And we think WE have problems!

This morning’s LA Times (Westminster School Board) presents the latest installment of the ridiculous and disconcerting Westminster School District (WSD) saga—a saga that, in many ways, parallels our own ludicrous epic.

For reasons that remain unknown at least to the Times, two members of the WSD board (James Reed and Judy Ahrens) opted to change their votes a week after voting to offer KimOanh Nguyen-Lam the district superintendent gig.

There’s talk of a lawsuit. (For what purports to be an eyewitness account of the board meeting, go to Orange Juice, May 31. Be sure to read the comments, too.)

The Times hints at a possible motivation for the vote change:

In a city whose population is predominantly Latino and Asian but whose power structure is largely white, the vote to rescind the job offer split along ethnic lines: The two board members who remained backers of Nguyen-Lam are Latino, and the three who voted to withdraw the offer are white.

That doesn’t look good.

The Times rightly characterizes the WSD as in “disarray”:

Four of its top five administrators have quit in the last year, including the superintendent, Sheri Loewenstein, who announced her resignation after only 16 months. Teachers have been working without a union contract since September.

Two years ago, the tiny district, which serves about 10,000 students in Westminster and parts of Huntington Beach, Garden Grove and Midway City, narrowly averted the loss of millions in federal funding after dropping a fight with the state over extending protections to transsexuals and others in its antidiscrimination policy.

Back in November (Fuentes World), we noted that the WSD is one of three county districts that have been burdened by an incompetent right-wing majority:

Perhaps you know—and perhaps you don’t—that there are three notorious right-wing “Board Majorities”[BMs] among OC school districts. [Tom] Fuentes, being the sort of guy he is, has hovered in the background, and sometimes the foreground, of all three. They are: (1) the Orange Unified School District “Board Majority” (which was offensive enough to be successfully recalled in June of 2001), (2) our own SOCCCD “Board Majority” (which was much dissipated by the inclusion of Bill Jay and the awakening of Nancy Padberg), and (3) the notorious Westminster School District “Board Majority,” which has taken aim at laws requiring fair treatment for gays. (Re Fuentes and the OUSD Board Majority, see OC Weekly, 12/28/01)

Mark Bucher was the Orange Unified BM’s attorney—yes, he quit his contractor's business in favor of the law in 2000—but he was quickly fired after the BM was replaced. Later, he became the Westminster School Districts BM attorney.

These guys sure do get around!

Bucher was among the founders of Education Alliance, the Christian right organization that, along with the then-corrupt Faculty Association, brought us Wagner and Padberg back in 1998. (EA's seed money came from Howard Ahmanson, a Fuentes crony.) These days, Bucher is the treasurer for the OC GOP.

—You know, the group that Fuentes chaired for 20 years.

(One of Bucher's two partners in Education Alliance was Frank Ury, who is now Mayor pro-tem of Mission Viejo. Check out his blog: Frank Ury's Mission Viejo Blog. Evidently, Ury's an Ayn Rand fan!)

“HUNG JURY” for Saddleback student, anti-Minuteman protester

As you know, Saddleback College student Kurt Isobe has been on trial here in Orange County. During an anti-Minuteman protest a year ago, he allegedly threw objects at police.

Local activist Duane J. Roberts has sat through the entire trial.

Here’s Duane’s report from today:

“HUNG JURY” FOR ANTI-MINUTEMAN PROTESTER

An Orange County jury deadlocks on three charges; issues “not guilty” verdict for two others.

By DUANE J. ROBERTS

SANTA ANA, CA—A mixed race, predominantly female jury deadlocked 10-2 and 9-3 in favor of an anti-Minuteman protester who was violently arrested by Garden Grove police on the night of Wednesday, May 25, 2005.

Kurt Isobe, 19, of Laguna Niguel, was one of three hundred people who attended a protest against Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist, who was speaking at a meeting of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform in Garden Grove.

During three days of testimony, two police officers accused Isobe of throwing two objects at police during the demonstration. They claimed they saw him throw a “golf ball sized” object and a “red soda can” toward a police skirmish line.

But a crime lab technician testified that no fingerprints could be found on any cans. And numerous witnesses, including some who accompanied Isobe to the demonstration, stated that they didn’t witness him throw any objects at the police.

