Speaker 1: There's a couple of weird political dynamics that are going
Speaker 1: on right now with regards to Measure H. Measure H
Speaker 1: is the largest of the various Fresno area school bond measures. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess it's actually the second largest. The largest is
Speaker 1: the one for the State Center Community College District State
Speaker 1: Center Community College District. It I had not really understood
Speaker 1: this necessarily about community colleges, but apparently they're kind of
Speaker 1: organized in a way similar to K through twelve public
Speaker 1: school districts. So you have basically a district State Center
Speaker 1: Community College District that oversees many of the community colleges
Speaker 1: in the quote center of the state, hence the name
Speaker 1: State Center so Fresno City, Ridley College, Madera College, Closed Community,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Nonetheless, what we've got right now is every
Speaker 1: local school district in Fresno, the community college district, plus
Speaker 1: all the K through twelve school districts have bond measures
Speaker 1: that are on the ballot for this November. People have
Speaker 1: gotten their vote by mail ballots or their drop off
Speaker 1: ballots already. Okay, those went out on Monday, so people
Speaker 1: are already starting to vote. Measure H is the largest
Speaker 1: of the K through twelve bond measures. This is for
Speaker 1: Fresno Unified. It's a five hundred million dollar bond measured
Speaker 1: to fund we are now belatedly learning a certain series
Speaker 1: of projects for construction throughout Presnoe Unified School District. What
Speaker 1: is weird? Now? I've gone on and on and on
Speaker 1: on this show about how much I oppose these bond measures.
Speaker 1: The only reason all of these school districts are seeking
Speaker 1: this bond money is because the money is on the
Speaker 1: table right now. There's a statewide bond measure, a ten
Speaker 1: billion dollars statewide bond measure Proposition two. And basically, if
Speaker 1: local school districts pass bond measures of their own, they
Speaker 1: can get matching funds from the state. So I don't
Speaker 1: think any of these bond measures are coming about from
Speaker 1: close Unified, President Unified, et cetera. I don't think any
Speaker 1: of them are coming out due to some exigent, urgent,
Speaker 1: genuine need. They just had bond measures that they passed
Speaker 1: four years ago in twenty twenty. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: in response to any genuine need. These bond measures are
Speaker 1: coming about because the school districts see that they're money
Speaker 1: on the table to be gotten, and so they're aggressively
Speaker 1: pushing for the voters to pass bond measures. Because voters
Speaker 1: like voting for school bond measures. They always do. The
Speaker 1: school bond measures always pass, and I think it's because
Speaker 1: fundamentally people don't understand bond measures. They don't understand that
Speaker 1: a bond is a loan to a municipal entity, a
Speaker 1: loan that you have to repay with interest. That's just
Speaker 1: what they are. In the case of Fresne Unified, this
Speaker 1: is a five hundred million dollar loan that's going to
Speaker 1: have to be paid back over I think it's thirty years,
Speaker 1: it might be forty years, thirty or forty years with interest.
Speaker 1: The amount that taxpayers within Fresnew Unified are actually going
Speaker 1: to have to pay is going to wind up being
Speaker 1: more than five hundred million, much more with interest payments.
Speaker 1: It's going to wind up being closer to the ball
Speaker 1: of a billion dollars a billion dollars in taxes to
Speaker 1: get five hundred million dollars of benefit. Now there's this bizarre,
Speaker 1: this bizarre thing that I am noticing from AFAR. You've
Speaker 1: got Susan Wittrup on the board of trustees for Fresnan
Speaker 1: Unified School district. She is the representative for the Bullard
Speaker 1: High School region, and I guess Fresne Unified's board of
Speaker 1: trustees they are elected kind of on a regional basis.
Speaker 1: So you're the representative for Bullard High School, you're the
Speaker 1: representative for this. Clovis Unified is switching to a similar model,
Speaker 1: and you'll you'll be able to see why. I don't
Speaker 1: know that that's a great idea in just a second.
Speaker 1: Susan Wittrup, though, is also in a relationship with Darius Assimi,
Speaker 1: who's a very wealthy guy owns Granville Holmes and also
Speaker 1: owns GV Wire, which is a now becoming more and
Speaker 1: more prominent news outlet throughout the San Joaquin Valley. I think,
Speaker 1: frankly it's becoming I think it's almost as important at
Speaker 1: this point. It's almost as important as the Presno B is.
