Cody Petterson

Cody Petterson was born in San Diego, California. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1996, a graduate degree from the University of Iowa, Iowa City in 2001, and a Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 2010. His career experience includes working as a senior advisor for San Diego County Supervisor, District 3, and as a lecturer for the UCSD Department of Anthropology.

Petterson has served with the following organizations:[1]

Torrey Pines Elementary School Site Council & Site Governance Team

La Jolla Town Council

San Diego River Conservancy Board

San Diego International Sister Cities Association Board

Volcan Mountain Foundation Board

Sierra Club San Diego Executive Committee

Resource Conservation District of Greater San Diego Board

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

I’m Chief Deputy of the California State Board of Equalization, Fourth District, where I help oversee the annual assessment of $167 billion in corporate properties and property tax assessment in California’s 58 counties. I also serve on the Board of Education of the San Diego Unified School District, the second largest in the State, with 95,000 students, 14,000 employees, and a $1.6 billion budget.

As immediate past President of San Diego Unified, I led the Board’s approval of 2,500 units of education workforce housing, tripling the total built to date in the entire state. I also serve as Chair of the San Diego Regional Housing Finance Authority, which is dedicated to spurring the production of mixed-income housing and welcoming children and working families back into our cities.

I hold a PhD from UCSD, where I lecture in the Anthropology Department when my schedule permits. I’m a native San Diegan and a single father of two kids, Sequoia (10) and Bardot (12). I was previously Senior Advisor for Land Use and Environment at the County of San Diego and have served on a wide variety of community organization boards, including the La Jolla Town Council, San Diego River Conservancy, San Diego International Sister Cities Association, Resource Conservation District of Greater San Diego, and San Diego Sierra Club. When I’m not working or parenting, I’m an ocean swimmer, naturalist, and voracious reader.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

I’m Chief Deputy of the California State Board of Equalization, Fourth District. Over my half decade at the BOE, I’ve helped guide the agency and overseen engagement with our County Assessors, state and local legislators, and the public. Although it can seem obscure, the BOE has significant impacts on all Californians. It annually assesses $167 billion in corporate property--mostly energy utilities, telecommunications, and railroads--, issues guidance to County Assessors, and performs Assessment Practices Surveys to evaluate and improve county property tax assessment. I’m the only candidate who has worked at the BOE and has the knowledge and experience to improve governance and help lead systemic reform.As a single father of two young children and a boardmember of the second largest school district in the state, I’m acutely aware of how difficult it is to raise a family in California. The spiraling cost of housing is the central driver of California’s poverty rate, the highest in the country. As immediate past President of San Diego Unified, I led the approval of 2,500 units of affordable housing for our teachers and staff—tripling the total built in the entire state. I’ve pledged to leverage the BOE’s authority over affordable housing exemptions to help lead the expansion of affordable workforce housing, continue the work we're started in San Diego, and welcome children and working families back into our cities.As the body that oversees California's 58 county assessors, the BOE has the ability to help Assessors and Assessment Appeals Boards identify and implement best practices. Many Assessors, particularly those serving small rural counties, do not have the means to implement process and technological best-practices that we know improve the efficiency, transparency, and fairness of our property tax system. As a Boardmember, I would move to sponsor legislative solutions that staff, experts, and constituents have already identified, including fully transitioning to electronic signatures and SDR (Standard Data Record) batch filing, bifurcation of residential and commercial appeals, and programs to assist small counties pool staff and resources.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

Throughout my career, I've done research and policy design and implementation on a wide variety of issues, but the heart of my work has been protecting the environment and confronting our society's troubling rise in inequality. On both fronts, I have profound concerns that we have been unable to meet the challenge. We are handing our children a troubled world and a country that is unequal, unstable, and in decline. As a father, an anthropologist, an educator, and a policymaker, I hope that my work can contribute to shared prosperity, workers obtaining a greater share of the value they create with their labor, deeper investment in our children and their futures, and an environment that can continue to sustain life on earth.

What organizations or individuals have endorsed your campaign?

San Diego Progressive Dem Club, Dems for Equality, Labor Dems, Dem Woman's Club, & Martin Luther King, Jr. Dems, Fallbrook Dems, La Jolla Dems, Pacific Beach Dems, SD County Young Dems. Congressman Juan Vargas, State Senator Akilah Weber Pierson, Asm Member Tasha Boerner, CA State BOE Mike Schaefer, SD Cnty Supervisors Terra Lawson-Remer, Monica Montgomery Steppe, & Paloma Aguirre, SD County Treasurer Larry Cohen, Solana Beach Mayor Lesa Heebner, Lemon Grove Mayor Alysson Snow, Oceanside Dpty Mayor Eric Joyce, La Mesa Vice Mayor Lauren Cazares, San Diego City Councilmembers Joe LaCava, Henry Foster III, Kent Lee, Marni von Wilpert, & Sean Elo-Rivera, Chula Vista Cty Cncil Michael Inzunza, Vista Cty Cncil Dan O'Donnell

