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# Our community deserves better
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/our-community-deserves-better-editor/
- Published: 2008-08-27T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T20:51:20.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By Craig Hamilton Santa Monica*

A recent issue of your paper contained a report on the late support that Jose Escarce received from the Santa Monicans for Renter’s Rights (SMRR) Steering Committee. It is important that readers understand that this support from the Steering Committee came after membership failed on three separate votes to support Escarce’s endorsement.

In your article you quote Patricia Hoffman, a member of the Steering Committee saying “One of the things that I have rarely seen in an elected official is that he (Jose Escarce) realized that one of the positions he held for while was actually wrong, and he publicly apologized”

When did Escarce actually change his position on Special Education? And do we have confidence that he believes he was wrong, and will behave differently in the future? He has said, as an apology “if” anyone was hurt by his previous decisions, but only when humiliated into doing so by the City Council and the Barber Report, and then pushed the idea of “not dwelling in the past” and “not placing blame” almost as soon as the report was presented. He now says he wants to be “an even better” school board member than he has been.

But, significantly, he has not reached out to the district’s board-appointed Special Education District Advisory Committee (SECDAC) or the general Special Education community to give them confidence that his damaging positions and actions of the last four years have changed.

Ms. Hoffman, and the Steering Committee should do their homework, and see whether candidates, particularly those not supported by the membership, are actually doing what they say before overruling the general membership. Overruling a democratic process continues the experience of marginalization that is the very reason the special education community sought the help of the City Council when the SMMUSD Board of Education, with leadership from Jose Escarce, failed to protect the rights of our most needy students.

Hoffman’s comments reinforce the belief in the Special Education community that our concerns continue to fall on deaf ears. Escarce long supported a closed door, failed policy of coercion and intimidation implemented by the district’s administrator, Tim Walker, that skirted federal law and has put increased city funding for our schools at risk.

Holding Escarce accountable for those actions is reasonable, and the community should understand these actions as they make choices in this fall’s election. Unfortunately that ability to choose was significantly diminished with last weeks’ withdrawal of Judith Meister, leaving only newcomer Chris Bley as an alternative to the four remaining candidates supported by SMRR.

I would hope that the leadership of SMRR, collectively and as individuals, would take the time to learn in depth the issues before speaking or taking positions that marginalize the rights of our community members, or support positions posited by candidates that are not supported by the record or action of those same candidates.

Our community deserves better.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 27, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/082708.pdf?ref=smdp.com)