The jury "hung" on three charges of felony assault against a police officer and obstructing an officer in the performance of his duties. They found him “not guilty” of lesser charges of assaulting a horse and wearing a mask in the commission of a crime.

A hearing will be scheduled later next month to determine if the Orange County District Attorney’s Office will retry the case against Isobe. Attorney David Haas, Isobe’s counsel, was unavailable for comment at the time this report was written.

[We’d like to thank Duane for his permission in using his piece.]

Trustee SPANKY on your right to “pack a gun.” —Plus our district’s lovely “renaissance”!

People who seek political office often leave quite a paper trail.

Take Don Wagner, the perpetually peevish and prickly SOCCCD trustee. Two years ago, he ran for a seat in the State Assembly, 70th District. (See map.) Wagner poured forth an impressive amount of verbiage during that campaign. (He lost, receiving 15% of the vote among several candidates.) It is archived by “Smart Voter” --Wagner for Assembly.

Much has happened in the past two years. Back in 2004, Bush and all things Bushy--you know: our Iraq adventure, sending people abroad to be tortured, assaulting civil liberties--were riding high, but now, well, not so much. Back then, the “illegal immigration” issue was on the back burner. Now, its hot, hot, hot.

It's fun to look back at what people said before things started changing.

If you go to the above site, you'll find much Wagnerian verbiage. In a lengthy essay entitled “Five Things I Will Do in Sacramento,” trustee Don displays his Libertarian tendencies, as when he argues that

The legislature must recognize that parents know best how to raise their children, and that parents care more for their kids than do bureaucrats. I will ceaselessly work to … free parents to educate, discipline, and instill values in, California's children. I will not support any piece of legislation that undermines parental authority and control over their children.

Unsurprisingly, Don embraces “local control”:

As a local government official, I know that local governments are closer to the people they serve, know better the problems of their local jurisdictions, and can best respond flexibly and appropriately to solve those problems. They should be empowered by Sacramento, not stripped of power, money, and authority….

Don rails against “Phony ‘Civil Rights’ Laws” that protect “cross-dressers” and laws that “harass the Boy Scouts.”

“I will not sit quietly,” he says. “I will oppose further enactment of the liberal agenda….”

Wagner’s answers to a campaign questionnaire are sometimes interesting. “What,” he is asked, will he “do to stop illegal immigration and its economic effects in California”?

“We should deport illegal aliens when and where found,” says Don. As you know, President Bush offers a very different answer.

Don’s a great believer in guns. In fact, in Don World, the good guys oughta have more of ‘em: "I would try to greatly expand the right of law abiding citizens to carry weapons.”

Greatly expand? I do believe Don wants us to wear holsters, boots, and Stetsons!

Like many conservatives, Wagner is especially concerned about the specter of homosexuality. He is definitely against sex education and the promotion of the “pro-homosexual agenda” in public schools.

At one point, Wagner is asked, Do you support same sex marriage? He offers a snappy answer, sure to annoy:

"Then it isn't ‘marriage,’ now is it?"

I like Don, but he just doesn't get how annoyed at his audience--and thus annoying--he often seems.

In the questionnaire, Don again emphasizes the value of local control. And so he supports the “right of communities to require curricula with greater studies of”—are you ready?—here goes:

The U.S. Constitution, the role of religion in American life, traditional values, honest U.S. history, the founding fathers in greater dimension tha[n] mere "slave owners," appreciation for the cultural and political traditions of our country, patriotism, gun safety[.] [He says “yes” to the preceding.]

Don’s a great one for discipline. "Corporal punishment in the lower grades works,” he asserts.

Ouch!

Spanky--er, Don--sees himself as a Warrior. Is there a culture war in the U.S. today? “Yes,” says Corporal (and corporeal!) Don. If so, then “What side are you on?”

His answer is a tour de force:

"I am on the side that thinks ‘under God’ belongs in the pledge of allegiance and that it's all right to wish people ‘Merry Christmas,’ but that free speech does not include burning the flag or dancing in the nude.

"I am on the side that did not scoff when Ronald Reagan spoke of a ‘shining city on a hill’….

"On my side of the culture war, mom and dad and kids…are esteemed such that public policy is made first and foremost to protect them.