Speaker 1: By this point, I think the Fresno Be's influence is
Speaker 1: waning and waning as actual readership of the physical newspaper
Speaker 1: of the Fresno B is going down and down. So
Speaker 1: Darias Sassimi comes out in opposition to measure h on
Speaker 1: GV wire, and then they publish in gv wire as
Speaker 1: a news story twenty four questions from Susan Wittrop and
Speaker 1: answers from district's staff on the Fresney Unified website. Wittrop
Speaker 1: herself is apparently urging a no vote. So this is
Speaker 1: this bizarre thing of Witchrop being on the board, but her,
Speaker 1: this person she's in a relationship with, runs this major
Speaker 1: media outlet that's covering this whole thing, and she's raised
Speaker 1: a bunch of questions and I think merit some real answers.
Speaker 1: I think apparently what appears to be happening is that
Speaker 1: with Measure H, all of a sudden, just this week,
Speaker 1: we're starting to get a finalized list of construction projects,
Speaker 1: projects towards which the five hundred million dollars in Measure
Speaker 1: H funding will be directed. And the purported rationale I
Speaker 1: talked about it a little bit earlier this week on
Speaker 1: the show. The purported rationale is to look at it
Speaker 1: on an equity basis. That has to be the liberal
Speaker 1: buzzwords speak. But I think what they mean is, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to allocate more money for poorer districts. So
Speaker 1: as a result, Bullard High School and its sort of
Speaker 1: region is not getting much of the funding. They're getting
Speaker 1: a small amount of the funding. A huge amount of
Speaker 1: the five hundred million. I think about one hundred million
Speaker 1: is going to go to Roosevelt. I think McLain is
Speaker 1: the other one that's going to get around one hundred million.
Speaker 1: So Fresno High is going to get a lot. So
Speaker 1: these poorer parts of the district are going to get
Speaker 1: a lot of money. There's going to be a whole
Speaker 1: rebuild of an elementary school in Calawa. Now Wittrup has
Speaker 1: raised these questions, the first and foremost being why is
Speaker 1: the project list coming before the board of directors a
Speaker 1: President Unified for a approval after the ballots already got
Speaker 1: to voters. I mean that just seems completely unacceptable. Voters
Speaker 1: already got their ballots and the project list wasn't even finalized.
Speaker 1: The next question she raises, why is the bond measure
Speaker 1: coming to voters before a permanent superintendent is hired? This
Speaker 1: is another question from Wittrop. Now we know why it's
Speaker 1: coming before the voters before a permanent superintendent is hired.
Speaker 1: For President Unified. So, for those who haven't followed, Bob
Speaker 1: Nelson was the superintendent of President Unified he retired, rode
Speaker 1: off into the sunset to some nice, cushy sinecure position
Speaker 1: over at Fresno State. There was this big push to
Speaker 1: hire Misty her as his replacement. Then there was pushback
Speaker 1: on that with the idea of, hey, mister Hurd just
Speaker 1: happens to be the assistant superintendent. There's no one else
Speaker 1: in the country would be better suited as superintendent. Shouldn't
Speaker 1: we have a larger search. There's all this soul searching
Speaker 1: from the board and self flagellation and oh, we're going
Speaker 1: to go through a board retreat and we're going to
Speaker 1: figure out what we have to do as a board,
Speaker 1: which was sort of I would imagine for voters within
Speaker 1: President Unified, you'd think, why do you Why does the
Speaker 1: President Unified board need a consultant and a board retreat
Speaker 1: to figure out how to do their jobs? Didn't you're
Speaker 1: elected officials, You postured yourself as being ready to do
Speaker 1: this job. Why do you need extra outside help? Why
Speaker 1: do you need an expensive consultant to help you with
Speaker 1: your job? So the reason why there isn't a permanent
Speaker 1: superintendent when Measure H coming out is because obviously Measure
Speaker 1: H is out, because Proposition two is on the ballot.
Speaker 1: That's the only reason we're doing Measure H right now. Yes,
Speaker 1: in a reasonable world, you would wait until there's a
Speaker 1: permanent superintendent before you go to the voters to ask
Speaker 1: them for one hundred five hundred million dollars bond measure
Speaker 1: for rebuilding all kinds of things, prioritizing different things within
Speaker 1: prisoning Unified, you would wait until you had a permanent
Speaker 1: superintendent whose vision for development of the district was clear
Speaker 1: and in place. But they don't have time to wait
Speaker 1: for that. The money is on the table now. They
Speaker 1: want to grab the money. Now, that's the whole point
Speaker 1: of this bond measure is to grab the money. The
Speaker 1: money from Prop two proposition to the statewide bond measure,
Speaker 1: the statewide ten billion dollar bond measure. They can get
Speaker 1: that money if they raise local bond funding. So gonna
Speaker 1: wait around for a permanent superintendent, because that's that's the
Speaker 1: tail wagging the dog nature of all of these bond measures.
