Q: Why are Coastside school board elections so vicious?  A: Because the stakes are so small.

Posted this incorrectly earlier. Starting off on the new article…

Nobody in the CQL etc group has ANY trouble with anything the school Board does or doesn’t do. Way back to Ken and Ruth yelling at people who rose to speak at meetings. It’s certainly OK to have little kids going around handing out literature against Measure D a couple years ago. “Oh isn’t that sweet. Having kids involved in the political process.” No problems with non-profits actively supporting candidates in your slate. No problem with PA announcements at school events. No problem with manipulation of ads in the “paper”. No problem with your Board members threatening to sue themselves.

You certainly seem to have no concern over the huge expense that CUSD and CQL (etc) ran up over Wavecrest. Why not? You can scream bloody murder over that the “legal costs” of the ball field incident that were actually paid by a local citizen, but you think Wavecrest was money was well spent (and not reimbursed) Why is that?

In general, why are you willing to push exclusionist politics over the education of our children?

I guess the bottom line is that “Coastside Community First” is not about the “coastside” community, just your community.

Comment 2 by Barry Parr  on  Nov 09  at  12:54pm  •  All my comments • 

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this piece said that no school board members are residents of HMB. I deleted the sentence because it turns out that one of them lives there.

Comment 3 by Jonathan Lundell  on  Nov 09  at  3:46pm  •  All my comments • 

It’d be one thing if the smears Barry talks about were made in open forums, where the candidate being attacked can respond. But of course they’re not. They’re circulated in closed email lists, by anonymous flier, by whispering campaign, making them impossible to answer.

I predict, though, that the main reaction to Barry’s piece will be assertions that our schools are doing great, and his is an unfair attack on our dedicated teachers and staff.

But of course it’s no such thing, and our schools are doing about average for California, which is very far from great. Even with dedicated teachers and staff.

Which isn’t to say that a local school board can do anything about it….

Just to amplify a bit on Ric’s comment above, for those who may not be familiar with all of the history:

“CQL” refers to Citizens for Quality Living—a pro Wavecrest political action commitee started back around 2002. The membership closely overlaps with that of PCF/CCF today. The name changes but not the political agenda.

“Ken and Ruth” refers to former CUSD board members Ken Jones and Ruth Palmer who insulted and shouted down anybody who disagreed with them at the infamous May 20, 2002 CUSD public meeting (see link to the sanitized description in the HMB Review Article below). Ken Jones was a founding member of CQL

http://www.hmbreview.com/articles/2002/05/29/export22951.txt

Some of the other incidents Ric refers to were:

In 2004, Lew Cohen (then the campaign manager for CUSD candidate John Moseley) had Amity Scholars from the Hatch Elementary Spanish Immersion Program doing precinct walking to pass out campaign materials for Moseley and Charles Gardner. The Amity Scholars program is sponsored by a 501(3)c non profit organization which is not supposed to engage in political activities. The precinct walking continued even after a Hatch parent called Mr. Cohen to point out that it was not appropriate. Oh yeah, at the time, Mr Cohen was (and still is) a member of the advisory board for the Amity Scholars program.

Also in 2004, we had the fake ad in the HMB Review that attacked CUSD candidate Jonathan Lundell. That stunt involved CUSD Board member Jolanda Schreurs, CCWD directors James Larimer and Chris Mickelsen, and the recently elected CUSD board member Kirk Riemer (see link below).

http://coastsider.com/index.php/site/news/326/

Now in 2006, we had Charles Custer, President of the Coastside Youth Organization (also a non-profit organization) sending out emails to the organization’s mailing list that encouraged people not to vote for Pam Fisher. The email read like it was expressing the official viewpoint of CYA—-not the personal political views of Mr. Custer. As a non-profit, CYA in supposedly a non-political organization.

Barry,

Quite understandable that you forgot - uhhhhh, [what’s ‘isname] ! He is our token HMB.

Ken Johnson

I don’t hear anyone griping that El Granada only has 1 “token” board member. And I’m not sure, but isn’t John the only CUSD board member from El Granada in a very long time?

And let’s not forget the period of Ken Jones (HMB), Marina Stariha (HMB? or south), Ruth Palmer (HMB? or south).

Considering that the northernmost board member is the most vociferous proponent of moving the middle school to the south end of town (Wavecrest), I don’t see much point in dwelling on which communities the board members reside in.