…"I believe public schools should be permitted to give out aspirin, but not condoms, and that bananas belong in the cafeteria, not in ‘health class.’

…”I am on the side of the culture war that believes Teddy Kennedy should do time for Chappaquidick and that Bill Clinton should do time for Juanita Broderick, perjury, illegal campaign fund raising from China...

"My side of the culture war thought that the first term of the Clinton Administration was … a disaster. There was nothing to like about his positions on gays in the military, nationalization of the health care industry, opposition to welfare reform that took a Republican Congress to finally achieve, …the incineration of children in Waco, …stonewalling on Vince Foster, missing Rose Law Firm billing records, … sale of the Lincoln Bedroom, ad nauseam.

…"Those on my side of the culture war believe that with rights come responsibilities, and that you have a right to build on your own property even if a snail darter or some such endangered vermin happens to live on it, a right to pack a gun, and the right to live free of an oppressive nanny state. You also have a responsibility to care for yourself and your family, and to exhaust every effort to do so before asking the government for a handout. Personal responsibility and self reliance [sic] are more highly regarded on my side of the culture war than are feelings and groupthink.

"My side of the culture war laughs at the hypocracy [sic!] of the left when it says we care about children only until they are born, when in fact it is our side that also opposes euthanasia, the left's creeping culture of death, the killing of Terry Schiavo….”

Don’s not finished! In a “separate statement,” he explains that

…I have volunteered for the GOP for years, ...served on a legal committee to stop liberal election day shenanigans…I was also the founder of the Orange County Chapter of the Federalist Society, a nationwide organization of lawyers, law professors, and judges. The Federalist Society has now replaced the leftist American Bar Association as chief outside advisor to the Bush Administration in its nomination of federal judges.

Near the end of this statement, Wagner touches on his role as Savior of our district. Ready?

When I was elected to guide a troubled college district, its finances were under State scrutiny, enrollment was flat, accreditation was in jeopardy, and campus dissension was widespread. Today, all that is past. The district's finances are robust. We are building new facilities without tax increases or incurring bond debt. Accreditation has been reaffirmed. Enrollment is up. Hard work, a commitment to educational excellence, and fiscally conservative leadership have led to a district renaissance.

—A renaissance? A freakin' renaissance!! I DON'T THINK SO, DON.

(All emphases added.)

College bound--without a High School diploma

There's an interesting article in today's New York Times concerning the growing phenomenon of students going to college without High School diplomas: Going right to college

Some excerpts:

...[M]any colleges — public and private, two-year and four-year — will accept students who have not graduated from high school or earned equivalency degrees.

...This year [in California], 47,000 high school seniors, about 10 percent of the class, have not passed the exit examinations required to graduate from high school. They can still enroll in many colleges, although they are no longer eligible for state tuition grants.

State Senator Deborah Ortiz, Democrat of Sacramento, has proposed legislation to change that.

"As long as the opportunity to go to college exists for students without a diploma," Ms. Ortiz said, "qualifying students from poor or low-income families should remain entitled to college financial aid."

Many community colleges and two-year commercial colleges take these students, as do some less selective four-year colleges. At Interboro Institute, a large commercial college in Manhattan, 94 percent of the students last year did not have a high school diploma. Yet most received federal and state financial aid, up to $9,000 a student for the neediest....

Padberg update

In case you missed it, on Friday, the OC Register ran an update on fundraising and spending of candidates in next week’s OC elections.

As you know, our own Nancy Padberg, an attorney, is running for Superior Court Judge (Office no. 4). She’s running against Shiela Hanson, a Democrat who nevertheless is endorsed by the Republican DA, and Lyle Robertson, a Superior Court Commissioner.


As you can see (see Reg graphic), Nancy has attracted a respectable amount of money for her campaign, even compared to Hanson. (I’m assuming it is not her own money.)

I’ve been told—it sounds plausible—that, if no one receives a majority of votes during the primary, then there’ll be a runoff. In that event, if Padberg chooses to run, she cannot also run for trustee.

Me Israelite

Get up in the morning, slaving for bread, sir,
So that every mouth can be fed.
Poo------r
Me Israelite. Aah.

1. The great Jamaican singer Desmond Dekker has died, in England, at age 64.

His song "The Israelites" (1968) was my introduction to reggae. Yours, too, I'll bet.

