Fresno Unified School District has been looking for a new superintendent, and the public
messaging about it was unbelievably sanguine. The public messaging we've been hearing was chiefly
in the form of a big, splashy op ed piece written by Susan Wittrup,
who's a member of the Fresne Unified Board of Trustees, talking about,
Oh, we're so grateful to Bob Nelson for his wonderful years of service that
Fresne Unified. As Bob Nelson rides off into the sunset for some sinecure easy
position at Fresno State and now there. But the main thing Witchrup said,
the word that I noticed was used multiple times was diversity. That we need
to make a hire to highlight our diversity, highland diversity, diversity, diversity.
The word diversity was used. I might have been making up that specific
formulation, but I know the word diversity was used and highlighted as a priority
several times over the course of this ip bed, which feels like another way
of saying, we recognize that Bob Nelson was a white guy, and so
our main priority here is not hiring another white guy, which is so typical
of these liberal run institutions. That that's what we're going to focus on,
Not the fact that the school district is doing a terrible job, that seventy
plus percent of the kids are not proficient at math or English. We don't
care about any of that. No, that was not mentioned, Not that
teachers can't enforce the cell phone rule to prevent kids from using cell phones in
class, Not that we just included this huge pay increase for teachers when there's
no discernible improvement in student performance. In fact, there's very discernible student decrease
in performance. One of the more intelligent guys who's been writing about what's happening
within Fresny Unified in public schools around California is Todd Madison. Todd's the research
director for Transparent California, and he does a lot of work sort of is
a founding member also of the Parent Association Advocacy Group, So he does a
lot of work researching K through twelve education, researching outcomes in K twelve education,
and trying to highlight a certain kind of you know, looking at the
problem through more of a business lens and sort of highlighting the problem that we've
been treating the public school system in California too much through the lens of the
most powerful force in the politics related to it, which is the teachers' union.
The teachers' union individual teachers' unions in individual school districts that have various statewide
affiliations with each other. Teachers' unions are hugely important and powerful political forces that
can drive school board elections, get out the vote efforts for school board elections.
Who is endorsed for school board elections. A lot of times, teachers
unions will buy both sides of the negotiating table. They will have their side
and a bunch of people whom they endorsed for the school board will be on
the other. And the point of a teacher's union. We lose sight of
this. The point of a teacher's union is not necessarily to educate children.
That might be a happy byproduct of what they do. But the point of
what a teacher's union does is to get more jobs, better pay, better
hours for teachers' union members. That's the point of a union. Okay,
the point of a knife is to cut things. The point of a union
is to get more money, more jobs for union members. That's the point
of it. That's the purpose, that's the the end goal towards which it
is oriented, not necessarily higher student performance, because if you wanted high student
performance, you might have to fire some teachers who aren't, you know,
up to snuff. And the whole process of negotiating the big pay increase that
the teachers' union received, that whole process, nobody brought up the question of
teacher performance that it should be tied to pay the collectively bargained the new agreement
between Fresdney Unified and the teachers Union that was ratified by in November, nobody
brought up teacher performance. And the numbers are staggering. So there's really good
piece in Fresno b by Todd Madison. Today, I'm going to read through
some of it. Presney Unified is going to get a new superintendent, he
writes. Current superintendent Bob Nelson, is stepping down this summer after more than
six years of service. The district has faced hurdles during his tenure, including
managing the pandemic response. But nothing is so central to the mission of a
school district then the academic performance of Fresno's children. That's the actual point of
the school district. The pandemic had a huge impact on that performance. By
every objective measure, including the state's own yardstick, the Smarter Balanced assessments.
The SBAC academic achievement levels are down significantly throughout the state. Fresney Unified School
District has not escaped. During Nelson's tenure, English performance declined from having thirty
seven percent of kids considered proficient to thirty three. In math, the decline
was from twenty seven percent of kids being proficient to twenty three percent. The
starting points were not good to begin with, but having that decline is worse,
right, So let's just remember sixty seven percent of kids in Fresne Unified
are not proficient in English language performance, So that's basically reading and writing.