Speaker 1: They're not coming about close. Unified doesn't need four hundred
Speaker 1: million new dollars all of a sudden, they want four
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars. They are always gonna say yes to
Speaker 1: new money, and they see, well, they're state funding on
Speaker 1: the table with Prop two. If assuming Prop two passes,
Speaker 1: that state money is going to be on the table,
Speaker 1: and we only get access to it if we raise
Speaker 1: or we get access to more of it if we
Speaker 1: raise our own bond funding. So here's Measure A for
Speaker 1: Close Unified, Here's Measure H for President Unified. Here's you know,
Speaker 1: the equivalent measures for Central Unified and for Sendard Unified.
Speaker 1: And all these school districts are doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: For State Center, Community College District, They're all doing this,
Speaker 1: so of course it would make more sense to wait
Speaker 1: for permanent superintendent, but they don't feel like they have
Speaker 1: time to wait. This is the tail wagging the dog
Speaker 1: nature of all this. Wit Troup asked the question, and
Speaker 1: clearly she's leading this way. Does asking for this Measure
Speaker 1: H bond funding create a public perception that the interim
Speaker 1: superintendent may be allocating bond funds into certain trustee regions
Speaker 1: to secure the permanent superintendent position by catering to a
Speaker 1: simple majority of the board. So Wittroup is making the
Speaker 1: argument here that the allocation of these Measure H funds
Speaker 1: it goes district. It basically goes on a high school
Speaker 1: by high school regional basis. Within president Unified, the Bullard
Speaker 1: High School and its region get this much, Sunnyside High
Speaker 1: School and its region get that much. Mclayane High School,
Speaker 1: Roosevelt High School, Fresno High School and its regions get
Speaker 1: this much, this much, and this much, and what Wittrop
Speaker 1: And by the way, all of the individual Board of
Speaker 1: Trustee members of Fresne Unified are elected on that regional basis.
Speaker 1: Wittrop is the representative for Bullard High, this person's the
Speaker 1: representative for Fresno High, this person's representative for Sunnyside High,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And what wit Trop is thinking is, hey,
Speaker 1: like you're giving a ton of money to certain districts.
Speaker 1: Are you just trying to curry favor with those trustees?
Speaker 1: Is that what Misty Hurt, who has clearly wanted the
Speaker 1: superintendent job, is she trying to curry favor with those
Speaker 1: individual trustee members. This is why, by the way, I
Speaker 1: am not crazy about the fact that Clovis Unified is
Speaker 1: changing to a regionally based Board of time trustees system,
Speaker 1: because this is what happened. Liberals want that for Clovis
Speaker 1: Unified because they think it will allow more liberals to
Speaker 1: be elected to the Close Unified school Board. What's really
Speaker 1: going to happen is this kind of territorial turf war
Speaker 1: nonsense is going to start happening right now. All of
Speaker 1: the trustees for Clovis High are charged with caring for
Speaker 1: all of the schools within Clovis Unified. But if it
Speaker 1: turns into regional stuff, which is what's going to happen
Speaker 1: for Clos Unified, well, you're the Clovis East regional representative.
Speaker 1: You don't care about the Clovis West. You don't have
Speaker 1: the same inherent need to care about what is good
Speaker 1: for Clovis West. In fact, if it's a question of
Speaker 1: allocating scarce resources, you're going to fight like hell for
Speaker 1: Clovis East to the detriment of Clovis West. You don't
Speaker 1: care what the Clovis West voters think. You're only you know,
Speaker 1: you're answerable to the voters in the Closed East region.
