PARENT+STUDENT ADVOCATE/4LAKids BLOGGER SCOTT FOLSOM QUALIFIES FOR SCHOOL BOARD BALLOT, IS ENDORSED BY UTLA

by smf for 4LAKidsNews

Dec 6, 2012 ::  Yesterday I turned in my nominating petitions to the City of LA elections office and preliminarily qualified for the March 5th primary election for LAUSD  Board of Education, Seat #2.  That seat is currently occupied by Board of Education President Monica Garcia.

Later in the evening I was endorsed by a vote of the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) House of Representatives after being interviewed a week or so back  and recommended by the UTLA PACE (Political Action Council of Educators) committee. That recommendation was seconded by the UTLA Board of Directors in a meeting earlier Wednesday.

e-mail to smf from PACE chair Brent Smiley:

Subject: Congratulations

Time & Date: Wed, Dec 5, 2012 10:44 pm

Message:

Congrats,

You have been endorsed by UTLA for School Board

 

The UTLA Board of Directors and House of Reps also voted to approve the tentative agreement on teacher evaluation last night– which still must be voted upon by the UTLA rank-and-file.

 

I would love to be able to say the Board of Ed race  will be a a positive campaign. 

It won’t be.

My opponent has been extremely bad news for :

• her board district (in East-and- Northeast Los Angeles, Downtown, Little Tokyo, Chinatown, Koreatown, Pico-Union, etc.) 
• for LAUSD in general
• and for the children and parents and teachers and principals and school staff and taxpayers of Los Angeles.

On the other hand I do-and-must admit that she has served her financial supporters and outside special interests well.

I didn’t oversee the building of 128 schools in Los Angeles – a program remarkably free from financial and political shenanigans -  to see the operation of the schools– and the schools themselves - given piecemeal to Monica’s friends.

Stay tuned.

The whole process of signature gathering has been pretty stressful and filled with way too much drama+angst.  More on that misadventure later - when-and-if  I ever  get to the “this will be funny in retrospect” phase. Suffice it to say I feel somewhat victimized by the professional signature gatherer/coordinator involved …and a friend I recommended him to was totally victimized!

The “preliminarily” part of the qualified statement in the opening paragraph comes from:

• the reality that a final signature count won’t be completed for ten days
• …and the fact that a 4LAKids reader told me at the UTLA meeting last night that she was approached by one of my signature gatherers in a neighborhood outside Board District #2. She signed under protest. My signature coordinator assured me that inadvertent signatures gathered from outside the area would be checked against the master list of registered voters and purged from the list before  I turned them in.

I am of little faith.