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| Bingo. |
Having often observed the results of this longterm process (so to speak) myself, I can only conclude that the legendary real people apparently don't read very much. Or they don't read the Pasadena Weekly. Something that might also explain the sidewalk success of the picture rich Pasadena Outlook. Not that I revel in that sort of thing, mind you.
Anyway, one of the topics that enchants the still wheezing progressive rump represented by the Colemanian remnant is packing the Pasadena Board of Education with what are nostalgically referred to as minority members. Even though Latinos represent the largest student population bloc in the Pasadena Unified School District and, as early as next year, will be the overall majority population in the entire state of California as well. Something that is going to turn a now weary world view upside its head once certain folks get around to grasping the significance of it all. Which, based on past performance, will likely be about a decade or so after the fact.
As an example of the Colemanian redaction in action, here is a sample of the rich harvest that was published in the Pasadena Weekly on Valentine's Day of this year:
Making the grade - Minority candidates poised to take on incumbents for new school district seats (link): Should two of three incumbent candidates lose re-election on March 5, minority officeholders for the first time could hold a majority of votes on the recently reconstituted Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education.
Seven minority candidates — four Latinos and three African Americans — are running for four vacant seats, three of which are occupied by white incumbents seeking re-election.
The emergence of Latino and African-American candidates is a result of the district’s going from at-large elections, in which each voter was able to cast ballots for all of the candidates, to district-only or neighborhood elections in seven districts.
The change, approved by a special task force hoping to stave off potential lawsuits that might be filed against the district under provisions of the California Voting Rights Act, was later approved in June by 54 percent of voters in Pasadena, Altadena and Sierra Madre, the three communities that make up the district. The 2001 Voting Rights Act prohibits “racially polarized” elections that impair the election of minorities.
None of that quite happened as planned, of course. The incumbents all handily won their races for re-election, deeply confounding the old white guys responsible for this so-called "subdistricting process." These being a rather effete folk who somehow believed that in certain districts the plurality of minority voters would only vote for minority candidates. Which, technically, they did when they elected incumbents in those areas. But I digress.
So that was then, and now I probably shouldn't gloat anymore. Today we find ourselves in an entirely different predicament, though equally odd in a way that the PUSD does better than anyone else. Let us peer into the Colemanian cranium for a brief overview of this latest woe offensive.
Filling the void - Pasadena school board set to review applications for district’s open at-large seat (link): The Pasadena Unified School District Board of Education will begin screening applications next week in hopes of filling a two-year board vacancy, a byproduct of the decision to change elections in the Pasadena Unified School District from at large to districts.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the six sitting board members will begin poring over 38 applications for the seat left open by Board member Kim Kenne’s decision to leave that post and seek a four-year term in her newly created District 1. Board members Ramon Miramontes and Ed Honowitz did not seek re-election in March, and Tyron Hampton won the April runoff for the new District 3 seat. With incumbent Board members Scott Phelps and Elizabeth Pomeroy winning re-election in their respective districts, and Board President Renatta Cooper and Board member Tom Selinske still serving their previous terms in Seats 4 and 6, respectively, one seat remains open.
From the pool of candidates for the job, board members will select eight names for consideration and rank them in descending order. The top three rankings will receive four, three and two points, respectively, and the remaining five will each receive one point.
After all of the points are added, the top-ranked applicants will be interviewed by the board early next month. From there, board members will once again rank their choices until someone is chosen. The at-large board member will serve until the seat, along with the two remaining seats — 2, 4, 6 — sunset in 2015
“Hopefully we will have some consensus or commonality on the top six to eight candidates and then they will be invited back for interviews in June,” said Cooper. “I am hoping we will be able to reach clear consensus. I know there are people who are trying to organize to push for an election, which would be very expensive, and most likely voter turnout would be very low and take money away from the kids."