Speaker 1: That's how President Unified is set up, and it leads
Speaker 1: to these kinds of silly turf war tensions and possibly,
Speaker 1: as wit Trip's pointing out, attempts to curry favor one
Speaker 1: way or another with attempts to curry favor with one
Speaker 1: school board member over another to secure a job. Why
Speaker 1: wasn't a community bond committee formed to provide input for
Speaker 1: the project list? The answer to that was, ah, we
Speaker 1: polled the public. We had board workshops back in May
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty three, and then April twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: and at the June board meeting. What was the interim
Speaker 1: superintendent's process for prioritizing projects, What was the interim superintendent's
Speaker 1: process for revisiting the project list? How many revisions have
Speaker 1: been made? So there are a lot of these questions
Speaker 1: that I think remain unanswered with measure H. But again,
Speaker 1: just the John Girardi basic principle, don't vote for bond measures,
Speaker 1: just don't do it. More on this when we returned
Speaker 1: this is the John Girardi Show on Power Talk. I
Speaker 1: want to read some of this piece in GV wire,
Speaker 1: this opinion piece written by Susan Wittrup, who is the
Speaker 1: president of the president Unified Board of Trustees and now
Speaker 1: the President of the Board of Trustees. I think it's
Speaker 1: more just kind of like a primus enterpars so first
Speaker 1: among equals. It's not like she's got more power necessarily
Speaker 1: than the other members of the Board of Trustees. I
Speaker 1: think she just kind of runs the meetings. She represents
Speaker 1: the Bullard region, and she has a piece that was
Speaker 1: published in GV Wire urging people to vote no on
Speaker 1: Measure H and it highlights a lot of things that
Speaker 1: are a little bit more specific than my opposition. I mean,
Speaker 1: my opposition has been mainly, Look, bond measures are just
Speaker 1: bad ideas. It's a bad way of funding public projects.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's whatever is the opposite of delayed gratification,
Speaker 1: instant gratification. The school district gets five hundred million dollars
Speaker 1: and taxpayers have to pay basically a billion dollars for
Speaker 1: that five hundred million dollars worth of benefit over the
Speaker 1: course of in this case, forty years. Okay, it's a
Speaker 1: forty year loan. That's what it is. It's not I
Speaker 1: think people have this sort of pie in the sky
Speaker 1: idea in their heads. I actually think most voters just
Speaker 1: don't know what a bond is. I think they hear bond,
Speaker 1: they hear money for schools. They hear sort of positive
Speaker 1: sounding things promoted by the school district, read by construction
Speaker 1: companies that want the contracts who promote these kinds of
Speaker 1: bond measures, they hear the positive things.
Speaker 2: Oh, we're just out here supporting our students.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we're out here supporting our students, and they
Speaker 1: don't stop to think of what a bond actually is.
Speaker 1: Bond is sort of just one of those words that
Speaker 1: I think we hear and that we don't actually have
Speaker 1: a very clear definition in our heads. A bond is alone,
Speaker 1: that's all it is. A bond is a loan to
Speaker 1: a governmental entity that the governmental entity has to pay
Speaker 1: back with interest. And governmental entities don't generate their own money.
Speaker 1: The only money governmental entities get is through taxes, through
Speaker 1: taxing you. In the case of school districts, they get
Speaker 1: that tax money from property taxes. And if you think, well,
Speaker 1: I'm a renter, so I'm not paying property tax, yes
Speaker 1: you are. Why do you think your rent keeps going up?
Speaker 1: You know your landlord is accounting for what he has
Speaker 1: to pay in property taxes. That is baked into what
Speaker 1: you pay in rent. And I think that's part of
Speaker 1: why these bond measures pass is because one it's a
Speaker 1: small increase in percentage, it's sort of buried in your
Speaker 1: property tax statement. You're not looking at it all the
Speaker 1: time the way that you're looking at you know, honestly,
Speaker 1: if if Chevron and gas companies like that really wanted
Speaker 1: to stick it to California, you know what they could
Speaker 1: do to basically overthrow California stick government immediately. Instead of
Speaker 1: just the normal dollar, you know how on any gas pump,
Speaker 1: you've got the amount of gallons of gas and the
Speaker 1: amount of dollars. If they set up a third little
Speaker 1: window showing the amount of gallons, the costs of the gallons,
Speaker 1: and then the amount of taxes. If they did that
Speaker 1: and people could see in real time on the screen
Speaker 1: how much they were paying just in California state gasoline taxes,
Speaker 1: there'd be a third American. There'd be a second American revolution,
Speaker 1: or at least a California revolution, let's put it that way.
Speaker 1: People don't see their property taxes day in and day
Speaker 1: out like that the way they do with you know,
Speaker 1: just at least you know, seeing gas at the pump.
Speaker 1: That's why people get more angry over gas prices rising
Speaker 1: than they do over various other kinds of things rising.
