By MY WRITE BY BILL BAUER
College and school board races are real yawners this year because everybody’s saying they want to “improve the educational experience.”
The candidates for four Santa Monica- Malibu Unified School District Board seats include incumbents Oscar de la Torre, Emily Bloomfield and Shane McCloud. Meanwhile, Kelly McMahon Pye, Barry Snell and Sidonie Smith are the challengers.
Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights endorsee de la Torre created a furor in April 2005, when, after days of disturbances between black and Hispanic students at Santa Monica High School, he arrived on campus uninvited with a reformed gang-banger in tow. de la Torre told this newspaper (April 23, 2005, Page 1) that they were there to steer students away from gang activity.
Unfortunately, this “bad timing” only ratcheted up tensions, especially among the black students. According to news reports, de la Torre refused to leave when asked to do so by police. For this reason and because of de la Torre’s poor judgment and confrontational style, including the ongoing head-butting with the Santa Monica Police Department, he won’t get my vote.
Barry A. Snell comes loaded with endorsements from SMRR, the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce and Community for Excellent Public Schools. But, according to this paper (Sept. 28, Page 1), he’s on professional probation for practicing public accountancy with an expired license.
Snell then bounced a check written to pay the $2,500 fine, continued to practice accountancy without a license and failed to obey all federal state and local laws relating to accountancy, according to the California Board of Accountancy web site www.dca.ca.gov/cba I’m surprised that SMRR, the chamber and CEPS, who actually announced their endorsement after this hit the news, haven’t withdrawn their endorsements. I had high hopes for Snell, but this level of irresponsibility is beyond a “simple mistake”and doesn’t bode well for a man (or his endorsees) who wants to oversee a hundred million dollar school district.
For the most part, school board candidates are oblivious to fiscal prudence in a district rife with waste and top heavy with high-salaried administrators mostly brought aboard by former superintendent, John Deasy.
Who to vote for? Throw a dart.
The Santa Monica College District Board of Trustees has incumbent and current board chair Nancy Greenstein running along with newcomers David Finkel, a retired judge and former City councilman; Andrew Walzer, a SMC professor; and Susanna Kim Bracke, a financial advisor. Others vying for the four seats are Louise Jaffe, known locally as a “Lifelong Learning” advocate, and Tom Donner, former SMC Chief Business Officer and two-time interim Superintendent/President.
Hands down, Donner’s 30 years in SMC administration more than qualifies him for the board. But, Donner has some enemies. The SMC Faculty Association bargaining unit that is behind Friends of Santa Monica College obviously has an ax to grind.
Their recent mailer sandbagged Donner with accusations of locking students out of class,running a $60 million deficit,terminating vocational classes,mismanagement and other half-truths and outright lies. However, most of their complaints actually resulted from cuts in state funding beyond SMC’s control and occurred under former SMC President Piedad Robertson’s watch three years ago.
The SMC professors and counselors quoted in the mailers got it wrong. Honesty in education? Haaa!
Then there’s SMC Board Chair Greenstein, who this past May proposed that a vacant multimillion dollar college property at Pico Boulevard and 14th Street be utilized for housing for young adults transitioning out of the adjacent YWCA’s foster care program — a function totally unrelated to SMC’s academic mission.
If elected, will Greenstein and fellow SMRR-endorsed candidates Finkle, Walzer and Jaffe be pushing the old SMRR social agenda of affordable housing on campus, nonacademic related services, improved benefits and higher pay for a faculty already among the highest paid of all the community college districts in the state?
As with the school board candidates, promises of an improved academic experience and a better SMC abound. Unfortunately, nobody’s even talking about curbing SMC growth, which is the major community concern.In fact,most candidates, especially Louise Jaffe, want to expand college enrollment, programs and activities.
“Bigger” doesn’t necessarily mean “better,” but it surely means more students, development, traffic and congestion with no end in sight. So voters, you’re on your own here, too.
Heaven help us all.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 23, 2006. Read the original PDF.