Mary Stanton For School Board

Four years ago our community came a few votes short of taking a sharp turn South. In 2006 the Teacher's Association of Long Beach under the direction of then Executive Director Scott McVarish made the decision to take over the Long Beach Unified School District Board of Directors. Determined to win the three seats up for election in the cycle the union board put the TALB into severe debt and ran three candidates for office. In one contest current LBUSD board member David Barton, backed by TALB, defeated incumbent Jim Choura. In another contest TALB managed to get Michael Ellis on the ballot in a race that was vacated by then incumbent Suja Lowenthal as she gave up the school board race to run instead for the City Council seat vacated by Dan Baker. Though not eligible for the ballot because of residency requirements, City Attorney Bob Shannon let him on the ballot anyway. With no opposition Ellis won the election. Ellis subsequently was busted a few times for DUI, almost never showed up for board meetings and was a disgrace to the LBUSD as well as the hard working teachers in the district whose hard earned money went into his campaign.

In the third race incumbent Mary Stanton barely beat the TALB challenger. The race was close and it went to a re-count, paid for by TALB as they tried to squeeze out a third victory and control of the school district. Paramount among their agenda items was firing Superintendent Chris Steinhauser and installing a teacher's union friendly Administration. Thankfully Mary prevailed.

On April 13th Mary will once again face a challenger that is backed and supported by TALB. Jeff Price's list of supporters reads like a Who's Who list of Long Beach Democrats who are tied to public employee unions and not its residents, including 7th District Councilwoman Tonia Reyes-Uranga who is running a write in campaign to retain her seat, and her husband Roberto Uranga who is supported by the employee unions at Long Beach City College. Essentially Price's list of supporters reads like a political insider not a member of the community, someone who will follow the party line and be beholden to public employees' unions and not the residents of his district. It is as if Mary is running against the local Democratic political machine and its allies.

Long Beach Unified School District has seen its revenue from the state decline by over $100 million in the past few years. The LBUSD has not control over its revenue, it is dependent upon Sacramento and is subject to the political process of the state budget negotiations. The results of these negotiations have not been favorable to K-12 schools as you are award. Throughout the declining revenue Mary Stanton has worked hard and honestly with fellow board members Jon Meyer, Felton Williams, David Barton and new comer John McGinnis who replaced Ellis when he resigned.

As President of the LBUSD Board of Education, Mary has led the district through extremely difficult budget cuts and staffing reductions. Holding off as long as possible through the past few years to keep the budget cuts out of the classroom, this year the LBUSD has had to send out notices to hundreds of teachers that they may be laid off at the end of the school year. With the political climate and desire to not cut spending where it needs to be cut in Sacramento it should be expected that LBUSD's revenue will again decline in the coming year. Our district needs experienced, level headed and unbiased leadership to ensure the ability to continue the quality education our children receive.

During Mary's tenure on the Board of Education LBUSD has won the prestigious Broad Award for urban school education excellence and been a finalist several times. Test scores have improved while funding has decreased. Parents of many students graduating from LBUSD high schools save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in college tuition from scholarships and from college credits their children earned through Advanced Placement courses. My kids are in the LBUSD system and I look forward to their continuing through high school receiving excellent education every year.

Mary Stanton is a proven leader, advocate for students, a former teacher who knows and understands what teachers face in classrooms and a solid member of our community.

Disclaimer! Several months ago Mary called me to ask if I would be the Treasurer for her campaign and I readily agreed. I agreed because I respect and admire Mary not only as a member of our school board and the work she has done, but as a person as well. She is honest, she is committed to improving the lives of my children and yours, she is intelligent and she is kind--not always adjectives used for people running for public office. I am proud to be associated with Mary and her campaign and hope you too align yourself with her effort to be re-elected.

I wholeheartedly endorse and support Mary Stanton for Long Beach Unified School District Board of Education in the election April 13, 2010.

Please join me in this support, visit Mary's site (link below) and donate a few bucks for the future of all students in Long Beach and their future. Please, if you are concerned about the future of education in our city do not be a bystander, be involved, donate a few dollars and help re-elect Mary Stanton.

For those in the area Leslie and I will be holding a meet and greet for Mary next Monday, March 22nd, in the late evening at our home. If you are interested in attending please contact me for details.