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

I’m a lifelong, 46-year resident of the District, a product of San Diego Unified, a UCSD lecturer, a policymaker, and a father. I have deep roots in the communities of coastal San Diego. I was brought home from University Hospital to UCSD’s Mesa Grad Student Apartments. I attended K-12 in San Diego Unified, I did my PhD in the UCSD Anthropology Department, and I’m the proud father of a Kindergartner and a Third Grader at Torrey Pines Elementary, where I serve on the School Site Council and Site Governance Team. I sit on the La Jolla Town Council and the Board of the San Diego International Sister Cities Association. I lecture in the UCSD Anthropology Department and serve as Senior Advisor for Education and Environment to San Diego County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, who represents the subdistrict in its entirety. I’m fluent in Spanish and I’ve spent many years working and doing field research in Latin America, which I believe is essential in a district that is 47% Latinx and 27% English language learners. I've been a body surfer and ocean swimmer since my youth. My kids and I love camping, thrift store shopping, and going to the Zoo, Balboa Park, and the beach. I'm also passionate about native plant landscaping, habitat restoration, and reforestation.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

Fight for the funding our students deserve in order to reduce class size, recover from the pandemic, and accelerate learning.Provide students, parents, teachers, staff, and the community with opportunities to obtain accurate, timely information and meaningfully contribute to District governance.Give teachers, para-educators, and principals the tools they need to deliver high quality instruction, foster a supportive campus environment, and develop professionally.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

My two areas of most active public policy engagement have been public education and the environment. For the last half decade, I’ve worked with Educate for the Future to organize and moderate trainings, workshops, and summits on public education policy, including science-based closure and re-opening, social and emotional learning, district budgeting, special education policy and funding, achieving full and fair funding, best-practices to close the achievement gap, post-COVID learning recovery, and countering anti-CRT, anti-mask, anti-vaxx, and anti-mandate discourse. I've been actively engaged in conservation and climate organizing and policymaking for many years. I currently serve on the board of the San Diego River Conservancy and the Volcan Mountain Foundation. I’m immediate past president of the San Diego County Democrats for Environmental Action and a former member of Sierra Club San Diego Executive Committee and Resource Conservation Board of Greater San Diego. In my capacity as Senior Advisor to the Supervisor I have helped design and/or implement a wide array of environmental policies, including the Regional Decarbonization Framework, Comprehensive Native Plant Landscaping Policy, and Departmental Sustainability Plans.

Who do you look up to? Whose example would you like to follow, and why?

I've largely lived a life of books. Until my children were born, in many ways the realest part of life for me was this journey through books. My deepest inspirations have therefore been authors: Montaigne, Emerson, Max Weber, Simone Weil, Seneca, etc. Through it all, one book has remained on my nightstand, always: Marcus Aurelius’s ‘Meditations.’ I talk to friends, family, colleagues, and stakeholders all day, every day, but when I need consolation, perspective, encouragement, correction, I pick up the ‘Meditations’—VIII.36: “Do not allow the imagination of the whole of your life to confuse you, do not dwell upon all the manifold troubles which have come to pass and will come to pass, but ask yourself in regard to every present piece of work: what is there here that can’t be borne and can’t be endured?” Or again: “Meditate often upon the bond of all in the Universe and their mutual relationship. For all things are in a way woven together and all are—because of this—dear to one another” (VI.38). As I've run for office, one passage in particular has returned often to my mind: "Our actions may be impeded, but there can be no impeding our intentions or dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

What characteristics or principles are most important for an elected official?

A San Diego Unified School Board trustee is responsible for overseeing a $1.6 billion organization. Unlike many other elected officials, they have no personal staff and serve essentially on a volunteer basis. This challenging task would be impossible without the support of stakeholders and community. School board governance requires bringing diverse stakeholders together to collaboratively solve complex problems. This in turn requires school board trustees who have deep roots in their community, intimate familiarity with the values and interests of their constituents, comprehensive and up-to-date subject matter expertise, familiarity with the Brown Act and board governance, experience in implementing policy and culture change in large bureaucracies, and the ability to shepherd education-related legislation through state and federal legislatures. At the level of personal character, the qualities that contribute to building and maintaining vibrant, resilient communities are the same across the world: honesty, fairness, competence, attentiveness, curiosity, creativity, wisdom, compassion, selflessness, industriousness, resourcefulness, humility.

What qualities do you possess that you believe would make you a successful officeholder?

Self-assessments are inherently difficult, but I think my friends and colleagues would agree that I am attentive, knowledgable, resourceful, forthright, kind, funny, hardworking. I’m confident of my abilities, but humble toward the work and relationships. I’ve cultivated a wide network of relationships, which I’m diligent in maintaining. Between multiple jobs, participation in civic organizations, volunteering, and parenting, I typically carry a very heavy load of diverse and cognitively challenging work. I have deep, lifelong roots in our community. I am compelled to give more than I take and to contribute to the wellbeing of the totality. I’m a dedicated father. My three great passions are spending time with my children, being a steward of our natural environment, and reading.