Sixty seven percent of kids two thirds of them can't read or write at grade
level, and then seventy seven percent of them cannot do math at grade level.
Seventy seven percent of kids in Presdent Unified can't do math at grade level.
Like, why aren't we talking about anything else? It's one of these
things, like it's such a the standard is so bad that we don't think
to talk about it all the time every day and maybe we should like the
standard they've set. The bar is so unbelievably low, and they have somehow
managed to sink even lower. Madison continues, it would be unfair to blame
the low level of academic performance on Nelson's leadership. Correlation is not causation,
but it's clear that leadership did not overcome the hurdles or improve the education of
Fresno's kids. President Unified's bord now is a golden opportunity to do something different,
to hire a superintendent and make improving education their first priority. Like why
wouldn't that have already been the first priority? One would ask? Board president
Susan Wittrup recognizes this need with recent b article quoting her saying, we need
to take it to the next level, such as in test scores. Our
children could be doing much better academically. We can certainly hope that actually happens,
but shouldn't the education of our kids be based on more than hope.
In twenty twenty two, according to data obtained by Presney Unified and published on
the Transparent California website, Nelson's total pay was three hundred and ninety four nine
hundred and sixty dollars, with total compensation including the cost of benefits almost a
half million dollars four hundred eighty two thousand, five hundred eighty five bucks.
We often hear parents gasp at those numbers. Half million dollars is a lot
of money, particularly in Fresno, where the US Bureau of Labor Statistics says
the average county residence average county resident made fifty one twenty six dollars. Presdent
Unified is a large organization with a total budget of over two billion dollars.
Some data show the average CEO of a company with total revenues over five hundred
million dollars makes one point four million. By that standard, the f USD
president the FUSD superintendent is a bargain, but there's a significant difference. In
private industry, a huge portion of that compensation, often up to fifty percent
of it, is based on meeting board specified performance goals. There you go,
board specified performance goals. A private CEO is held accountable by their board
by making sure the leader as a significant amount of personal skin in the game.
If the CEO doesn't improve something important to the company, that person loses
out on a large part of the paycheck. Not so in education, where
superintendent pay is often dependent on nothing more than what was the last person paid
time in the chair and the ability of a superintendent to convince the board that
they're trying really hard. Our boards of education don't consider actually improving the education
of our kids, not just trying hard to be so important? Why do
school boards not make sure the highest paid discre employee is incentivized to accomplish the
goals they define? Does that make sense? President? Unified board is an
opportunity to change that. The trustees can make sure their new superintendent is paying
attention to their goals and priorities by tying a portion of the super zone pay
to that attention. The California State Dashboard provides a good way to define those
goals. The dashboard is far from perfect, but it is the state's yardstick.
Its metrics are understandable, and it seems a reasonable starting point for determining
objective measures. Budgets are important also. The budget is an objective view of
the financial performance of a district. Keeping that budget in the black would be
a primary function of the leader of any organization. A properly designed performance based
compensation program would include a few key measures that can be objectively determined. If
the employee succeeds, the employee wins, the board wins, and most importantly,
the kids of the district win. Isn't that what we all want?
Every word of that was sound, Every word of that was sound, and
both I think Madison, and I've interviewed Madison for stuff on power Talk,
I think he would agree that it's not gonna You don't need to one hundred
percent tie every dollar of teacher pay exclusively to performance. You know, you
could have, in I mean, you can have, in individual circumstances,
an excellent teacher doing a really great job, really pouring in her time and
energy and talent, et cetera. And you could have a kid who just
doesn't do well for reasons outside of the teacher's power and control, bad home
life parents who don't value education, the kid or the kid just makes bad
choices. Like there are all kinds of ways that that can happen. But
to act as though teacher pay should have no tie, no correlation, no
connection whatsoever to student performance, I think is insane. When we return,
though, we'll explain why it is that way, and the chief reason why
being we are viewing this as a jobs program for adults, not something for
teaching children. That's next on the John Jrwardy Show, Great Peace in the
Fresno b by Todd Madison. I've retweeted it to my Twitter account Twitter dot
com slash Fresno Johnny. That's at Fresno Johnny talking about the search for a
new superintendent for Fresney Unified School District and how hey, maybe we do something
about trying to tie the superintendent's pay to performance to student performance. That's what
happens in with the CEOs of most you know, major corporations is that over
half their pay is tied to the business's performance. The CEO has skin in
the game, and thereby, by tying it to his pay, the CEO
is made accountable to the board of directors. But instead, what happens with
school districts is no, no, no, no no. The superintendent's pay
seemingly has no relationship to student performance whatsoever, Absolutely no possible relationship to student
performance at all. It's based purely on well, what did we pay the
last guys. As Madison points out, superintendent pay in California seems mostly to
be defined by what did we pay the prior person? How long have you
been here as superintendent? You've okay, you've been on the job five years,
all right, we need to give you maybe some percent increase every year
over year over year. So that's what's going on. There's no discussion of
any sort of bigger picture questions than that we're not running it like a business.