Speaker 1: I'm convinced it's because you see that, you see the
Speaker 1: dollars going way faster than the number of gallons, and
Speaker 1: it's the psychological thing that drives people nuts. People used
Speaker 1: to be that way with ATM fees all the time
Speaker 1: because you'd see it right there on the screen. But
Speaker 1: people don't really see that with these property tess especially
Speaker 1: if you don't pay, especially if you rent and you're
Speaker 1: not seeing property tax kind of built into your rent payments. So,
Speaker 1: especially in a school district like Presney Unified that has
Speaker 1: a lot of voters who are lower income, who don't
Speaker 1: own their homes, I think it's a very easy sort
Speaker 1: of cell. It's very easy pitch.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this is increasing property tax on your landlord,
Speaker 2: not on you.
Speaker 1: It's well, yeah, it's on me. It's not like the
Speaker 1: landlord just eats it. He has to increase rents now,
Speaker 1: Susan Wittrop's p You know what, I've been yammering too long.
Speaker 1: In next segment I'm going to go through Susan Wittrop's
Speaker 1: piece again. The superintendent Fresney, not superintendent, the head of
Speaker 1: the board of trustees for Fresney Unified her arguments against
Speaker 1: Measure HS, the bond measure defund her own school district.
Speaker 1: So that'll be next on the John Girardi Show. This
Speaker 1: is the piece in GV Wire written by Susan Wittrup,
Speaker 1: who's the head of the board of trustees for Fresney Unified,
Speaker 1: in which she's telling people to vote no on Measure H,
Speaker 1: which is the five hundred million dollar Presdney Unified School bond.
Speaker 1: And I thought it was kind of fascinating that a
Speaker 1: school board member would actually urge a no vote on
Speaker 1: a bond. It's a rare thing and frankly something I
Speaker 1: actually admire that Susan Witchrup's done. I'll confess I haven't
Speaker 1: at various times been very enthusiastic about her, but I'm
Speaker 1: pretty impressed by this. So let me go through this
Speaker 1: as a school board trustee, She writes, I don't make
Speaker 1: the recommendation no lightly because I recognize that our schools
Speaker 1: in Fresney Unified are aging and dilapidated, and we will
Speaker 1: need a bond measure passed in the near future. However,
Speaker 1: the process to put Measure H on the ballot you
Speaker 1: received this week was sloppy and deeply flawed. Measure H
Speaker 1: simply is not ready your ballot, states quote. The school
Speaker 1: board has identified detailed facilities needs of the district and
Speaker 1: has determined which projects to finance from a local bond.
Speaker 1: The most recent revision of the still unapproved construction project
Speaker 1: list came out on Friday, so a week ago. Today.
Speaker 1: The board will vote to approve the project list with
Speaker 1: no public discussion on Wednesday, two days after residents began
Speaker 1: voting on Measure H. Since the item is on the
Speaker 1: consent agenda, there was no community bond committee formed to
Speaker 1: provide input and o resite to the development of the
Speaker 1: project list, so the voters got it before there was
Speaker 1: actually a detailed list of construction projects actually approved. She
Speaker 1: continues with the section called hastily thrown together raises taxes
Speaker 1: for forty years. President Unified could take lessons from neighboring
Speaker 1: school districts. I've been talking with their trustees about how
Speaker 1: their districts prepared for bonds. Both Clovis Unified and Central
Speaker 1: Unified have bond measures on the ballot. In Clovis Unified,
Speaker 1: the project list was developed by district staff and a
Speaker 1: community bond committee based on priorities set by the board
Speaker 1: well in advance, without any involvement from board members. That's
Speaker 1: the way it's supposed to be to safeguard the project
Speaker 1: list from becoming politicized. In Fresnow Unified board members met
Speaker 1: directly with facilities staff multiple times and dictated where bond
Speaker 1: funds should be allocated for projects. Woh, that's a juicy
Speaker 1: bit of info. So okay, So what she's saying is
Speaker 1: when Clothes Unified developed its list of things, staff put
Speaker 1: together the proposed list, then it was presented to the
Speaker 1: Board of Trustees. Then the Board of Trustees voted on
Speaker 1: the project list. What Wittrip is saying is that, no,
Speaker 1: apparently they met with some board members. Some board members
Speaker 1: were dictating what kinds of projects they wanted, So they
Speaker 1: were manipulating the process on the front end with staff
Speaker 1: and then presenting that to the board. And that's more
Speaker 1: egregious I think within Presne Unified, because Fresney Unified trustees
Speaker 1: are elected on a regional basis. So I'm from the
Speaker 1: Bullard High Region, I'm from the Sunnyside region, I'm from
Speaker 1: the Fresnoe High Region, I'm from the McLean region. I'm
Speaker 1: from the Roosevelt region. You had what wid Trip seems
Speaker 1: to be saying here is that people were trying to,
Speaker 1: you know, hog more funding for their region over and
Speaker 1: against some other region. She continues, there have been at
Speaker 1: least three revisions to the project list since the item
Speaker 1: was pulled by staff from the agenda at the last
Speaker 1: board meeting. The only public discussion for the original project
Speaker 1: list occurred at a board meeting in August. Where is
Speaker 1: the list of projects by schools that voters need to
Speaker 1: see before they vote? In Close Unified, every school in
Speaker 1: the district placed signs with a QR code before voters
Speaker 1: received ballots so that the public can easily access information
Speaker 1: about improvements planned for the schools in their neighborhoods. For
Speaker 1: both Cloes Unified and Central Unified, timing for the bond
Speaker 1: was intentional, so there will be no tax rate change.
