Protecting “life as we know it”: Groundhog Day

[Scariest OC people #3] We keep explaining to anyone, including The New York Times, that OC’s reactionary rep is outdated hooey. But then the Weird Sisters of the Westminster School Board come along.

Roll call! Helena Rutkowski once said school libraries have too many books on Judaism.Judy Ahrens calls the teachers’ union “Communist” and talks about how her “rewards are going to be great in Heaven” by defying state law. And Blossie Marquez-Woodcock...has offered varying accounts of phony educational degrees before finally admitting all her degrees are from now-defunct, unaccredited ministerial colleges.

It all came to a delicious gestalt in March, when the Sisters refused to allow the district to pledge...against discriminating based on one’s perceived gender. The decision nearly cost Westminster $40 million in state and federal aid, but Ahrens justified it on her website by claiming “the legislative gay agenda . . . shortens the lifetime for the average male to 34 years if he becomes gay...just to get that tiny 1 percent vote of the gays the liberals have legislated a shortened life span for your child by approving an alternative lifestyle that is poison.” (OC's Scariest People, 2004) OC Weekly

Lately, I’ve monitored the ongoing Westminster School District (WSD) Ridiculosity. The WSD’s board achieved national laughingstockery a couple of years ago when it took a fatheaded and self-destructive right wing stand against a policy concerning gender orientation. The Fuentes crowd was involved in that one, of course, just as it was involved in the Orange Unified School District's right wing ridiculosity (which led to a successful trustee recall election).

Now, the board has drawn attention to itself with regard to its efforts to hire a superintendent. The Board first hired then, a few days later, inexplicably unhired Kimoanh Nguyen-Lam, a seemingly well-qualified person of Vietnamese descent who appears to have the support of many in the diverse WSD community (Caucasians are a minority).

Now the community is upset. A lawsuit is likely.

On Sunday, the Times provided a helpful recap of The Westminsterian saga (Westminster School District Lives in a Furor), which, as I’ve suggested previously, parallels SOCCCD's travaillery, what with its right winged wacko trustees, its precipitous descent into mediocrity, its endless instability, its capacity to generate embarrassing media circuses, etc.

Owing to my experiences with the sometimes superficial (albeit sometimes excellent) news coverage of our own travails, I’m not entirely sure that we know, based on newspaper accounts alone, what’s really going on in the WSD. Times and Register reporting paints a portrait of incompetence and chaos, stemming largely from the Neanderthal right wingedness of the WSD board.

No doubt, that's largely true.

The teachers union is not usually portrayed as a contributor to the Schweinerei. But, according to Orange Juice’s designated right winger—Art Pedroza—the latest WSD FUBARery can indeed be attributed to the teachers union (the WTA) and its willingness to do whatever is necessary to secure a favorable contract.

Sound familiar?

On Saturday, Pedroza offered the following report (Something Stinks in Westminster):

Inside sources tell me that the problems at the Westminster School District stem not from Kermit Marsh, the conservative Westminster council member who allegedly advised one of the school board members to pull her endorsement of Kimoanh Nguyen-Lam, but rather with Janet Brubaker, the president of the Westminster Teachers Association [WTA]. She is well known for her stand against the school board, in 2004, in favor of a uniform complaint policy that gave protection to students and staff based on gender orientation.

The WTA has already endorsed a slate for the fall including Jim Reed…, a cop named Bridgewater, and a third person—all are Caucasian candidates. Bridgewater is the husband of the PTA president who supports the union.

My sources tell me that the WTA, in endorsing Jim Reed, a Republican who caters to the WTA, is showing its true colors. They cannot say that they are neutral with regard to Nguyen-Lam, and that they support the community.

I believe that their real concern lies with their concerns about a new contract. They will do whatever they have to in order to take control of the board and get the contract they are looking for…. [My emphasis throughout.)

Pedroza seems to embrace a view provided to him by like-minded “inside sources.” It’s hard to say how reliable he and his account are.

But, especially given our own district’s history, the "corrupt union" interpretation is at least plausible.

So maybe we’re seeing the 1996-1999 SOCCCD Unprincipled Unionist Occupation, mutatis mutandis.


O HERE'S MY POINT. I am continually amazed by the short memory of SOCCCD denizens. Some battle will be fought--over, say, how to respond to violations of faculty rights, or, say, how best to approach the upcoming trustee election--and then, a few years later, the battle will be fought again, but with zero recognition that we’ve been through this before and that costly & important truths were then revealed.

That's when the Twilight Zone theme starts playing. Or maybe the Groundhog Day theme.

Let’s remember just what happened a decade ago. A small group of greedy and unprincipled and secretive faculty sought control of the Board by any means necessary, including support of right winged wackos, such as the Holocaust Denying Steve Frogue, the sleazy John Williams, and, a bit later, the acutely anti-faculty and anti-union Don Wagner, Nancy Padberg, and Tom Fuentes. (Maybe Padberg's improved since then.)

I recall a meeting—9 ½ years ago—in which the Faculty Association president was asked to explain the organization’s unprincipled tactics. We asked: How can you defend using a deceptive and homophobic flier? (See The homophobic flier.) How can you defend supporting a Holocaust Denier? How can you defend installing a slate of conservative anti-union Republicans?

We did all that--especially resort to the flier--she said, to protect “life as we know it." She repeated those words as if they were magic. "Life as we know it." Shazzam!

Some of us were upset by this answer. Some of us were not upset! That's pretty upsetting.

Face it: our current plight is, without doubt, a residue of that disastrous Old Guard victory of 1996. Protecting “life as we know it” by any means necessary has given us a board that hates faculty, a board that can't be got rid of for as long as Mr. Connected is around. (Maybe.)

So when you run into Mike or Sherry or Sharon or Raghu or Patrick or Curt or any of the rest, be sure to express your appreciation of history. Say: THANKS FOR THE MASSIVE & INVETERATE DISTRICTULAR SHITULOSITY.

And when somebody like me or Reb or Red comes along and insists on reminding you of events of the past decade, please don’t complain that that’s “old news” or that we’re just “complaining again” and “being negative.” No, that’s not it at all.

You know the Santayana quotation.

OK then.

(For a brief account of SOCCCD history in the last decade, go to Dissent's Very Short History of the District's Troubles.)