And that's what it is. I mean on a certain level, the
superintendent and Fresden Unified. But Nelson was paid with pay plus benefits around half
a million bucks about four hundred thousand dollars in take home pay, and then
with benefits, we're in the ballpark of a half million dollars. Frozen.
Unified is a district with a two billion dollar budget. By a lot of
other metrics, most companies that are two billion dollars, they would have a
CEO making somewhere over one million dollars per ye. So maybe what we're doing
this is not the right thing to do. Maybe we structure the pay of
the superintendent so that they can make a lot more if there's good performance,
or a lot less if there's bad performance, or you keep under budget and
blah blah blah blah, blah. There are a lot of ways to skin
this cat. The reason why we don't is because if you concede that for
the superintendent, people will start to ask questions like that about teachers. You
know, if this teacher all of her kids have terrible test results, terrible
scores, but this other teacher teaching the same kind of cohort of kids,
maybe another you know, two sixth grade teachers at the same school, so
pulling from the same kind of pool of kids. This teacher year over year
over year, her kids have better test scores. This teacher, year over
year of year, her kids have worse test scores. Do we eyeball either
the better teacher for more pay or the worst teacher for less pay. And
that's not how it works with the union negotiated structure of teacher pay. Again,
the main driving force in education policy in California are the teachers unions.
They're the main driving force for all policy in California at the unions. California
is a union dominated state. Sooner we all understand that the better California is
dominated controlled by labor as far as public policy goes, and especially public sector
unions, particularly the teachers' unions, they control the whole thing so clearly,
because they're the most powerful force throughout the state and in local era and in
local governments too. Like I think I've made this point a lot. If
you're driving around and you see it's election season and you see a billboard for
someone that says heh, so and so for the Fresne Unified Board of Trustees
endorsed by Fresno teachers, I think most people have the reaction of, oh,
well, that's nice. The teachers think this person would be good for
the school board, and who would know better than the teachers. No,
you should have the exact opposite reaction, if anything, when I see that,
almost as a matter of pure principle, I want to vote against the
person. Why the point of the board of trustees is to negotiate with the
teachers union on teacher pay teacher compensation as a matter of principle, just so
you don't give away the taxpayer's store, you might want to just take the
approach of, hey, maybe I shouldn't have the same party owning both sides
of the negotiating table. That's precisely what's happened in school district after school district
after school district all up and down the state. And because of that,
the structure of teacher pay in school district, after school district, after school
district around California is premised around looking at public schools as adult job programs,
not entities that are focused on educating children. So your pay is not really
tied to performance, is always, always, always tied to seniority. If
someone just came in, hasn't put in their years, hasn't put in their
dues, they are far lower down the totem pole. We don't care as
much about them. That's the one thing about teacher pay that's like slightly unfair
is that entry level teachers don't make very much money. That's true, the
average teachers make on a average, much more than other professionals in Fresno County
with the same levels of educational attainment. But it's mostly because of the teachers
who've been in for a longer time. They are paid extraordinarily high amounts of
money. And guess what, those teachers who've been around for a longer time,
they don't want the insecurity that comes with close scrutiny of their job performance.
