Team backs three local school board candidates
By JOHN F. MULLER Special to the Daily Press
MID CITY — With local election campaigns heating up, a group of teachers and faculty announced Monday it will endorse three candidates for the upcoming school board race.
Santa Monica’s Education Team was formed earlier this year to back candidates for November’s election for both the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District School Board and Santa Monica College’s Board of Trustees. The group will endorse SMMUSD board incumbents Jose Escarce and Maria Leon-Vasquez, and newcomer Kathy Wisnicki, a Malibu parent who has been active in school and city politics. Mike Jordan, the third incumbent up for reelection, will not run because of health reasons.
The team last month announced it would endorse Doug Willis and Susan Aminoff for the SMC Board of Trustees.
While teachers and faculty members have traditionally voiced support for candidates in the two races, they have never unified to back candidates as strongly as they have this year. Previously, the district’s teachers association and the college’s faculty association gave endorsements separately and waited until the fall before the election.
The joined efforts of the two faculty groups will include campaigning, fundraising and voter outreach activities, team spokesperson Kelly Hayes-Raitt said. She attributed the combination to the activism of an outraged SMC faculty that had lost confidence in its board of trustees after the board cut eight vocational programs at the college last year as a result of cutbacks by the state. That activism enlisted the support of the local teacher association, which has long been trying to establish a professional working relationship with the board of education, said Jenny Lipson, a teacher at Grant Elementary and chair of the SMMUSD teacher’s association’s political action committee.
“We’ve joined so that both professional associations can elect board members who are pro-student, pro-academic and pro-faculty and teacher,” Hayes-Raitt said. “We really felt that Santa Monica voters should really hear from the people in the classrooms dealing with the decisions these officials make.”
Wisnicki beat out retired teacher Jim Jaffe and Pico neighborhood activist Ana Maria Jara among others for the team’s endorsement. Wisnicki has been on the district’s financial oversight committee for seven months and a group of other education related committees. Wisnicki chaired the campaign for Measure S last year, which will bring $6.5 million annually to the schools through a $225 parcel tax. She said her experiences in research methods and applied statistics by getting her doctorate in education would allow her to process large amounts of information and use them to improve the schools.
“I will serve as a liaison between the two cities to broaden communication between them,” she said. “I will work to improve special education and work to make more efficient use of the limited resources we have.”
Wisnicki also spoke on the importance of closing the achievement gap and identifying those students with special needs in the district. This will be her first time running for public office.
Leon-Vasquez, who didn’t get the endorsement of the teachers association when she first ran for the local school board four years ago, said she’s proud of the board’s performance over her term and hopes to continue fighting for the inclusion of all students.
She said she will continue pushing for the creation of a seventh house at Santa Monica High School, which she said needed improvement in including all students. The six-house system at Samohi divides students into different “houses” in an effort to create smaller communities within the high school and provide students with more personalized instruction.
Leon-Vasquez said her track record will make her attractive to voters.
Escarce was unavailable for comment because of a family emergency. He said in a statement that he hopes to devote more attention to special education and improve programs and achievement among disadvantaged students.
In addition to Escarce, Leon-Vasquez and Wisnicki, Jara has taken out papers from the city clerks’ office to run for one of the three seats open on the SMMUSD school board.
Incumbent Margaret Quinones leads a list of candidates who have taken out papers for the SMC board of trustees that includes Charles Donaldson, Tonia McCoy and Rob Rader in addition to Willis and Aminoff.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 20, 2004. Read the original PDF.