Despite the failure at the ballot box of the PUSD Districting Task Force's attempt at ethnically profiling the Pasadena Unified School District's Board of Education last month, Ken still feels he has a lot to say about how things should be run there. Why he continues to believe so being a bit of a mystery since he has caused so much harm already. You'd think the world would have heard enough from him by now. But Ken carries on, as evidenced by this letter published yesterday in the Pasadena Star News:
To the incoming Pasadena Unified school board: Very soon after you are installed, you will be confronted with a significant decision of whom to appoint to fill the remainder of Kim Kenne's at-large seat. I understand that there is a desire to select a Latino/a for that seat given that there will not be Latino/a representation during that period. I agree with that approach, but I would have you weigh things carefully and I would advise against selecting Ramon Miramontes for that spot. Reasons?
- Ramon has been the most divisive figure on the board, bar none, in recent years. He has attacked fellow board members, threatened PUSD volunteers (including me) and is not a collaborative person. You don't need that.
- Ramon has made nothing but enemies in the rest of PUSD's community. He has angered other public officials and has not shown any interest in truly working with other entities to help the kids of this district. You don't need that.
- Ramon claims to represent the Latino community yet he has not supported one Latino person for a local election unless they had the last name Miramontes; not for council, not for school board and not for Assembly. His interests are his own, not the community. He wants to run for City Council. You don't need that.
What you need is a balanced and thoughtful person who has no political agenda (how about not selecting someone from districts 2, 4 or 6 to avoid that issue?) and who has truly spent time in the community and can make good use of the two years. That is what you need. I urge you to think carefully ... and pick what the district needs.
You know what? Ramon Miramontes, if chosen to fill Kim Kenne's at-large Board of Ed seat, would be just about the closest thing Sierra Madre will have to a representative there until 2015. He consistently opposed Ken Chawkins's redistricting schemes and the theft of our Board of Ed vote. Ramon has also been a strong advocate for the rebuilding of our Middle School. Something we've paid out the nose to have done with our Measure TT bond money, but the PUSD has somehow very consistently failed to honor. Despite its repeated promises to do so.
Here is a passage from a Brian Charles penned Pasadena Star News article ("Measure A fallout fractures PUSD" click here) that sheds a hot light on the sad pique of Ken Chawkins:
Measure A will convert the Pasadena Unified School District from its current at-large system to a subdistrict format for the future election of board members. The process has fueled a contentious argument over the adoption of subdistricts and more specifically the subdistrict boundaries. School board members accused the redistricting task force appointees Wednesday of drawing those lines to improve their own political fortunes.
"Those maps are for the benefit of Ken Chawkins and others on the task force like Chris Chahinian," PUSD board member Ramon Miramontes said. "If Ken Chawkins, Chris Chahinian or someone in the Armenian Coalition runs for school board, we'll know the maps are self-serving."
Chawkins ran for school board nearly a decade ago and lost; Chahinian launched a failed attempt to win a seat on the City Council. Redistricting task force member Roberta Martinez ran an unsuccessful campaign for school board in 2007.
That is the real rub for Chawkins. Ramon Miramontes has previously been elected by the people to serve on the Board of Education. Chawkins, on the other hand, ran and was beaten badly. Ken instead gets his authority now from intrigue riddled political pressure groups such as ACT, a reactionary clique that has proven to be no friend of Sierra Madre.
Apparently Mr. Chawkins feels that the Board of Education should do what his Districting Task Force failed to accomplish, put someone on the Board that supports his own politically inspired agendas. An ideological persuasion the voters overwhelmingly rejected when they went to the polls last month.
That is, of course, those voters who were actually permitted by Mr. Chawkins and his Task Force to cast a vote. A preferred group that did not include us.
So exactly how bad was the failure of the Chawkins chaired PUSD Districting Task Force to accomplish its ends? Wayne Lusvardi, writing for CalWatchDog (click here), a site that all dedicated Tattlers read often, has penned an excellent article that speaks in part to this matter. Here is Wayne's expose' in its entirety:
Gerrymander backfires on Dems in Pasadena - Gerrymandering is a strategy to manipulate political district boundaries to split the voting population in favor of the group in power. But sometimes gerrymandering is subject to the Law of Unintended Consequences and results in the opposite of what was intended.
An example is Pasadena Unified School District’s Measure A, Formation of Geographic Sub-Districts Pasadena Unified School District, that passed with 54.5 percent of the vote on June 29, 2012. As reported in the Pasadena Sun newspaper, Measure A was intended to generate greater low-income Latino representation on the Pasadena School Board.
Measure A ended at-large voting by all voters in the school district for school board members. Nomination and election of board members would be by geographic sub-districts only. The sub-districts would be adopted by the School Board and redrawn after each U.S. Census, based upon recommendations of a Citizen Redistricting Commission.
However, what happened in the very first election under the new law, on April 16, is that Pasadena ended up with no Latino representation on the School Board. This was the result of an unexpected combination a Latino board member in District 5 deciding not to run for re-election; and the failure to elect a Latino in a heavily populated Latino District 3 under the new law.
Ruben Hueso, a Democratic-Party candidate, failed to get elected. Yet he enjoyed a $30,000 campaign war chest for a runoff election from donations by state Sen. Kevin DeLeon, D-Los Angeles; former Assembly Speaker Fabio Nunez; and state Sen. Ben Hueso, D-San Diego, Ruben’s brother. Ruben Hueso also garnered endorsements from almost every liberal elite in town.
Possibly contributing to Hueso’s defeat was that the local teachers’ union, the United Teachers of Pasadena, pulled their endorsement of him for unexplained reasons just before the election.
Republican broad public interest politics won
In ultra-liberal Pasadena, Hueso lost to a most unexpected candidate: a Republican in the construction business who had a campaign fund of $10,000: $5,500 from his construction business and $4,500 from small contributions. His name is Tyron Hampton, Jr.
Hampton attributed his election to senior citizen turnout in his new district. He ran on a platform of developing innovative solutions to school district budget shortfalls. Hampton is married to Tara Gomez, PhD, an alumnus of UCLA and Cal-Tech.
The turnout for the runoff election was only 10.7 percent of all registered voters. Hampton got 904 votes (61.5 percent) compared to 590 votes for Hueso (39.5 percent). But how did Hampton win when even Republicans initially opposed Measure A?
Republican Bill Bibbiani, a former Pasadena Unified School District administrator and School Board member, opposed Measure A on the grounds it would “result in a style of racially oriented, ward-based, ‘what’s in it for me’ politics and politicians.”
What resulted, however, was the opposite: the candidate who appealed to the broader public interest — rather than racial or ethnic politics — won. Gerrymandering gave a Republican candidate an opportunity to win that would have been unlikely in school district-wide election in a Democratic Party stronghold.
The Democratic candidate lost in part because of using gerrymandering tactics that narrowed the numbers down to fewer voters; and narrowed the election issues down to symbolic ethnic identity politics that had nothing to do with the concerns of senior citizens and property owners in the newly carved out district.
Maybe the senior citizen voting block that put Hampton in a seat on the School Board didn’t want racial identity politics, but a public school system that didn’t have to ask taxpayers for more money to meet budget shortfalls.
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