They don't want close scrutiny of job performance. They don't want their pay
to be based around student test scores. They want the greater security of No,
no, no, we're the union. We're taking care of you've been
in your staying at No, we're not gonna let the big bosses cut your
pay. Which, by the way, that sort of attitude makes a little
more sense like at you know, the Ford Motor Company for people work in
the line less. So for a government run institution like a school district,
where there is no profit motive, the motive is to educate children. But
because the union controls both sides at the table, that's not really the motive
anymore. The motive is hiring more adults. That's the point of it.
That's why it exists in their eyes. And so you'll you know, we
had this whole public debate in Fresno over the summer and fall about the new
CBA, the new collectively bargained agreement that the district and the teachers' union were
negotiating with each other. No one brings up the idea that student academic performance
should be tied to teacher pay, or that teacher pay should be tied to
student academic performance. No one brought up in the public debate other than like
me, I think, and possibly Trevor did. I'm not sure. I'm
trying to recall any segments he did about it. But no one was bringing
up that thirty three percent of kids, only thirty three percent of kids in
Fresney Unified are considered proficient in English reading and writing, that only twenty three
percent of kids are considered proficient in math. The district is doing a terrible
job of educating teachers. Maybe we should do something to incentivize better performance on
the part of teachers. Maybe if your kids can get better test scores to
a certain extent, we can boost your pay or something. But no,
we never had any even bare whisper of anything like that. And I think
the teachers' union would react to such a suggestion with shock and horror and outrage
and how dare you why? Because they view this as a jobs program for
adults. They don't actually really view it as an enterprise for educating kids.
If we did view it as an enterprise for educating kids, we would look
with greater scrutiny at academic performance of children and look at the adults who are
supposed to be educating them and say maybe we need to tie some compensation decisions
here, one way or another to how these kids actually do, because that's
why we spend all this taxpayer money on these schools. It's to educate these
kids. And we're spending all this money and seventy seven percent of these kids
are coming out not able to do math at grade level. What was the
point when we returned the illegal marijuana shops still operating in Fresnos, still not
shut down? What are we waiting for? John Girardi with a see I
told you so, that's next on the John Girardi Show. So you've seen
them all over town. They're sort of little blights, little eyesres wherever they
are. I remember seeing one time a very tacky looking gas station and my
friend's mom that I was driving with in the car as we drove past and
said, look at that. I saw. That's what that's called an I
saw. So something that's particularly stand out ugly within a city or community.
You've probably seen these eye sores that I'm going to be discussing, smoke shops,
vape stores, these places that are clearly sort of presenting this image of
we're selling a lot of weed paraphernalia. That's what we're about. That's what
these stores are clearly signaling and messaging and the stuff that's there. And these
stores, they often stick out like a sore thumb within a community. I
remember talking with a guy in fresnok and a little south. He owned a
business sort of south of Tower district. He was moving out, and he
was talking about how he was trying to find a tenant and the only tenants
he could get were these guys who wanted to start vape stores, vape stores,
smoke shops, smoke shops. And he was like, gosh, I
just don't want to deal I don't want as a landlord to have to deal
with these things. But they're like the only guys who are wanting to They're
the only people wanting to start these businesses, all these smoke shops, all
these vape stores. So they're popping up all over the place, and the
City of Fresno has begun along with state actors. About six months ago,
there was this big stirm and drong that we need to crack down on these
smoke shops. We need to shut a lot of them down. Rob Bonta,
the Attorney General, rode into Fresno on a white horse. These smoke
shops are terrible. We need to take steps, take action, and go
against them. Why well, because they're selling marijuana illegally out the back door,
which allows me to pat myself on the back. I might wear out
my rotator cuff patting myself on the back. Why well, because I'm one
of the few people who said, Hey, legalizing marijuana is a bad idea.