Speaker 1: Their bonds pick up where previous bonds drop off, so
Speaker 1: the cost is neutral to taxpayers. I hate that argument.
Speaker 1: By the way, I'm not to interject myself into wip's
Speaker 1: piece here again, this is Susan Wichrop's piece, the president
Speaker 1: of President Unified Board of Trustees. Just to interject here,
Speaker 1: I hate that Close Unified does this actually, because what
Speaker 1: Close Unified does with their bond measure is say.
Speaker 2: Oh, well, well, here's a four hundred million dollars bond measure.
Speaker 2: It won't increase your taxes, well, yeah does.
Speaker 1: Our taxes would naturally decrease once prior bond measures that
Speaker 1: we're still paying for right now, once we finally pay
Speaker 1: them off, our taxes should naturally decrease. But what you're
Speaker 1: doing is then what Close Unified is doing is basically saying, well,
Speaker 1: we'll just contain you to have your taxes be high
Speaker 1: forever and pretend that it's not a tax increase. No,
Speaker 1: you're still taxing us more. You're preventing a natural tax
Speaker 1: decrease from happening. Don't act like you're getting money from nothing.
Speaker 1: This word gain Close Unified does is doing with Measure
Speaker 1: A that that annoys me, and they've done it with
Speaker 1: prior bond measures as well. If it passes, which continues,
Speaker 1: Measure H will result in a sharp increase to the
Speaker 1: tax rate over the next forty years. While Fresno families
Speaker 1: are still struggling to recover from their summer PG and
Speaker 1: E bills, their property taxes will increase to the highest
Speaker 1: tax rate Fresno taxpayers have ever seen. She then talks
Speaker 1: about her opinion that they should have a permanent superintendent
Speaker 1: first before voting on such a massive bond measure. Hire
Speaker 1: a permanent superintendent first, which are brights? I met and
Speaker 1: spoke with several voters of the last few weeks to
Speaker 1: solicit input and submitted twenty four unanswered questions to interim
Speaker 1: Superintendent Misty Her about the district's process for prioritizing projects
Speaker 1: and allocating bond funds. My questions and responses from the
Speaker 1: district staff should be posted for the public at the
Speaker 1: President Unified website before Wednesday's board meeting. Moreover, in the
Speaker 1: big scheme of priorities for this school district, measure h
Speaker 1: is out of order. Conducting a national search and hiring
Speaker 1: a permanent superintendent must come first. Until the President Unified
Speaker 1: School Board can actively demonstrate a focus on student outcomes
Speaker 1: and hire a permanent superintendent, a bond measure should be
Speaker 1: out of the question. Several months ago, I called out
Speaker 1: another flawed process when a narrow majority of the boards
Speaker 1: sought to limit the superintendent search to internal candidates. The
Speaker 1: community weighed in and pressured the school board to conduct
Speaker 1: an external search for the best, most qualified leader. Your
Speaker 1: voice made a difference and changed the trajectory. Use your
Speaker 1: voice now to reinforce it. In fact, a no vote
Speaker 1: on Measure H may help accelerate the school board governance
Speaker 1: training that's in progress by communicating the expectations and values
Speaker 1: of the community. In other words, you can't expect Presney
Speaker 1: Unified trustees to make the changes that are obviously needed
Speaker 1: by continuing to reward poor decisions as the ultimate stewards
Speaker 1: of taxpayer money. The board shouldn't be focused on the
Speaker 1: educational should be focused on the educational outcomes of our
Speaker 1: students while creating policies in a culture that demands operational
Speaker 1: excellence at the district. A plan I support and voters
Speaker 1: should insist upon is for the board to conduct a
Speaker 1: national search and hire a permanent superintendent. The district needs
Speaker 1: to show evidence that student outcomes are improving and that