Mary Stanton For School Board 2010 website.

Price's list of supporters.

DCS03172010

Back To School

Last Thursday our girls, woke up, put on their blue skorts and white shirts and headed back to school. A day filled with excitement, nerves, anticipation and some relief to get started on another year of academic achievement, personal growth and homework.

This year our elementary school campus mirrors many in the Long Beach Unified School District, and other districts across the state, because we have fewer adults on the campus. Adults that used to provide library services, nursing, physical education, instrumental or vocal music lessons, computer instruction, counseling, janitorial services, and teachers aides to name a few. Budget cuts from the district have resulted in staffing cuts on school campuses and principals have juggled what small portions of their budgets they can control to keep cuts out of the classroom and core academic instruction and push the budget cuts into the "ancillary" services.

Long Beach Unified School District, and other districts up and down the state, are cutting their budgets because of the almost criminal budgeting processes that have been overseen by the California Legislature controlled by the Democrats and signed by Governors Gray Davis, another Democrat, and Arnold Schwarzenegger who ran as a Republican. Each of the budgets the past ten years has required anywhere from three to five Republicans to cross party lines to vote for the budget so there is fault on both parties for the obscene give aways the past decade to public employees in the form of salaries and benefits. Those give aways have resulted in take aways from our students. While prison guards have seen their salaries balloon our school has lost its nursing service so for five hundred or more students there is a nurse on campus 1 day a week.

While the Legislature has doubled the spending from the State it has taken billions away from our school districts while increasing the number of mandated programs and services that school districts must offer--whether needed in the district or not. So while the number of staffers who work for the Legislators and their committees who make well over $100,000 a year, plus benefits, has exploded, many campuses across the Long Beach Unified School District have no Physical Education.

Our campus is not alone, our childrens' campus reflects campuses throughout Long Beach Unified School District and up and down the state. District Administrators and principals are making difficult decisions as to who and what must go so our kids can learn the core subjects. In the meantime parents are scrambling to back fill funding for what they consider essential services and prioritizing their fundraising targets.

Last year our PTA was told that Patrick Henry Elementary would not have Ms. Roberts for the 2008-2009 school year. Ms. Roberts runs the computer lab and teaches our children how to use the computers, research on-line, how to do PowerPoint presentations. We asked how much to keep her and were told we would need to raise approximately $60,000 to keep her on campus 5 days a week. We began to fund raise because as parents we consider computer training and instruction in this day and age to be close to a core service. Thankfully we have so far raised funds to keep her four days a week, for this year, but what about next? It led us to establish the Henry Technology Endowment, realizing that funding for computer equipment and instruction would not be coming back to our district and campus in the near future. Why?

Why will we not see money coming back to our districts and campuses to fund and re-start services and programs that have been cut? Because the politicians in Sacramento have no incentive to cut the payments extracted through contracts to SEIU employees or other groups that have contributed to their campaigns and their party. We will not see any change because voters will continue to vote for the same individuals to fill the same seats and when they are term limited out of office you will vote for the person who represents the same party as the last one.

Long Beach Unified School District will find out later today if it will once again win the prestigious Broad Prize for Excellence in Public Schools. Since its inception in 2002 Long Beach Unified has been a finalist for the prize five times, winning it in 2003, including this year. As the Broad committee has observed, Long Beach Unified is an outstanding distrcit. Supervisor Chris Steinhauser, the Board of Education, the principals, the teachers, the support staff, the parents and the students overwhelming make positive contributions to the education of our children. Despite losing tens of millions of dollars in funding from the state budgets the past decade.

Our state collects more and more taxes, our state spends more and more money, our state sends less and less back to the taxpayers' school districts to educate their children. And yet the political intelligence of the California voters is such that they will re-elect again and again the people responsible for this broken budget process that has rewarded the public employees unions at the expense of our childrens' futures. Some would say the politicians actions are almost criminal rewarding political donors at the expense of citizens; I would say the proposed criminal act is with the voters for rewarding them with their votes.