Yes, there are some exciting commonality themes that do need to be discussed here. One being that the Board of Education had promised all of those brave souls who stepped up and declared themselves candidates for appointment to this "at large" seat a fair share of time to discuss their bad selves before the six remaining Board of Education members. It looks now as if that may be in doubt. A potential bait and switch that, if true, is certain to have at least 30 of the applicants scratching their heads in chagrin.
Another concern going around is what the criteria will be for weeding out the vast majority of these candidates and choosing what Renatta Cooper happily refers to as "the top six to eight candidates." For some insight into that issue we dip back into Colemania for this insight:
Not for sale - Underdog Tyron Hampton easily wins District 3 school board seat (link): Hampton’s victory leaves the school board without an elected Latino board member for the next two years, despite the work of a special task force, which did away with Pasadena Unified School District’s at-large voting system and divided the school district into seven neighborhood voting districts in order to increase Latino representation on the board. The change was made to stave off potential lawsuits that might be filed against the district under provisions of the California Voting Rights Act, which prohibits racially polarized elections.
Although Latinos make up about 61 percent of the district’s student population, over the past four years there has been only one Latino board member, Ramon Miramontes, who did not seek re-election in March.
The board could still end up with Latino representation if board members appoint a Latino member in June to fill the at-large seat vacated by Kenne, who, following implementation of the district-only voting system, opted to run for the District 1 seat instead of finishing the remaining two years in the at-large seat she won two years ago. Longtime Board member Ed Honowitz decided to not seek re-election, leaving one seat open.
So is it possible to assume here that we are being told that the main criteria for making it into the final eight (or six) next Tuesday will be Latino ancestry? I believe so. Based on some of the statements made by Board President Renatta Cooper, that could very well be the case. Here is one of them from an unattributed PW article:
Calling all candidates - Five political hopefuls — none Latino — vie for open Pasadena School Board seat (link): "I believe the school board should be representative of the constituency served by the school district,” said School Board President Renatta Cooper. “With that in mind, given our demographics, clearly we need Latino representation at the school board level, at least one person.”
Now there are people whose opinions I respect that strongly believe Renatta Cooper is engaging in a form of progressive racism by making such a statement. That race should be the reason why someone is appointed to this at-large Board of Education seat, rather than talent or experience in that line of work, has some folks decidedly put off. Especially when you consider that race could very well have been why the PUSD Districting Task Force ripped off Sierra Madre's voting rights in last March's BOE election.
However, I have a moderately different take on this. The current six members of the Board of Education are split into two equally divided camps. One faction, led by Scott Phelps, takes a more pragmatic approach to running a school district, and is more apt to exercise fiscal constraint when it comes to spending the taxpayer dollar. Given the depressing fate of Measure TT's bond sale millions, I'd say there are some good reasons for supporting this viewpoint.
The other faction, led by Renatta Cooper, seems to believe that the PUSD should become an appendage of the social equity delirious ACT crowd. The notion being that public schools shouldn't serve merely as places where children go for an education, but also as shining beacons of hope where the world gets saved from its many evils, and on a regular basis.
Attempting to save the world in this way being a very expensive, and almost always futile, proposition.
The so-called "subdistricting process" was, in my opinion, never really about gerrymandering racial equity. Rather it was a political race card designed to further empower the kinds of outre' political agendas advocated by Ms. Cooper, along with the likes Peter Dreier, Ed Honowitz, Bill Bogaard, John Buchanan, and the rest of that crowd. It was a race based political ploy, played in hopes of achieving dominance over the hundreds of millions of dollars controlled by the Pasadena Unified School District. Especially the $240 or so million left from the Measure TT bond fiasco.
It really is always about the money, you know. And more often than not, development as well.
Next Tuesday the race card will be played again. And largely for the same political purpose. That being to do for the Renatta Coopers of this world what they could not achieve at the polls, retain political and ideological control of the PUSD's Board of Education.
With the result being yet more years of the kind of abject failure these same people have already brought to our public schools.
That election idea is starting to sound better all of the time, right?
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