I was just a kid. The song annoyed me. A few years later, I loved it. People don't change, I guess, but their ears sure do.

I recall seeing Gus Van Sant's wonderful Drugstore Cowboy (1989). At one point in the film, we hear "Israelites."

At that moment, swoonage is inevitable.

2. Enron

For a delicious recounting of Mr. Bush's relationship with Enron, go to the Center for Public Integrity website (Enron Backgrounder)

Have I mentioned that the President is a rat bastard from Hell?

3. Hastert and Fuentes

C’mon, reach over mama,
An’ hand me my travelin’ shoes
I want you folks to know right now,
I’ve got the Statesboro Blues

Yes, my mama had ‘em,
My sister had ‘em
My brother had ‘em,
My daddy died with ‘em

When I got up this morning,
The family had them weary blues…
I poked my head down in the corner, an’
Grandma had ‘em too

—from David Bromberg’s Statesboro Blues

Speaking of delicious, here's a tasty schadenfreudular factoid. As you know, Dennis Hastert appointed our man Fuentes to the EAC. That's just swell.

Recently, ABC News reported that Mr. Hastert is among those being investigated by the FBI with regard to the Abramoff corruption scandal. The Justice Dept. denies this. ABC is thusfar sticking to its guns.

In any case, here's the factoid: the day after Abramoff pleaded guilty (in January), Hastert gave to charity $60,000 in campaign contributions given to him by Abramoff's clients.

Give me back the hat I bought you, the big umbrella
Give me back the shoes, I want the dress ‘an
--Ah, if you don’t like your daddy, woman
You’ve got no right to stand and squall

Gimme back the wig I bought you
Now that your goddam head go'd bald

Hey, I did more for you woman, away last winter
I suffered through the summer, an’ I scuffled through the Fall
--I done more for you woman than
The good Lord ever done

Hell, I put hair upon your head, an’
You know, he never give you none

4. Flake bombs

In today's edition of What's New, Bob Park reports:

The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), one of the countless independent, nonprofit, public policy research institutes in Washington, reported last week that the Pentagon will spend $30 billion on classified programs in FY 2007.

Why? In a new book, Imaginary Weapon: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underworld, Sharon Weinberger peeks behind the curtain at hafnium bombs, "remote viewing," telepathy and all the rest and concludes secrecy is mostly to avoid rational oversight.

D'oh! I'd rather pay for John Williams' Orlando junkets than for this nonsense!

For a rational discussion of "remote viewing," go to Remote viewing

Explaining Babs Beno?

Back on the 9th, the Berkeley Daily Planet published an article, "Accrediting commissions provokes critics", that might help explain “Babs” Beno’s curious behavior last month.

Babs, of course, is the president of the Accrediting agency, ACCJC, a division of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC).

Last month? Well, despite several public displays of trustee contempt for the ACCJC and its recommendations (No, it's macromanagement!), Babs declared that she saw "a lot of progress."

Listen:

(Babs' "progress" remark comes at the beginning.)

Progress?

Evidently, our trustees listened closely to Babs' baneful babblery. They're feelin' mighty relieved about now. Those of you who attended Monday’s board meeting probably noticed the absence of any mention of the ACCJC's recommendations, which have occupied this body for months. It’s like the whole accreditation worry has magically disappeared! Poof!


What gives? Well, Babs and her close ACCJC associate Debora Blue are in retreat. Turns out they're in dutch with some districts, in part because the ACCJC’s harsh actions against those districts looks like payback. Here are some excerpts of the Daily Planet article:

A statewide education revolt is growing against the agency that accredits California community colleges in part because of recent actions the agency has taken against the Peralta and the Compton Community College Districts.

Linda Handy, the president of the Peralta Board of Trustees, said that ACCJC operates “without a lot of oversight,” and said that the accrediting organization backed off of its warning to pull the Peralta colleges’ accreditation only under the threat of a discrimination lawsuit by Peralta.

And Michael Mills, the president of the Peralta Federation of Teachers union, says that the leading administrators of the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) have a vendetta against the Peralta college district, and that the ACCJC is “operating like a star chamber” with a “process that is out of control.”