Who are these people? Well for those who represent the Long Beach Unified School District here are the members of the California Assembly and Senate who voted to cut your school nurse, your PE instructor, your librarian, your language arts, your music, your computer lab, your counselor, your science camp:

Assembly:

Bonnie Lowenthal (D) 54th Assembly District (click here for campaign donors)

Warren Furutani (D) 55th Assembly District (click here for campaign donors)

Senate:

Rod Wright (D) 25th Senate District (click here for campaign donors)

Alan Lowenthal (D) 27th Senate District (click here for campaign donors)

Jenny Oropeze (D) 28th Senate District (click here for campaign donors)

Remember these names in 14 months when you go to vote...if you go to vote.

Who are they representing, the list of voters or the list of campaign donors? Who is taking money from your child's school and funneling it to those on their donor lists?

Don't live in Long Beach but want to find out who is responsible for taking funding from your district? Here are links for State Senators and for Assembly Members.

Being a responsible parent also means being a responsible voter, doing homework, studying for the election and doing your best on the final test: casting your votes.

UPDATE: It was announced today that Aldine Independent School District in Texas won the $1 million Broad Prize for 2009. Long Beach Unified School District as a finalist was awarded $250,000 for scholarships. Congratulations to everyone in the District for this accomplishment despite having no support or prospects for future support from Sacramento.

.

LBUSD Special Elections

If you live within the boundaries of the Long Beach Unified School District, particularly District 3, you will see more activity than you are used to on your local ballot in 2010. In April incumbents Mary Stanton and David Barton are up for re-election and there will be an open election, or an election with an incumbent, in the 3rd District--more later. Then in November 2010 voters are being asked to pass a parcel tax of $92 per year for the next five years--yes a tax with an automatic expiration date, unique in California.

There is some tie in between the LBUSD 3rd District elections that may occur and the parcel tax, both are the result of political power wielded by teachers' unions in California. To recap for those not following their local Press-Telegram or the local websites, earlier this month Michael Ellis submitted his resignation effective September 1, 2009, thereby creating a vacant seat on the school board. Ellis has had quite a history in Long Beach. He is the poster boy for the local teachers' union, the Teachers' Association of Long Beach, attempt to take control of the school board and then hire TALB friendly administrators to run the district in a TALB friendly way--forget the children it was about the union controlling the district. As I wrote extensively on the Long Beach Post website, then TALB director Scott McVarish and some members of the TALB board of directors racked up huge debts to fund three candidates in the 2006 elections for the five member LBUSD school board. Ellis, who had a history with McVarish, was moved into Long Beach to run for his seat, it was discovered he moved to an address that was not in a district up for election so he moved again. The residence he established was after the filing deadline for the 3rd District seat, but City Attorney Robert Shannon allowed him to be on the ballot. He was challenging incumbent Suja Lowenthal, who dropped out of the race when the 2nd District City Council seat became open due to the resignation of Dan Baker. Confused?

Ellis won the election with tens of thousands of dollars of money from TALB and its PAC--funds collected by paycheck deductions from teachers. Subsequently Ellis toed the union line as dictated by McVarish and was on the small side of many 4-1 votes. Meanwhile back at TALB headquarters on the corner of Atlantic and Claiborne there was quite a battle going on. The board was fractionalized with President Michael Day leading the pro-McVarish camp and board member Marc Hyatt taking on a leadership role of the anti-McVarish camp. At one point a majority of the board fired McVarish, but TALB is set up in a weird way and a subset of the organization, the site representatives, overturned the firing and McVarish showed back up to work. Aiding in the internal battles and guiding McVarish and Day through the minefields was Long Beach 5th City Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske who was the on staff legal counsel.

It turns out the anti-McVarish camps did the right thing by firing McVarish for financial impropriety. The local was taken into trusteeship by the California Teachers' Association and an audit was performed. Having read the several hundred page document, if anyone wants a gander let me know, it was evident that financial controls were either not in place or ignored during McVarish's tenure as Executive Director. The CTA trustee dismissed McVarish and many of us in Long Beach thought, hoped, that it would also mean the end of Ellis on the school board. Without his puppet master and mentor around, not being a resident, having what appear to be extensive personal issues and battles to focus on, the assumption was he would resign. Instead he just stopped showing up to meetings. So for more than a year the families and residents of the LBUSD 3rd District have been unrepresented on the school board due to the failure of their elected representive not attending meetings.

