Fresno School Board Bloc Fails to Serve

School Board Bloc Fails to Serve
Fresno Unified Students Need Effective Representatives, Not Rubber Stamps
By Larry Moore

The first round of absentee ballots for the fall election will arrive any day now. Unfortunately, when it comes to deciding on candidates for the Fresno Unified School District Board of Trustees, most voters will be unaware of just how high the stakes truly are.

They'll be ignorant of the people who behind the scenes are grasping for control of the state's fourth largest school district. They will not have heard of the neo-con money lined up behind seemingly progressive candidates.

Well-intentioned, responsible citizens are at risk of voting for people who have abandoned the interests of our community's working families. These unsuspecting voters will have been led by people and organizations they trust into support for a hidden agenda of union-busting, privatization and profit.

Missing from the hidden interest agenda are the most important items of all: our children, their education and their future.  

Pushed away from the table of decision-making are the people most central to the lives and education of Fresno children: their parents and teachers, plus librarians, nurses, custodians, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, office clerks, school secretaries and more.

 Majority Bloc

 The hijacking of local public education began more than four years ago when local conservatives led by Fresno Mayor Alan Autry formed a coalition with "business Dems" led by then-County Supervisor Juan Arambula, now serving in the state assembly. They formed the political action committee "4 Voices for Education." For 2006 the Autry-Arambula effort has been renamed "Voices for Excellence in Education."

 But whose voices do they truly represent? Unfortunately, all too often in politics nothing talks louder than money. The group raised more than $250,000 from a mix of local and out-of-state backers in 2002 (see Bizarre Bedfellows below).

 Of their slate, three were victorious: Richard Johanson (Sunnyside High), Luisa Medina (Edison High) and Tony Vang (McLane High). While their fourth candidate Joseph Penbera lost to Pat Barr (Bullard High), once on the board Barr quickly joined their ranks. Johanson retired less than two years into his four-year term and the open seat was won by non-slate candidate Valerie Davis in 2004. Rounding out the board are Carol Mills (Fresno High), Manuel Nunes (Roosevelt High) and the Autry-backed Janet Ryan (Hoover High).  

A ruling majority has emerged on the school board, led by Autry slate candidate Medina , now in her second year as board president. She is backed by Ryan, Nunes and Barr. Fellow slate candidate Vang broke away early in his term when he refused to support cuts to music, libraries and nurses. It appears he is the primary target for removal in 2006 by Autry and Arambula..  

Barr, meanwhile, proudly touted Mayor Autry's support for her when she announced her reelection bid this July. "Those people who put people up against me are now with me," she told The Bee (July 23). Of course they are. Barr was school board president in 2004 and led the way on needless cuts to elementary school music programs, libraries and school nurses, and she hasn't stepped out of line once.  

The split in the board became very apparent last year when Mills sought to become president for 2006-07. Having served as board clerk the preceding year, according to the board's past practice Mills was in line to become president.  

But Mills is an independent thinker critical of top-heavy administration, placing her firmly out of sync with the ruling bloc mentality. The majority kept Medina in control. Valerie Davis, who nominated Mills for board president, has now been targeted for removal, too.  

The ruling bloc's first major action was to remove former superintendent Santiago Wood. They did so quite generously with a $500,000+ buyout of his contract, plus lifetime health benefits. They next hired Michael Hanson, a 39-year-old assistant superintendent from Elk Grove , Calif. , with no experience at the head of a school district. His starting salary and benefits top $280,000 annually.  

The mindset of the board majority appears to be one of blind faith in all of Hanson's actions. They apparently see their success as tied to his. The result is a staff-driven process in which board members are expected by their backers to rubber-stamp his decisions.  

This is a very undemocratic approach for any elected body to take, and it poses a direct threat to the quality of education offered to Fresno Unified's nearly 80,000 students.  

Bureaucratic Excess  

Despite volumes of positive press from local media, the truth is that Fresno Unified has embarked on an all too familiar "solution" to over-crowded classrooms, aging facilities and precipitous dropout rates -- they're hiring more administrators.  

For this school year alone Hanson, the latest in a long line of would-be district saviors, has increased the administrative budget by 16%, a record-setting one-year increase.  

Schools throughout the district are seeing additional vice principals and program managers. Meanwhile, students and teachers continue to jam into over-crowded rooms. Special education programs continue to be undercut by mismanagement and lack of instructional aides.  