Speaker 1: a basic level of operational competence has been restored. This way,
Speaker 1: taxpayers know exactly how their hard earned tax dollars will
Speaker 1: be spent over the next forty years. All of this
Speaker 1: must be completed well before ballots arrive in homes. Only
Speaker 1: then can the public feel confident that President Unified can
Speaker 1: be trusted to deliver what is promised both with their
Speaker 1: children and their tax dollars. Again, that's the piece by
Speaker 1: Susan Wittrop those published in GV Wire urging a no
Speaker 1: vote on Measure H. She's right, but I think again
Speaker 1: one of the things she's not mentioning is she's saying, well,
Speaker 1: why are we having a vote on this before a
Speaker 1: permanent superintendent is hired? And this is the reason why
Speaker 1: is part of the ridiculous tail wagging the dog nature
Speaker 1: of all of these bond measures that are before all
Speaker 1: of the voters throughout the San Joaquin Valley. The reason
Speaker 1: they're having a vote on it now is because the
Speaker 1: money's on the table from the state now. It's being
Speaker 1: put before the voters now. This bond measure is put
Speaker 1: before the voters right now because Proposition two is on
Speaker 1: the table. Proposition two is the statewide bond measure, the
Speaker 1: state wide ten billion dollar bond measure for K through
Speaker 1: twelve school districts as well as for community college districts.
Speaker 1: K through twelve school districts can get more of that
Speaker 1: money if they raise matching funds locally through local bond measures.
Speaker 1: That's why Measure H is on the ballot right now.
Speaker 1: It's not rocket science. That's why it's because of the
Speaker 1: screwed up nature of how public school districts do their funding.
Speaker 1: This is what happened last time. In twenty twenty, there
Speaker 1: was a statewide bond measure for public schools funding, and
Speaker 1: so all local school districts had to bond up. And
Speaker 1: this just reflexively happens every time there's a state bond measure.
Speaker 1: The local school they the way they structure it because
Speaker 1: this is how the California Teachers Association runs this state. Okay,
Speaker 1: if they don't feel like they got enough money, if
Speaker 1: the California Teachers Association, the teachers' unions that run Sacramento,
Speaker 1: and yes they run Sacramento. Public employees unions are the
Speaker 1: most powerful force in Sacramento. And the biggest of those
Speaker 1: public employees unions is the teachers. They run sec cremental.
Speaker 1: They are the single most powerful public the single most
Speaker 1: powerful special interest lobbying entity, political donor, influence makers, power brokers,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. In Sacramento. You look
Speaker 1: at the donors who gave to Gavin Newsom, no single group,
Speaker 1: certainly during his recall when there were a lot of
Speaker 1: like there was a lot of loose limitations on well,
Speaker 1: so there are certain dollar limitations on what you can
Speaker 1: just give to Gavin Newsom for governor. But a lot
Speaker 1: of those dollar limitations didn't exist during the recall because
Speaker 1: you weren't technically voting for Gavin Newsom. You were you
Speaker 1: were campaigning on No on the recall measure. So the
Speaker 1: people who gave gazillions of dollars to the No on
Speaker 1: the recall Gavin Neussom measure, like the teachers unions were
Speaker 1: the single biggest group and it wasn't even close. And
Speaker 1: you could see right there just based on the dollar
Speaker 1: amounts and just adding them up like, okay, yeah, the
Speaker 1: teachers unions, they've got the most clout. The teachers' unions
Speaker 1: basically were mad that Gavin Newsom didn't allocate enough money
Speaker 1: for public schools in this last year's budget. Gavin Newsom
Speaker 1: is caught between a rock and a hard place. Teachers
Speaker 1: unions want ever more and more and more and more
Speaker 1: money for public schools, much of it going into their pockets.
