After all my years in the coffee-fuelled business of journalism, I think I can say pretty definitively that there’s hardly anything as boring as a school board meeting.
School boards often represent small cross sections of cities and communities and it’s mostly parents who are concerned enough to attend meetings. The only time you read about a school board is if they try to ban evolution in Texas or if it’s election time. Well, this ain’t Texas, so here come the candidates!
The current incumbents on the Santa Maria-Bonita School District board of education and their challengers had an epic showdown on Oct. 26 (see page 5), debating the district’s most pressing issues with fiery rhetoric and barbed insults. OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration; they mostly agreed and then went home.
Seriously, incumbent Ricky Lara basically answered a few questions with a “what she said!” He also seemed totally uninformed on most issues the audience asked about. Someone had to explain to him during the debate what cultural proficiency even was before he answered, “I’m for it!”
I’ve complained about voter apathy more than a couple times this election season, but candidate apathy? Seriously?
Apathy is contagious, I guess. If you have voters who don’t care to do their homework, you’re gonna get representatives who are the same. You might also get some opportunistic vultures in your midst though, too.
One challenger, Gary Michaels, is a Santa Maria transplant who used to work for Comcast. He was quick to jump on Lara’s lack of knowledge on the issues.
“I have to say that when I listen to him now, it makes me wonder about what’s going on on the board,” he said.
Michaels pointed to the board’s lack of conversation about “cultural diversity” as a problem, but he ended his own rambling answer on the cultural proficiency question with a pretty tone deaf “gracias,” which received scoffs from the audience. Classy.
In the world of education and actually interesting school board meetings, cultural proficiency is a pretty big deal. And in a community like the one served by Santa Maria-Bonita, which has seen notable demographic shifts in the number of Hispanic students, having a school board educated on the topic should be important. These candidates should at least care enough to know what it is.
That’s the opposite problem with more progressive challengers like Abraham Melendrez, who spoke up loud and clear on the cornucopia of issues that his group CAUSE (Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy) is concerned about, from dual immersion classes to mental health support or cultural proficiency training. CAUSE has harped on these topics at school board meetings and elsewhere for years, and has seen so little done that its own members are stepping up to join the board.
It’s not bad that school boards are boring, they really should be. Making decisions that affect an entire school district isn’t flashy, but it is work. So is knowing who the candidates are and where they stand on the issues–if they know, that is.
The Canary is a bird of few words. Send your thoughts to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Nov 1-7, 2018.