The ranks of non-teaching staff have been further inflated through the creation of dozens of math and reading "coach" positions throughout the district; these are teachers who monitor other teachers rather than working directly with children. A true coaching program can be beneficial; however, teacher-coaches from throughout the district report they are being required to perform administrative functions.  

But it's at the very top of the administrative food chain where the grossest inequity is to be found. The combined salaries of the district's top seven administrators, Hanson's "leadership team," now exceed $1 million annually. In addition to Hanson's $280,000 "package," other top administrators earn in excess of $165,000 every year.  

The school board's controlling majority is also backing Hanson's direct assault on parent and teacher involvement. He is attempting to override the state-designated powers of School Site Councils. These councils were established in California law in 1988. Every school in the state has a democratically elected body of parents, teachers, other employees and -- at high schools -- students.  

At schools eligible to receive federally funded "categorical" monies -- dollars designed to reach classrooms of low income students -- these councils are supposed to decide the spending priorities for their school. Much of that money has been siphoned off by the superintendent.  

The site-based decision-making that is supposed to occur has been usurped by Hanson, and by extension the board majority. Instead of following state law, he and his leadership team huddled behind closed doors for weeks last summer and emerged with their one-size-fits-all Site Plan for Student Achievement. Plans combining various schools are allowed only if the schools have agreed to coordinate, usually to pool their resources, but the superintendent has imposed his plan on the entire district.  

Rather than seeking to implement much-needed reform of the failure of the district to effectively reach out to parents and teachers through the site council process, Hanson seeks to cut them out of the process entirely. The Fresno Teachers Association has filed a "uniform complaint" with the State Department of Education in an effort to force Hanson and the school board to follow the law.  

Duck and Cover  

And where has the school board's controlling majority been through all of this? Perhaps the most accurate image is that of a Cold War duck-and-cover drill -- hiding beneath their desks, or in this case behind the dais.  

Those board members who dare to break ranks and challenge any action of Superintendent Hanson are bullied by fellow board members, political backers and The Fresno Bee. For example, voters can anticipate receiving an anti-Vang mailer featuring a recent Fresno Bee editorial criticizing Vang's lone vote against the hiring of Kurt Madden as chief technology officer (Trustee Votes Wrong Way, Sept. 15, 2006).  

Vang dared to object to Hanson's failure to follow the board's directive regarding applicants' need to be highly qualified, which Madden clearly is not. Ironically, the Bee immediately slapped Vang as supporting a return to "mediocrity." The paper's editorial writer chose to overlook the fact that Vang was striving for a higher standard.  

Vote for Change  

There are thousands of people in Fresno Unified who work directly with students as teachers or who support them as librarians, nurses, custodians, cafeteria workers, bus drivers, office clerks, school secretaries and more. They are the voices the Autry-Arambula board members seek to silence and strive to ignore, regarded as mere front-line workers.  

But the elected member-leaders have met and interviewed all of the candidates running for school board. These workers represent the real voices of Fresno . Their children attend the schools in which they work. They know firsthand what's not working in the district and have myriad suggestions for improvement. Their quality of life is largely determined by the people who sit on the school board.  

So, which of the Autry-Arambula "voices" have the support of the front line workers at Fresno Unified?  

None.  

From the Fresno Teachers Association and Service Employees International Union, to the California School Employees Association and the Central Labor Council, not one of the Autry-Arambula slate has been endorsed by a single union -- not Medina , not Barr, not newcomers Hornbeck or Parker.  

The candidates to have been endorsed by the working families of Fresno are Michelle Arax-Asadoorian, Valerie Davis, Cal Johnson and Tony Vang.  

(Editor's note: Fresno Unified trustees are elected on at-large basis. While they must live in the area they represent, everyone living in the entire district casts votes for all of the races.)  

Computer science teacher Larry Moore is president of the Fresno Teachers Association.

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Related story:  

Bizarre Bedfellows
By Larry Moore

A look at the campaign contribution records of the mayor's 2002 "4 Voices for Education" school board slate reveals some very ugly money. Major local contributors include the usual dominant forces of land, developer and building interests. For example, the so-called Citizens for Housing Opportunities is a Fresno-based building industry political action committee that in recent years has backed right wing politicians such as Phil Larson, Nathan Magsig and Ken Steitz.

The slate's list of financial backers seems strange enough when the above folks are combined with the likes of Washington-based New Democrat Network and Assemblymember Juan Arambula. But it takes a turn toward the bizarre with the addition of its out-of-town backers. Joining Arambula in the slate's $5,000 club are three of the most pro-free trade, anti-public sector forces at work in our society today.  

