[Editor’s Note: On Sunday morning at 10:30, Madeline and Paul Ehrlich, Britta and Goran Eriksson will host a meet ‘n greet to support the School Board candidates Anne Burke and Scott McVarish. It will be at the Ehrlich home, 11472 Diller Ave.]
Fellow taxpayers, we attended the School Board candidates’ forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters at City Hall. There are three candidates for two open seats. For the last two years, by far the most important issue has been the passage of the bond. In June, 2014, it was approved by three-quarters of voters.
The bond measure allows the School District to spend $106 million to upgrade health and safety conditions to protect our children and employees and to upgrade infrastructure, including modern infrastructure technology. We taxpayers pay for this and interest through real estate taxes. This means nearly a quarter billion dollars we must pay out of our pockets.
As taxpayers, we were eager to learn what the candidates had to say and what they would do for the decisions that need to be reached now that the District has access to all that money.
Anne Burke and Scott McVarish:
- Supported, endorsed and proudly voted for the Bond.
- Have been actively working with the School District for the last two years in the bond sub-committee meeting.
- Interviewed the principals and staff at all school sites about each school’s condition.
Anne pointed out that the deadline for decision-making is fast approaching. Choosing contractors, architects, making District-wide construction standards, issuing competitive contracts are examples of informed Board decisions. She said that major work must be done in June, July and August of 2016 while the schools are closed. She promised to work closely with the Division of State Architects in Sacramento to shorten the approval process.
What came out of the forum shows that Kelly Kent is well formally educated, sincere and well meaning. Scott and Anne pointed out, however, that Kelly Kent:
- Never supported our bond measure.
- Did not endorse our bond measure.
- Did not vote for our bond measure.
- Never went or participated in any bond subcommittee meetings, Bond Advisory meetings or Bond Oversight meetings.
None of her campaign literature even mentions the bond.
As in all prior forums, the question came up, “What is the role of a School Board member?”
We were expecting the standard memorized answer from all three candidates:
Making and reviewing policy, working with the superintendent, negotiating salary and work conditions with employees, budgets, and spend a large amount of time working on bond decisions. Instead Kelly declined to answer this fundamental question and passed. Kelly had a second opportunity to explain the role of a School Board member, but failed to follow up.
Fellow taxpayers, in choosing a candidate for School Board, should you trust Kelly Kent or any candidate to spend our quarter billion tax dollars wisely? Can we allow her possibly to delay making critical and urgent decisions because she has not taken the time to be informed?
Ms. Ehrlich is a former School Board member and Mr. Ehrlich is her husband. They may be contacted at PMSHA@aol.com
Mrs. Erlich,
The most important issue the district needs to focus on is student achievement. The bond issue is obviously resonating with certain members of the community who have apparently found fault with how quickly the projects in the Master Plan are being completed. Yet, as everyone knows, these types of sweeping projects take time and dealing with state agencies can be a long drawn out process. As we have suffered through heat waves the last few summers, there has been more and more talk about installing air condition in the classrooms. The district purchased air conditioning units for every classroom this year, but they have not been able to cool down the classrooms as effectively as we would have liked. It is a step up from the large fans the district purchased last year, of course, and some people are now calling for the installation of air conditioning with bond monies.
But, take a moment to think about how much money we will realize from our bond. Balfour-Beatty identified $165 million dollars in projects through-out the district that needed to be done. When surveyed, the taxpayers would only agree to an increase in their property taxes that would support a $106 million dollar bond. We are already $59 million short of what we originally needed. I believe that there is an additional $30 million in “soft costs” that will be subtracted from that, so we now have $76 million to spend. I have heard that the cost of installing centralized air conditioning throughout the district could be as much as $40 million. That doesn’t leave us with much to spend on all of the other health and safety issues that have been identified…let alone the completion of the field or the Robert Frost auditorium. When Ms. Burke and Mr. McVarish talk about the bond and putting air conditioning in the classrooms, I think they are unaware of the numbers game we’re playing and simply telling everyone what they want to hear. I get it…I work in the district and I see how the students and staff suffer for the two months of the year that things are unbearable, but these candidates shouldn’t be making promises to us that they can’t deliver.
Yet, with all this talk of the bond, we are losing sight of what should be the most important issue of this campaign. It’s the one that Kelly Kent seems to understand the best because it is clearly her area of expertise. How children learn and how we can deliver curriculum in a way that our children will understand it needs to be THE critical focus of this district now…NOT how fast we are spending the bond money! Talk of more academies at the high school level doesn’t solve any of the problems we are seeing with children at the elementary level that are having difficulty mastering basic concepts. And with all of the changes in curriculum this year, we need to keep our eyes on what’s important and focus on student success–NOT who supported the bond, who didn’t, who voted for it, who didn’t, who went to meetings, who didn’t, who endorsed it, who didn’t, who has it in their campaign literature, who doesn’t…COME ON!! Could we possibly BE any more petty and misdirected than that?
Sincerely,
Debbie Hamme
Hello taxpayers and voters in Culver City,
I also attended the League of Women Voters Forum that Madeline is referring to but I had a very different impression of what happened there.
I heard Scott Mc Varish make a strong case for why the Board of Education should principally be focused on administering the Bond, and not on instructional issues. In fact when he was asked what the primary concern was for teachers, he suggested that it was air conditioning.
The reality is that earlier that week, the teachers had endorsed Kelly Kent, not him. This tells me teachers understand that the role of the School Board is not, as Scott suggests, to delve into the minutiae of Bond projects. If it were, only facilities management professionals should run for the Board.
Teachers understand that while adequate facilities are critical, what happens inside the classroom is the business of the District. They understand the School Board must focus on making sure the District is supporting teachers to make sure instruction is constantly improving.
Parents are concerned, mostly in those few weeks at the start of the year, that our children remain comfortable despite the heat. But after Back to School night and by mid October, we want to make sure the focus is on teaching and learning.
Parents and teachers want to make sure that the Bond is used to meet as many of the needs–in all the schools–that were already identified through the needs assessment process. Changing course, spending the majority of our bond funds on air conditioning for every school would be prohibitive and reckless. As tax payers, we must make sure that we elect Board Members who are committed to investing our bond dollars prudently.
Ms. Hamme and Ms. Vizcarra already addressed the bond issued discussed at the League of Women Voters forum.
I would like to respond to Mrs. Ehrlich’s comment about Dr. Kent choosing to pass on the question about “What is the role of a school board member?”
In Mrs. Ehrlich’s own words, “We were expecting the standard memorized answer from all three candidates.” Ms. Burke and Mr. McVarish spent some of their limited, valuable time during the forum to answer this question. Dr. Kent tactically decided to not spend her limited, valuable time on a standard, memorized answer. Instead, Dr. Kent chose to address another issue which she believes is important for our community to hear, about ensuring a diversity of voices on the School Board.
It’s also worth noting that at the very end of the forum, Ms. Burke had time left on the clock to talk about anything she wanted. She chose to pass.