Well, there's nothing like late notice. The two candidates in the May 17th runoff election for the Sub-District seat will meet at 7:30 pme tonight in the Auditorium at Eagle Rock Elementary. (I was among the group that was supposed to be "in the know" on this as one of the sponsoring group, and we had it scrubbed as of last week, only to find a few days later that it was "on." Well, coordination isn't always happening where it might be.)
This position is being vacated by Yolie Flores as she heads into the private sector. leaving her mark as a supporter of parent's who want alternatives to classic LAUSD schools that are currently operating in assorted forms.
Kayser would be my choice here since Luis Sanchez is LAUSD Board President Monica Garcia's chief-of-staff. Garcia was elected to the LAUSD post as Jose Huizar left LAUSD to head on over to the City Council seat in CD-14. Now remember that CD-14 was represented then by Antonio Villaraigosa who promised to serve the entire council member term for us here in CD-14, on of many promises that he failed to keep. That promise to serve out his whole term didn't last too long as we all know the rest of that story.
But Huizar had, as his chief-of-staff, Monica Garcia, and like musical chairs, she moved to take the LAUSD office that Huizar vacated, elected with the weight of Huizar and his benefactor, Antonio Villaraigosa, helping get the votes.
With the sad state of affairs that the LAUSD is in, what with them having shown us huge cost overruns on the many school that are costing way too much and being completed so slowly with one delay after another for many of the more expensively built schools. The enrollment in LAUSD has been on the decline consistently over the laste decade that there is no longer the numbers of students now as before which created the need for more seats in the first place.
Villaraigosa was now the mayor and he was more interested in LAUSD and making it turn around (yes, he of little relevant experience) than dealing with his mandated responsibility of the city government itself. But after spending much time, energy and money on the takeover of the school district, and being disappointed in that endeavor by the court's decision that he could not "take over" the District, or even just a little chunk of it, he's finally been able to insert several of his supporter/followers on the Board to have the influence that he wanted. If Sanchez is elected, it would tilt this power more decisively in Villaraigosa's favor to have Board decisions go the way he and his friends want it to go. Not a good situation at all for students but then the mayor and crew don't really have that as their main concern.
I think Antonio's got plans to dissassemble the LAUSD from within and all these expensive new schools are being handed over to charters and partnerships, it seems. I don't think voters would have approved the huge bond measure if they knew the buildings were going to be given away as they have been, and it's not stopping, no, not with the Villaraigosa aligned folks getting their say-so.
At the same time, the city has plunged into financial chaos, as the mayor had somehow put the city business at the lower end of priorites over the years while he manuevered into a position to get into the Obama administration, but Obama was wise to pass over Antonio while taking many of the better staf members to D.C. Then there was the run for governor. That effort fizzled so badly that his announcement that he was NOT running for governor was of his choice, partly to take care of city business and partly to be a father to his youngest child.
So the city's floundering and now the attention is back on city government with the budget deficit unimaginably high, and bankruptcy is within reach. As soon as the July 2009 inauguration was done, Antonion and love interest, Lu Parker of Ch. 5 News, quickly left L.A. for travel to South Africa. (It was during this time period that the Michael Jackson memorial events happened, using huge numbers of LAPD officers to attend to anticipated crowds by the Staples Center. I don't think the city ever recovered anything close to what expense it took for all these events to be handled by the police and other city services.
So with all the links to the political machinery of the mayor and cronies like former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, living large while in offices and finding his son on the wrong end of the law with a homicide charge, I think there's more than enough Villaraisgosa-style of influence on the scene to go around for now.
Kayser should get the vote and Luis Sanchez needs to be turned away at the door to keep that Villaraigosa influence from spreading any further. The track record from Antonio activities just taints all the rest of the picture for me to believe any other of his cohorts will think of students first and not let politics rule their decisions. Monica Garcia has showed me that problem too many times already, and you know that Sanchez was not chosen for his job as chief-of=staff by disagreeing with her.
Vote for Kayser. And this turnout on May 17th might hit a low of 10 percent of the registered voters who actually will show up to vote and make a difference. And in a low-turnout election, anything can happen. No to Sanchez. Yes to Kayser.
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