Mike Saviers

Mike Saviers’ grin was audible through the phone, and now his self-deprecating humor comes through from the other side of his sunglasses. The sun’s higher in the sky and he’s no longer sitting in the shade; would he like to move? “Oh, I could use some color on my head,” he laughs as he runs his hand over his shiny scalp. Powered by a can of Diet Coke, he thinks through his answers yet displays a surprising degree of candor, remaining patient through equipment malfunctions, flying papers, and a deluge of questions; he’s an advocate of the slow pace of small town life.

It’s what he likes about Fillmore, where he moved his family in 1991; the city is about the same size as Santa Paula when he was growing up there. “I’m as local as you can get without being from Fillmore,” he jokes. Saviers waves back to someone rolling by in a sedan, “The people here are awesome. It’s fun to walk around; people know each other. Before we lived here in Fillmore, we lived in east Ventura. Life is different—it’s more kick-back and relaxed here.”

After thirty-some years in law enforcement, Saviers appears to fit the bill of a capable cop—approachable, but someone you don’t want to mess with. When asked how he ended up the provisional school board member, he seems surprised himself.

Saviers originally wanted to go into agriculture and work for the Forest Service, but left his natural resources studies at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo before completing his degree. Returning to Santa Paula, he followed in the footsteps of his police officer father, training at the Ventura County Police and Sheriff’s Reserve Officer Academy and putting to use his earlier law enforcement classes from Ventura College. “It’s the best career in the world,” he enthuses about his years as a cop, “it changes how you see people and how people see you; you see people at their worst and at their best—it’s fascinating.” He says his experience taught him that there are two sides to every story. Now he’s a foreman for a ranch management company.

The transition to the school board came began with discussions with his wife, Tressa, the art teacher at Mountain Vista Elementary. Upon school board member David Dollar’s exit, Saviers decided to give a shot at filling the seat for eight months until elections in November. “When we showed up, there were just two of us,” he recounts. His rival was Scott Lee, a former City Council member who had not only been a teacher but had also served on the school board for several years. “He knew the basics, knew most of the members…” Talk about stacked odds. “There was a vote: 2-2.” Then? “He spoke first”—and withdrew. Saviers pauses as though reliving the experience. “It was really a shock I ended up on the school board,” he concedes.

Plunged into the midst of major teachers’ union negotiations and the Piru charter school debate, Saviers has been studying and tackling his work head-on. Who’s been showing him the ropes? “Everybody’s been great. Luckily, I sit right next to Mr. [Jeff] Sweeney [the superintendent] at the meetings, and he explains things—like in law enforcement, we have our own catchphrases; the school board has its own catchphrases and acronyms.” In recent months, the school board has been faced with the possibility of teacher layoffs due to strained budgets. “If the charter went through, all the Piru people would have been laid off,” Saviers says. “I really kind of got in at the tail end of it. The one thing that really bothered me was the parent opposition. They weren’t happy that they weren’t involved in the process, asked to participate.” He describes the experiences of diving into the fray, “Not so much intimidating … more overwhelming.”

As befits a former police officer, Saviers is concerned about students’ security. “I want the kids to be safe,” he explains. “I’m kind of selfish; I have two kids in the district. But I want everyone else’s kids to be safe, too. It’s not just physical safety; it’s psychological as well, that they know they’ll be taken care of, that they know they have caring teachers looking out for them.”

Saviers staunchly believes in parental involvement’s key role in student success, “They’re at school for six hours a day. That’s eighteen hours left. If parents aren’t making sure they’re doing homework, or reading, sitting down with them and helping them do their homework, a quarter of day is all they’re getting for education. Parents need to be wiling to sit down and take the time to look and see what [their kids are] learning, what the homework is, go to school, talk to teachers, see what they as parents can do to help their kids excel.” And himself? “I try to sit down every night, look at their homework.” He got into the habit after retirement: “I enjoyed it! In fact I ended up substitute teaching.” He also worked as a Fillmore school bus driver for two years.

One way in which Saviers envisions encouraging parental involvement is by making schools “more parent-friendly.” He cites the monthly Meet-and-Greet at the middle school: “parents can socialize with teachers, but it’s at 7:30 in the morning; working people can’t take time off to take advantage of it.” He’d like to see campuses, teachers, and administrators accessible when more parents are able to visit. Saviers admits, however, that accessibility alone might not be a panacea for the large Hispanic population in Fillmore, “I don’t know if they’d feel intimidated going to school not knowing if someone’s going to be there to translate for them,” he reflects.

