There is a certain journalistic territory that I have decided I am going to have to call
Colemania. Named in honor of the
Pasadena Weekly's very own
Andre' Coleman,
it is a place where the more delusional political stratagems advocated
by the hidebound remnants of what was once the blushing flower of
Pasadena progressive politics still gets its airing out. Mostly from the pulpy piles of neglected
PW's
stacked once every seven days or so upon rusty street racks placed long
ago in front of liquor stores, real estate offices, lottery shops and
other places where the legendary real people go.
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 they represent the majority population not only in the
Pasadena Unified School District, but quite soon 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 true meaning 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 the majority
minority voters would only vote for minority candidates. Which,
technically, they did when they elected the incumbents. 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?