students would be able to try different careers to figure out what they want to do, and would be able to get the training they need to either get a job in that field or to go on for additional training or schooling. He said that the key in integrating the education. One example he gave was of the high school now having a digital production studio in which every subject can utilize through lessons.
“It really could involve every department,” he said.