Still, he urges parental effort. “To take the kid to school, drop them off, drive off—you don’t see anything, you don’t see the school. Get out, walk around, see it. Even the landscaping. Don’t make the schools look like prisons; make them want to be there, make it more friendly. Things like that. Parents could volunteer to help…I don’t think there’s a teacher in the district that wouldn’t like a parent helping once in a while.” Saviers points out that “people would see the school, see what needs to be done,” and take action. He points out his wife Tressa’s art program at Mountain Vista, which was supported by the district until last year, but now is funded by private donations. “She saw that San Cayetano had an art program, so she developed a program herself, presented it to the principal who gave the okay, gave her space at school, and she now teaches art concepts, to encourage kids to be artistic.”

He’s not done praising his wife. “She’s a great mom. Does everything she can, especially in the schools, to help with education. The library at Mountain Vista—she saw it was empty, so she challenged the kids to raise $8,500, and if they did, she’d shave her head. The kids raised $21,000!” How’d he take to her new ‘do? He pauses. “I got used to it. It grew back. We have a picture of us together,” he laughs, referring to their joint bald status.
For Saviers, it’s a good day when “we pass resolutions, no teachers get laid off, no classified get laid off.” But it’s tough “when you have to sit up there and consider someone’s livelihood may be going away or cut their hours and they lose their benefits that they depend on.” And it’s discouraging to face the budgets, only to “see there’s not enough to do everything you want to do.”

The school board has been meeting almost every Tuesday night for the last couple of months, and some nights Saviers has gone home at 11:30. Despite the massive tasks ahead, is he going to run for the school board in November? There’s no hesitation: “Oh, I’m gonna run.” The challenge of everything going on is the best aspect of the position, he says: “It’s not just an every-Tuesday-night thing. We get a binder full of information that has to be read—that’s four to five hours of reading even before the meeting takes place. It keeps you thinking all the time, trying to think of ways to make things better.” But he’s not fazed by the task: “In law enforcement, there was something new and different happening every day, and I missed that until this. Now the challenge is back. So it’s fun.”

Even after his short time as a board member, there’s much that Saviers wants the community to know: “The board really does have the kids’ best interests in mind, trying to make things better for the kids. The kids’ education is what this is all about, quality education. The decisions that are made, it’s not just … a knee-jerk decision. There’s a lot of thought and discussion that goes into every decision that’s made, and the board knows that we don’t have money to do everything that we want to do; there’s got to be cuts, programs may not always be what they are now, or how they were five or ten years ago. So much depends on the State; so much money comes from the State. Even the Student Resource Officer program—half depends on what the City does.

“With the concession the unions have made, there hasn’t been a lot of cuts,” he says, but he laments a resolution passed at the last meeting to cut hours for library and computer lab staff. “We’re in the 21st century. Kids need to know how to use a computer. Life depends on it. And reading! It’s just things you shouldn’t have to take away from them.” Currently, Saviers’ nightly reading with his kids is Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. For himself, Saviers likes reading the newspaper and fiction by John Grisham.
If he had magic powers to unleash on the district, “We’d have the most awesome schools in the state of California. Whatever teachers want, we’d get for them—state-of-the-art equipment, anything the kids needed.” Saviers pauses for a long time before he carefully articulates his ultimate dream for the district’s students: “What I want is for them…the day they graduate from high school, to not have any doubts that the education they got here in Fillmore is any less than anywhere else in the world. That if they want to go to any college—any college they want to—they can accomplish that goal with the education they got here.”
How does he intend to realize this ambitious aim? “Continue to push for programs that would give the kids the chance to learn, whether it be Advanced Placement classes or language classes for English learners to excel.” He stresses that all students deserve to have their needs addressed, “You can’t just concentrate on one segment of the population; you have to concentrate on everybody.”

Finally, it’s time to ask about he blue ink peeking out from his T-shirt sleeve. It’s his son’s name, Jacob, across his bicep. His other arm features his daughter Hannah’s name above a red rose. He got his tattoos eight years ago—is he okay with his kids following suit? “When they turn 18, they can make that decision,” he chuckles, “I won’t have much say then…well, if it’s tasteful…” Worries of teenage rebellion can wait; right now Saviers is the happy father of student athletes, and even his nine-year old’s phone etiquette displayed remarkable poise and consideration. Saviers retired from law enforcement to be able to spend more time with his family; “We go fishing, camping…we have a boat that we use whenever we can—which hasn’t been a lot; the boat’s got rust on it—we go to Dodgers games…Hannah’s in band at middle school. She does swimming. Jake plays baseball, football, and basketball. I’ve coached both of them in sports.” However his rookie status on the school board, this proud father appears to be doing something right with kids. Saviers is quick to give due credit: “It’s my wife, too,” he adds.