The top two staff members of the ACCJC are former Peralta staff members who reportedly left under less than amicable circumstances. ACCJC President Dr. Barbara Beno is a former president of Vista College in Berkeley (now Berkeley City College). The ACCJC Vice President, Dr. Deborah G. Blue, is a former president of Laney College in Oakland.


…[T]he ACCJC commission is largely a self-appointed body, with the commission chair holding the power to appoint three of the seven-member body that selects commission members.

Last March, that led the California Federation of Teachers [the teachers union that competes with CTA] to pass a resolution at its annual convention calling the ACCJC “a private organization that is accountable to no one it serves” and charging that the organization “often causes colleges to implement changes that reflect the current biases of the accreditation team.” The CFT resolution called on the California Community College System Office and “other appropriate bodies” to “investigate the operations of AACJC-WASC and consider possible alternatives for evaluating and accrediting the state’s community colleges.”

A spokesperson for the CFT said by telephone that the “other appropriate bodies” was meant to refer to the state legislature.

Late last month, the California Community College Academic Senate passed a resolution “in support of the [CFT] and other . . . bodies who have expressed their unhappiness with the ACCJC,” and joined the call for an investigation into alternatives to the organization.

Representatives of the ACCJC could not be reached in connection with this article.

The lengthy article goes on to explain that ACCJC’s troubles began with its harsh action against Compton Community College in August of 05. Initially, in view of the very real problems at Compton (concerning trustees and top administration--fraud and corruption), State Chancellor Mark Drummond stepped in, replacing Compton’s trustees with a single state trustee.

Oddly, that was not enough for the ACCJC, which pulled Compton’s ticket anyway.

That led to the AFT and State Senate resolutions.


As near as I can tell--based on conversations I've had over the last year--the problem here isn't simply that ACCJC does not respond reasonably to meaningful efforts to fix what is broken. The problem is also that ACCJC takes harsh action against colleges that are working at the level of instruction--and that's what they're there for--but not at the level of administration or trusteeship. You know, the "Raghu" and the "Terrible Tom & Dandy Don" levels.

Why, some ask, are faculty and students made to pay the price for the failures of others—i.e., trustees, presidents, and chancellors? Why should a college that essentially works be shut down owing to the abject pinheadery of overseers? Surely, there is a better way to handle these situations!

You'll recall that the ACCJC had nothing but good things to say about instruction at Saddleback and Irvine Valley colleges. As far as teaching goes, our colleges are tops!

The Chancellor and trustees were another matter entirely. They suck, or so said ACCJC. Untl last month.

Evidently, a year before the Compton ticket-pulling, the ACCJC issued warnings against the four Peralta colleges. According to a Peralta official, the colleges were placed on warning status “because of unfunded medical liabilities by the district, for ‘micromanaging’ by the district board, and for not having a strategic plan.”

Micromanagement. Inadequate planning. Those are issues for us, too.

“None of these were accreditation standards,” said the official (according to the article).

Further, many community college districts are burdened by unfunded liabilities, but only Peralta was dinged by ACCJC on that score.

Even after a majority of Peralta trustees were replaced in elections, the “micromanagement” warning stood.

What's a college to do?

According to at least one Peralta official, the reason for all this is that Beno and Blue, who come from the Peralta district, have axes to grind.

You’ll recall that, during the time that our own SOCCCD board battled with ACCJC/WASC, a similar conflict of interest objection was raised re the involvement, in the accreditation process, of a former president of Saddleback College, Constance Caroll.

No doubt, our trustees are crowing about this Accredular brouhaha. ACCJC is retreating because it's been bad. Nya nya nya nya nya!

But let's not lose sight of the real issues in our benighted district. Sure, at the instructional level, our colleges work. Just like always. But micromanagement, inadequate planning, and a "plague of despair" are genuine problems, whether or not they are listed among the ACCJC/WASC's standards.

And whether or not the people who run ACCJC are real a**holes.


P.S.:

I went to lunch with my best friend today. I told him about the above. I said, "So the watchdog shot himsef in the foot. --No, that ain't right. What's the right metaphor?"

After about three seconds, my friend said: "The watchdog has chewed off his balls."

I rejected that one. "I can't write that," I said.

But now I'm thinkin' that, really, it's spot on.

I can't help it if these people do something to themselves as awful as that!