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Lois Henry: It's time for change on the KHSD board
| Saturday, Oct 11 2008 12:54 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Oct 10 2008 11:55 AM
When you settle in to vote for two Kern High School District trustees on Nov. 4, remember your ABCs — Anyone But Chad.
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As in Chad Vegas, the lightning-rod trustee who has polarized the district with unnecessary religious debates that have no place in public education and take away from real problems that need attention.
Aside from pushing to change winter/spring breaks to Christmas/Easter and mandating “In God We Trust” posters be put in every classroom, he has also publicly stated that he would not follow a law if it crossed his religious beliefs.
“My oath was not to uphold every statute or decision made by the courts,” he wrote in a letter to this newspaper.
Actually, that’s exactly what it means. If a law or court decision so offends, quit your office in protest and work against the law as a private citizen.
But you can’t have it both ways.
In a recent Californian Editorial board meeting with all the KHSD candidates Vegas said that, if elected, he doesn’t plan to introduce any more social/religious proposals. He wants to focus on education now, he said.
Too late.
The other trustee up for re-election is Bob Hampton, who has parried Vegas’ religious thrusts, saying students’ spirituality should be up to their families, not school teachers and administrators. Hear, hear!
You will also see five challengers on the ballot and possibly one or more write-in candidates.
So, now that I’ve recommended who we should not elect (Vegas), who should we elect?
Hey, that’s up to you!
But to help with your candidate homework, I did a small survey (separate from The Californian’s Opinion department) that I think adds greater dimension to the hopefuls seeking your vote.
The biggest news out of my totally unscientific survey was that one candidate actually copped to cheating — Vegas!
The question was whether they had ever cheated on an exam. All the other candidates said no.
Vegas said: “I never cheated on an exam, but I cheated on numerous quizzes. I learned that it was easy to cheat and that my heart is far more sinful than I thought at the time.”
Despite my dislike of Vegas’ social/religious agenda, I admire his honesty. And I have some sympathy, as I had a geometry class in high school I would never have survived without a bit of, er, creative test-taking skills.
But I digress.
None of the trustee candidates owned up to ditching, per se. I asked if they attended the last day of their senior year (wasn’t that a free day?). Most said yes, except Vegas, who wanted clarification as to whether I was talking about “Senior Week.”
Charles Cournyea did not attend the last day of his senior year because he had quit school in his junior year and was serving in Vietnam, which I’m counting as an excused absence.
I also wanted to know if any of the seven trustee hopefuls had flunked a class.
Five candidates admitted that, yes, they had. Hampton said no and Bill Perry skipped that question. Hmmm.
The flunkers (flunkees?) were: Charlie Rodriguez, Spanish his junior year; Robert S. Frank II, government his senior year; Cournyea, algebra his freshman year; and both Vegas and Larry W. “Captain” Bly, geometry their sophomore years. I can relate to that last one.
OK, I did ask some serious questions, such as what to do about KHSD’s high dropout rate and low test scores and whether the candidates supported trustees sitting in on job interviews for teachers and administrators.
Here are some highlights.
Most candidates except Vegas and Bly did not like the idea of trustees sitting in on job interviews. Though Bly said he probably never would sit in on an interview, he didn’t feel it would be a bad precedent for a trustee. Vegas supported it as a means of evaluating the performance of Superintendent Don Carter.
Cournyea was most passionate about the dropout issue, having dropped out himself. He wants to create a mentoring program.
More parental involvement was Hampton’s answer to the dropout rate. He felt it was most important to be “positive in every part of the instruction process” regarding test scores.
On test scores, Perry, a longtime educator himself, laid out a plan for doing more work to understand the underlying reason for low test scores.
Bly felt scores would improve if teachers tested students at the beginning of the year and developed self-paced, individual instruction so the student could improve in areas they were deficient.
Rodriguez worried that low test scores might be a result of busing and that students are focused more on fitting in than academics.
Frank said he didn’t know how to fix either problem. But, he said, he knew enough to ask the right questions to find an answer.
Almost every candidate — with the exception of Vegas, of course — stressed that KHSD absolutely must stop the side-show religion-based distractions and focus on education.
Now that’s a concept I can endorse. Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com.