Don't do it. Don't legalize marijuana. It's just bringing all kinds of
attendant social ills with it. It's gonna make marijuana more accessible to kids,
it's gonna lead to more dui deaths. It's just bad. It's bad,
bad, bad, bad bad. And guess what, I don't believe that
it's going to destroy the illegal market. That one of the big arguments in
favor of marijuana legalization is, oh, well, let's take marijuana. Let's
take these drugs out of the illegal black market. Let's bring these transactions out
into the light of clear day. But here's the problem with that argument.
The only way they were able to sell the legalized marijuana argument and get local
governments to support it and get libertarians to support it, really how to get
how do you get local governments to support it? How do you get local
politicians to support it? You promise that you can tax it, have it
be legal, and let it be heavily taxed. Why Because local politicians love
they love love, love, love love. They are constantly covetous for any
new source of revenue that doesn't involve coercively increasing taxes on a whole bunch of
people. People don't like their taxes being increased. They just don't look at
measurey. Okay, the city get Presno Counties and nope, not zero point
two five cents. Nope, we're not going to do it, even though
there are a lot of good things that would have helped with and that there
were some decent arguments for measury there there were, there were some decent arguments
for measury, but taxpayers of Presno County just said, nope, not doing
it. People don't like their taxes being increased. But local politicians think,
correctly, this is a voluntary activity that nobody has to do. Nobody has
to smoke marijuana. Okay. John Girardi has managed to live, you know,
thirty six years on this floating blue marble in space, and he's never
once used marijuana. You don't have to smoke weed, you don't have to
go to casinos. So let's tax these things that are voluntary activities. No
one has to do them. And it's a source of revenue. Local politicians
love that. They love it, and that's how legal weed got basically sold
to local governments, local politicians all up and down the state. It's a
source of revenue. It's how it got sold to states individual, state after
state after state throughout the country. It's a source of state revenue, a
source of local revenue, whatever it is. Well, here's the problem.
The people who want to buy pot are potheads, and potheads are not necessarily
known for being really industrious, high income types. I'm sure there are some
who are. Sure there are some who do quite well for themselves. But
that's the thing with pot is that it makes you not as industrious and a
little lazier, a little slower going. So, yeah, there's not It's
not like you're this isn't Mercedes Benz. I'm not talking about, you know,
taxing, Mercedes Benz. Here we're talking about taxing a product that lots
of people who don't have a lot of money really like, and in fact,
maybe they don't have a lot of money, in no small part because
they keep smoking weed all the time rather than getting a job or working hard
or blah blah blah blah blah. So as a result, you know,
if you were a pothead before marijuana legalization. And let me just note,
we always see like news reports, Oh a drug deal went bad and there
was a shooting, or you know, you see on like a TV show,
Oh this drug deal that went south. So many drug deals, the
vast majority of them in this country, in this state, do not go
south. In fact, they go perfectly due north. Thousands and thousands and
thousands of drug transactions take place in our Golden State every day, completely in
violation of the laws of God and man, without a single hiccup, without
any interference from local law enforcement. Money is given in exchange for narcotics,
for mind altering substances. It happens every day. It was happening before marijuana
was legalized. And guess what, even though marijuana got legalized, it continued
to happen and people got weed all the time everywhere in California with great ease.
Now I think they're going to get more. I think more people will
get marijuana. I think more children will have access to marijuana. But there
was a decent chunk of people who, even with marijuana being illegal, were
still getting weed. And those people basically asked themselves the question, well,
marijuana is now legal, should I pay more money for legal marijuana? Or
should I just pay less money for this illegal marijuana that I won't get caught
if I buy it. I know I'll keep paying less money for this illegal
marijuana that I won't get caught for buying, because I would rather not spend
as much money. People making that kind of a purchasing decision has resulted in
the illegal weed market in California still being a huge, booming black market industry,
a six billion dollar industry. In the black market in California. Is
people buying weed illegally? And where are they buying it on the street corner
outside of a garbage dump, in a dark alley as someone and holds a
knife menacingly. No, often they're buying them in around or behind these smoke
shops that are all up and down Fresno, all over the place. We
only have a couple of legal weed dispensaries in the city of Fresno, and
we've got a million illegal weed dispensaries. All these smoke shops, a bunch
of them have people selling weed out the back. Now, City of Fresno,
a bunch of local government officials, including Miguel Arius, which kudos to
him, had this big press conference six months ago. Rob Bonte came to
visit about how terrible these smoke shops are. People are selling weed illegally in
them. All this bad stuff is happening. That was six months ago,
and a bunch of members of the city council said they were drafting legislation that
would result in shutting down a bunch of these smoke shops. We're still waiting
for it. So what's the hold up? Are we gonna do this or
aren't we? Since October, the story in the Fresno be about this wrote.