Speaker 1: But Gavin Newsom, that's the rock and the hard place
Speaker 1: is math. We don't have much money. California has been
Speaker 1: facing budget deficits the last two years. Why because revenues
Speaker 1: from taxpayers are not matching the costs that we have
Speaker 1: to spend money on, or that Democrats have basically gotten
Speaker 1: the state used to spending. We had this bumper year
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two when we had this big influx
Speaker 1: of federal COVID money. We had a budget surplus, and
Speaker 1: everyone thought happened Days in Sunshine were here to stay. Well,
Speaker 1: they weren't. The economy wasn't great. A bunch of people
Speaker 1: who make a lot of money in capital gains and
Speaker 1: a lot of high income earners left California between twenty
Speaker 1: twenty and today, and tax revenues are outpacing spending burdens.
Speaker 1: So the teachers unions didn't get enough money for schools.
Speaker 1: And the way that Newsom sort of wiggled himself out
Speaker 1: of it to placate the teachers unions was by pledging,
Speaker 1: all right, I'll support a statewide ballot initiative for a
Speaker 1: statewide bond measure, and then all the local school districts
Speaker 1: they can do their own, you know, bond measure funding.
Speaker 1: That's the only reason why Measure H is on the
Speaker 1: ballot right now. It's on the ballot right now for
Speaker 1: reasons that have nothing to do with anything reasonable for
Speaker 1: Presne Unified, WI. Trop's totally correct. Yes, it's unreasonable to
Speaker 1: have a five hundred million dollar bond measure for a
Speaker 1: school district that hasn't even hired its permanent superintendent, where
Speaker 1: maybe you have a superintendent who has a different vision
Speaker 1: for ways in which the district should go that would
Speaker 1: impact the allocation of funding for all this different construction projects.
Speaker 1: But no, we're going to let the interim superintendent who
Speaker 1: interim that means for the meanwhile, the interim superintendent is
Speaker 1: going to guide the process for these five hundred million
Speaker 1: dollars worth of construction that's going to impact the school
Speaker 1: district for years, for forty years to come, at least,
Speaker 1: as taxpayers have to pay this off for forty years,
Speaker 1: increasing property taxes in the Presdent Unified region for forty years.
Speaker 1: So of course she's right that it doesn't make sense
Speaker 1: to do this now. But the reason why it doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense to do it now is it's the same
Speaker 1: reason why none of this makes sense for any of
Speaker 1: the school districts in not just President Unified, but Closes Unified,
Speaker 1: all the school districts that are doing bond measures right now.
Speaker 1: It's not in response to any exgent need necessarily that
Speaker 1: the school district has. It's only in response to their
Speaker 1: state money on the table because Gavin Newsom, because the
Speaker 1: teachers' union's got angry at Gavin Newsom. That's the only
Speaker 1: reason we're doing these this bond measure right now. That's
Speaker 1: why we're doing another bond measure four years after we
Speaker 1: just did one to close out the show. Just a
Speaker 1: reminder that maybe there could be a different paradigm for
Speaker 1: all of this with public schools. That's next on the
Speaker 1: John Girardi Show. With all this brew haha over measure
Speaker 1: h and you know Susan Wittrap, the head of the
Speaker 1: board of trustees for President Unified, actually urging people to
Speaker 1: vote no on measure age. It just makes me think,
Speaker 1: you know, parents, does it have to be this way?
Speaker 1: Do you need to send your kid to a public
Speaker 1: school that not only is it questionable how it's being led,
Speaker 1: how funding is going, how it's being spent, but just
Speaker 1: a school district that in general, and any of you
Speaker 1: listening to this who are maybe Christian or have a
Speaker 1: more conservative leaning worldview, a school district where the curriculum
Speaker 1: is set up to actively oppose you a curriculum that
Speaker 1: actively hates you and your beliefs and what you believe
Speaker 1: in and what you stand for, and is communicating a
Speaker 1: different moral vision from yours. Homeschooling's out there, man, and
Speaker 1: let me tell you it is producing better results than
Speaker 1: President Unified. Is two thirds of these kids in President
Speaker 1: Unified can't read or do math at grade level. So
Speaker 1: the idea of giving five hundred million dollars for this enormous,
Speaker 1: badly run venture that can't even educate kids, that is
Speaker 1: failing to educate kids at a staggering level, it's beyond
Speaker 1: me why anyone would vote for that. So anyway, vote
Speaker 1: no on all these school bond measures, any bond measure,
Speaker 1: Just no, Just say no. That'll do it. John Dierready
Speaker 1: show see you next time on Power Talk