John Birch Society, Cato Institute

According to Wayne Madsen's "Another Oily Tie That Binds: Koch Industries" (Feb. 2002, CorpWatch.org), "Through the years, Koch Industries has had a close relationship with various right-wing causes. Fred Koch, the founder of the privately-owned company, helped to establish the John Birch Society. Koch Industries is also a major contributor to the right-wing 'libertarian' Cato Institute, a Washington think tank.

 "In 1996, Koch brothers Charles and David, the current co-owners of the company, set up one of the first soft money organizations that ran 'issue-oriented' commercials against Democratic candidates. They were thus able to funnel money to GOP candidates in order to get around campaign spending limits. This was a tactic that Bush used successfully against his primary opponent John McCain and presidential opponent Al Gore."

 Maquiladora Sweatshops

Emerson Electric appears on the short list of the top Fortune 500 countries cited by The Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras report "Making the Invisible Visible: A Study of Maquiladora Workers in Mexico - 2000" (New Study: Mexicans Unable to Live on Sweatshop Wages, Jan. 2001, CorpWatch.org).  

"In community after community, maquiladora workers can afford only to live in make-shift houses without water, electricity, and to even talk about nutritious diets for themselves and their children is a luxury," stated Ms. Martha Ojeda, a former maquiladora worker, now executive director for the Coalition. "They work long, productive hours for the world's biggest corporations and still cannot provide the most basic needs for their families. They cannot even afford to consume the items they produce.  

"This is a violation of Mexican worker's human rights and of the Mexican Constitution that guarantees a living wage. The foreign-based corporations that benefit from free trade have a moral obligation to pay their workers a sustainable living wage. Even though workers realize that they take a big risk in organizing independent unions, still they challenge the system because it is the only way to improve their working conditions and standard of living" (emphasis added).  

Mickey, Tobacco & Guns

In his March 2005 article "The Media Lobby," Alexander Lynch (AlterNet, CorpWatch.org), describes how the Washington lobbying firm Verner, Liipfert, et al, earns its money.

"Walt Disney (ABC) and GE share the lobbying firm Verner, Liipfert et al, with insurance agencies such as Aetna Inc., the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation, the New York Stock Exchange, PhRMA, General Motors, the tobacco industry's Philip Morris, the richest in the banking industry Citigroup, and weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon, Harris Corp. and the infamous Carlyle Group," writes Lynch.

 Reagan Chief of Staff

Just to round things out, there's $1,000 donor Steven Champlin of The Duberstein Group Inc., Washington, D.C. Russ Baker wrote about the firm in his article "The Top 10 Corporate Democrats-For-Hire" (Aug. 2006, AlterNet, CorpWatch.org).

The firm's president Michael Bergman, reports Baker, "is a former chief of staff to President Reagan. Firm clients have included Comcast (nation's largest cable operator; uses aggressive anti-union tactics; trying to block cities from providing cheap wireless internet access; censored political issue ads it didn't like); DeBeers (hired to protect the interests of the huge international diamond mining/trading company as Congress considered legislation that would strengthen bans against the sale of so-called 'conflict diamonds' that fund civil wars in parts of Africa);... and something called 'Americans for Accountability' (lobbying disclosures for this 'accountability' group say it is interested in educational reform but unaccountably does not show up in article database searches or search engines.)... the Business Roundtable (big business super-lobby; goals include social security privatization, elimination of class action suits, and opposing mandatory reductions of greenhouse e emissions)."  

Fresno Business Council

When all was said and done four years ago, the 4 Voices PAC had $21,500 left over. In late 2003 they gave all of the money to the Fresno Business Council as a contribution to the "Literacy Initiative of the Collaborative Regional Institute."    

Mayor's Slate 2002

Major Contributors  
$10,000
The New Democrat Network
Washington , D.C.

$5,000
Arambula for Supervisor

Citizens for Housing Opportunities
[Building Industry PAC]

Koch Industries
Wichita , KS

Lyles Diversified
Fresno , CA

Robert McDonald
Emerson Electric, Washington , D.C.

John Merrigan
Verner, Liipfert et al
Washington , D.C.

$3,000
Al Galvez
Pacific Gas & Electric, San Francisco

Klein Financial Corporation
Fresno , CA

$2,500
California Real Estate PAC

$2,000
Richard Johansen

Source: Recipient Committee Campaign Statements, Fresno County Clerk 's Office