POWAY – Already years ahead of the state's main goal for academic performance, the Poway Unified School District doesn't seem complacent with its success.

A vision statement issued in June says the 36-school system must meet a “moral imperative to have each student graduate college ready” and prepared for a world of accelerating, unpredictable change.

Amid such lofty goals – and the reality of state budget cutbacks – board veterans Andrew Patapow and Linda Vanderveen, both of Poway, are seeking re-election Nov. 4. They face three challengers: Tom Giles of Rancho Bernardo, William Gore II of Poway and Darin Hunzeker of Rancho Peñasquitos.

Patapow, seeking a fourth four-year term, and Vanderveen, who won two elections after being appointed in 1998, said the board would benefit from their continuity.

Their opponents aren't pitching voters any sharp turns in policy, but rather a few gentle curves. Giles said the district needs to seek funding from local businesses to plug budget holes. Gore wants the board to be less of a “rubber stamp” for administrators. Hunzeker would push for a major increase in parental involvement in classrooms.

Giles, 40, founder of a software-development company serving health care, said having three elementary school children has made him sensitive to teachers worried about the next rounds of budget cuts and test scores.

Poway Unified School District Budget: $260 million, 2008-09 Enrollment: 33,300 Teachers: 1,710 Campuses: 36

“We should have our hand in every one of those grant processes for our schools,” Giles said. “Then try to figure out how to get private businesses more involved.”

Poway Unified schools may have become too concerned with standardized test outcomes, Giles said, resulting in “a bunch of stressed-out kids that panic on tests and . . . teachers just teaching to the test.”

Gore, 73, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security screener at Lindbergh Field, said the school board should be more challenging to its administrators and strive for greater oversight.

Gore criticized the board for cutting bus routes in the new school year, saying administrative positions would have made a better target.

He recommends offering teachers new marketing-style cash incentives and other rewards to do “the extra 10 percent” needed to achieve higher goals. “If the teachers are motivated, they will motivate the students, and the students will reach their goals,” he said.

Hunzeker, 47, a real estate agent and Republican candidate for Congress in 2004, said parents need to assist in classrooms, even helping in the presentation of core curriculum instruction, at a teacher's direction. It would be an essentially free alternative to paid teachers aides, he said.

Math and science scores that trail off in the district's higher grades are a sign the district does not “bear down on the basics” and may be presenting students with complex problems too quickly, Hunzeker said.

Hunzeker also said the district should be pressuring the state to reduce “mandates” that reduce local control and spending options.

Patapow, 73, who joined the board after 28 years as principal of Abraxas Continuation School, said that he is “the only educator on the board” and that he continues to be motivated by working with kids.

If predictions of another tough budget year come true, Patapow said, the board will strive to keep cuts “as far away from the classroom as possible.” A bond measure passed this year should help the district make better use of technology at its older schools, he said.

While test scores have been good, Patapow said, “I don't think you can ever stop pushing, because there's always something over the next horizon.”

Vanderveen, 58 and the board's current president, makes no apologies for a consensus-driven approach that leads to few if any split votes. “Everybody is rowing in the same direction, so to speak,” she said.

College readiness is going to become an increasing priority in the district, Vanderveen said, with increasing use of online courses. She said she wants “every single child achieving at advanced or proficient levels” in the subjects measured on standardized tests.

Vanderveen also wants the district to devote as much attention to at-risk students in middle schools as it does for high schools.

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Jeff Ristine: (760) 737-7578; jeff.ristine@uniontrib.com