More concretely, I’ve spent the last 5 years working with schoolboard members across San Diego County to help guide their engagement with critical issues affecting their districts, including budgeting, community schools, learning loss recovery, Brown Act compliance, Board-Superintendent dynamics, culturally responsive teaching and curriculum, special education policy & funding, and science-based COVID closure and reopening. As secretary of the Site Governance Team & School Site Council at my children's elementary school, I have a working knowledge of school site challenges and opportunities. As a UCSD lecturer, I wrestle with lesson planning, student assessment, and facilitating meaningful student engagement. I also have extensive relationships with elected officials and policymakers locally and across the state and am committed to utilizing them to advance the interests of the district and its students and staff. I’m also fluent in Spanish and have spent many years travelling, working, and conducting research in Latin America, which will facilitate assisting students, teachers, families, and community members in a district whose students are 46% Latino and 26% English-Language learners.

What was the last song that got stuck in your head?

I grew up in the late 70s and 80s, so I have an enduring passion for 80s pop and alternative music. If I'm working, I often listen to classical music, preferably Bach. When I'm driving, I bounce between my two 80s music stations and NPR. In the evenings, I mostly listen to contemporary indie rock, like Phoebe Bridgers, Aldous Harding, or Shakey Graves, but the last song that got stuck in my head is actually Harry Styles, "As It Was."

What issues get in the way of quality education? How would you address these obstacles?

There are many factors that facilitate or impede a quality education, but the fundamental element in providing education is the teacher. A core function of the district is therefore attracting, retaining, and supporting a motivated, well-trained, fully certificated teaching workforce. This will be increasingly challenging as the looming teacher shortage builds. Already a third of new hires do not fully meet certification requirements. Teachers in California are already underpaid relative to non-teacher peers with comparable experience, education, and responsibilities, and the current affordable housing crisis and skyrocketing cost of living make it increasingly challenging for teachers to live in the communities in which they teach. Beyond salary and benefits, teachers are working longer hours than they did before the pandemic, facing students with learning and behavioral challenges exacerbated by the pandemic, wrestling with the second worst teacher-to-student ratio in the country (1-to-26 versus the national average of 1-to-16), without adequate opportunities for professional development and lesson planning (in part because the substitute shortage forced the district to embargo the use of substitutes for those uses). These challenges will require a wide variety of responses, including expanding opportunities for apprenticeships and mentorships, adequate time for collaborative lesson planning, ongoing rather than one-off trainings, federal teacher debt forgiveness, teacher housing, improved principal pipelines to ensure teachers have skilled, supportive site leadership, and increased teacher involvement in site, cluster, and district governance.

In what areas would you like to expand curriculum? For example, do you see a need for advanced technical training or apprenticeships? What sort of innovative programming would you advance if given the opportunity?

There are several areas where an expansion of curriculum would be advantageous. Career and Technical Education (CTE) is essential to preparing students with well-paying careers that are appropriate to their interests and aptitudes. The San Diego region is poised for a dramatic increase in investment in public infrastructure, commercial development, and multifamily residential construction. Much of this construction will be performed by skilled, union workers with good pay and benefits. The District needs to expand and intensify its commitment to CTE. We can provide motivated students not only with a diploma, but an accredited certification in a trade. Another critically important curriculum expansion is systematic and explicit phonics. California schools are facing a literacy crisis made more severe by the pandemic, and the first step in addressing that crisis is to ensure that elementary school students have a solid foundation in phonics. More broadly, teachers have expressed frustration about 1) the lack of time and substitutes available for teachers to do collaborative lesson planning and 2) the regular replacement of one curriculum program with another with one-off trainings rather than ongoing implementation assistance. The district needs to ensure that implementation of curriculum is given as much attention as selection of curriculum.

What will you do to build a relationship with parents in the district? What plans do you have to be inclusive of parental involvement?

The first step in building relationships is to already have relationships. I am a parent in the district, I talk regularly to other parents in the district, and I participate in district institutions with parent representation. As a member of the School Site Council and Site Governance Team at my children's elementary school and an attendee of the District Advisory Council, several facts seem clear to me. First, there are numerous fora for parental involvement in the district, but they are inadequately integrated into district decision-making. Active parents therefore contribute substantial time and energy, but are left feeling frustrated and unheard. Second, school sites have inadequate funding and policy discretion to give parents--as well as teachers, principals, and other staff--a sense that their involvement is leading to meaningful changes in administration and student learning. The annual discretionary budget at the elementary school that my children attend is roughly $51,000, which has to be spread across supplies, the office copier, technology subscriptions, substitutes for teacher professional development, VAPA, etc. The result is that, in the absence of substantial Foundation, Title 1, or LCFF Supplemental or Concentration funds, parents and educators have very little control over priorities and allocations. The first necessity in building relationships is to ensure that the district communicates information to parents about policies, deadlines, and issues in a timely, transparent manner. Second, the district needs to create opportunities for genuine engagement and collaborative decision-making. In the absence of formal mechanisms, SSC, SGT, DAC, ELAC, and other fora can seem pro forma. Third, the district must be proactive in eliciting diverse parent participation--with particular focus on language resources and participation subsidies for working parents--to ensure that parent representatives reflect district's social and economic diversity.