Now LBUSD has some legal work to do. With the seat vacant they must call an election date within 30 days of the election, which gives them until the end of September to annouce the election for the seat. The election must then be held within 120 days of the announcement, which if made on September 30, 2009 means the election must be held before January 28, 2010. However if the election is within 120 of a scheduled election, which is April 13, 2010, they can forego the election; 120 days before April 13th is December 14, 2009. Doing all the calendar math it appears that the District can save about $200,000 for a special election for a seat that will be held for a few months--but I am not an attorney and it could be that a special election will have to be held.

An issue with a much larger fiscal impact than a special election to fill the 3rd District seat is also on the election calendar. In July the school board passed by a vote of 4-0 (guess who was absent...right! Ellis) to put on the November 2010 ballot a parcel tax that would add $92 per year to the annual tax bills of the residential property owners within the district's boundaries. It is expected the parcel tax if passed by two-thirds of the votes will generate approximately $11 million during the five year period. The funds will be used to fill the huge holes in the LBUSD budget because of the inability of Sacramento Legislators to properly control the education funds paid to them by the tax payers. While some in the community are complaining that the LBUSD must "live within its budget" the problem is LBUSD has lived within its budget, has cuts tens of millions of dollars out of its budget since 2003, and its budget is pretty much set by Sacramento, not just in revenue but also its expenses by dictating programs to which LBUSD must dedicate funds.

LBUSD, like many districts across the state, are in financial straits because of dedicated funding of programs by state mandate. Sacramento controls how much of our property taxes, income taxes and sales taxes are sent back to our school district, then tells our school district what that money must be spent on--with little to no knowledge of our district and its needs. So in reality our school board and Superintendent become handcuffed when it comes to budgeting for our district and often their job is what needs to get cut because of the mandated program funding, much of it not needed in our district.

Where do these mandates come from? Legislators and policy wonks within the Department of Education. When it comes to the members of the Assembly and State Senate with our gerrymandered districts all a candidate needs to do to gain office is to win the primary in his or her district. If you are a Democrat in Long Beach, or most of Los Angeles, or San Francisco, or most of the districts in the state, and want to be a member of the Assembly just win the primary against other Democrats on the ballot and you are virtually guaranteed election to Sacramento. To win your primary you need money, to get the money you need to make sure you agree to follow the needs of your donors if (when) you get elected.

Guess who spends millions of dollars up and down the state on primaries and elections for members of the Assembly and State Senate, virtually every campaign dollar being spent on Democrats? Guess who as part of the quid pro quo knows they will have friendly meetings and access to politicians shaping education policies and programs in the State. Guess who probably has more control of the education budget in Long Beach than local officials? If your guess was either the California Teachers Association or the California Federation of Teachers you get a point, if you guessed both you get a bonus.

TALB's attempted takeover of the Long Beach Unified School District in 2006 was a local union with aggressive, and somewhat out of control, leadership following the game plan enacted by its parent union, a game plan that has been active and working in California for many years. By finding and financing local candidates friendly to the unions' wants and needs and guarantees of funding for future campaigns, our teachers up and down the state are giving a few dollars out of every paycheck, every pay period to build a huge political warchest for CTA and CFT. Those funds are then used to influence, perhaps actually write, education policies that are then mandated back to the districts. The school districts then have little to no operating room in their budgets.

And when Sacramento cuts funds for school districts because of its complete failure to honestly budget for education, health care, infrastructure, and public safety, our kids suffer and our future suffer. And when teachers hold huge protests against the cuts I just shake my head, knowing those same teachers holding the signs deriding politicians in Los Angeles or Sacramento, bought and paid for the elections of those in the majority in the Assembly and the Senate--they got what they paid for: short-sighted policies that create imbalance in the budgets and programs that have finally broken.

There is a connection between our vacant 3rd District seat in Long Beach and the lack of funds for schools in San Diego, Los Angeles, Fresno, Inyo County and Riverside. The connection is the power wielded by the teachers' unions in controlling our budgets and education policies. It is my hope that Long Beach and other districts throughout the state are able to regain control of their budgets, of their programs and allow the local voters and local leadership determine the course of their schools for their children.

Long Beach Unified School District Superintendent Chris Steinhauser writes here of the need for local control. If you support his position please let him know and vote "Yes" on November 3rd on the parcel tax for local schools.

.