School board candidate Marne Foster breaks out into Swedish a few minutes into our interview. It turns out she lived in Karlskrona, in southern Sweden, for a year while her mom, a dance program coordinator, ran a course at the local dance school. The experience gave her “the international bug,” she said, driving her to experience cultures and lifestyles a long way from the southeastern San Diego neighborhood where she was born and raised.
Foster, who got her bachelor’s degree from Howard University and her master’s degree from American University, both private colleges in Washington, D.C., now works as an educator at the San Diego Community College District. She specializes in transitioning students from continuing education into the workplace or college, and described her City Heights classroom as “like a small United Nations.”
Foster is generally supportive of the work current schools trustee Shelia Jackson has done for her district. She wants to see more equality across the city’s schools, with the best teachers, equipment and training programs spread across the entire city. And Foster said she will be encouraging the teachers union, which has endorsed her, to sit down and start talking to the district about solutions to ongoing budget woes.
Foster is running against Bill Ponder, a retired university administrator. I asked her the same questions I’ve asked the other three school board candidates.
Click here to read a Q&A with Foster