Since October, the city's Code Enforcement Department has inspected thirty one smoke shops
in Fresno. Of those, nearly all were found to be engaged in some
form of illegal activity. There were code violations, but inspectors also found unpermitted
guns, great wonderful illegal drug paraphernalia, flavored tobacco products which we outlawed in
California just a little bit ago and cannabis. Several of the shops were operating
hundreds of feet from school sites and parks. Cannabis in particular seems to be
at issue. Some smoke shops are operating as pseudo to spend Street, said
council member Nelson Asparza. It's that simple, he said. It's really no
wonder the legitimate market is being undermined. So that's the thing it now when
we return, well, we'll dig more into this when we return. I'm
wondering how much we can really effectively limit, if not these specific kinds of
smoke shops, the notion of illegal marijuana sales. That's next on the John
Jrardy Show. It's been six months since a bunch of city leaders said they
were going to take on the problem of smoke shops all up and down the
city of Fresno selling marijuana out the back, engaged in illegal activity. We
still haven't seen any legislation on this topic from the City of Fresno. I'm
wondering if it's a thing of you know, we're trying to collect data,
we're trying to you know, code enforcement has looked into thirty one of these
different smoke shops. One of them, this was an interesting thing from the
story, the Royalt smoke Shop on McKinley Avenue. Police seized more than one
thousand, one hundred grams of marijuana, so a kilo of marijuana, along
with more than twenty five hundred dollars in cash and two handguns, one of
which was modified to be fully automatic, according to a statement from the Fresno
Police Department. So, just a lot of lovely guys running these smoke shops
all up and down Fresno. And as I mentioned in the you know,
just the number of these shops is kind of staggering. The Fresno Bee story
says it's not clear exactly how many smoke shops like this are operating in the
city. There are more than four hundred and thirty six tobacco retailers in Fresno,
according to the Fresno County Tobacco Free Coalition. Well, those guys are
doing a bang up job. The Tobacco Free Coalition only four hundred and thirty
six, four hundred and thirty six tobacco retailers and president that's one for like
every thousand people in Fresno. Practically, I guess Presno has more people than
that anyway, though the city puts that number at closer to a thousand when
you include convenience and grocery stores, gas stations, liquor stores, and smoke
shops. Well, and that's another thing. Apparently a lot of these smoke
shops have been able to open under like grocery store licenses because they'll have,
you know, a section where they have, you know, a couple bags
at Dorito's and Cheetos and funions and that'll be enough and some diet cokes and
that's enough to suffice as a grocery store. But then they've got all this
marijuana paraphernalia. They've got all this you know, smoke paraphernalia. There are
one hundred and twenty five licensed smoke shops, Arias said, though he suspects
hundreds more opening or operating without business licenses or under a license at to a
different location. Those are the businesses that have been targeted by code enforcements so
far and will continue to be the focus of inspections as the city works through
the smoke shop ordinance. Arius said, Now, this is my one point,
the fundamental problem here. As I identified in the last segment, is
that people were buying and selling weed legally in drug deals that did not go
south. Millions of drug deals went north in this state even while weed was
totally illegal. And the people who are buying weed are often not people with
a lot of money. They have no desire to pay more money for this
product that they can get for less money with no legal consequences. So even
if you shut down all these smoke shops, and I admit there are other
benefits to shutting these smoke shops down as far as other kinds of attendant illegal
stuff happening, I don't know how you stop the black market of marijuana.
They will find places to sell them even if Unfortunately, even if you shut
down all these smoke shops, which I still think is a worthy goal,
that'll do it. John Girardi Show, See you next time on Power Talk