Board incumbents kept on defensive

Deirdre Newman

The challengers for the Newport-Mesa Unified school board kept the

incumbents on the defensive for most of the night Wednesday during

the first candidates’ forum, questioning some of their decisions and

calling for fresh ideas.

The forum also exposed a wide chasm between the incumbents and the

challengers, as some of the incumbents offered misinformation.

A sparse crowd of about 50 turned up at Corona del Mar High to

watch the forum, which the Harbor Council PTA and the League of Women

Voters of the Orange Coast sponsored.

Contender Ed Loyd described the board, with the exception of Wendy

Leece, as a unified block of like-minded trustees with no room for

independent thought. His comment came in response to a question about

the district’s zero-tolerance policy and received the loudest

applause of the evening.

Loyd said one of the reasons he is challenging Serene Stokes is

because the board, as a whole, did not follow its own policy and take

a stand against trustee Jim Ferryman after he was convicted of drunk

driving.

“The board showed a type of buddy-buddy scheme because they have

been together for so long,” Loyd said. “The board has one brain for

six board members, and I think it’s time for a change.”

Stokes, one of three incumbents seeking reelection, defended the

board, saying each trustee independently investigates the topics

before they come up for a vote.

“If we seem to vote a lot in the same direction, it’s because

we’re voting on what works for kids and what’s good for kids,” Stokes

said.

While the three incumbents have classroom and/or administrative

educational experience, the four challengers all come from the

business world. This disparity was most evident in the candidates’

responses to questions about the greatest challenge facing the

district in the next four years and about the amount of time students

spend taking statewide tests.

Tom Egan, challenging Wendy Leece, said stretching the district’s

resources and making teachers more productive using technology are

the biggest challenges.

“It’s what businesses do all over the world,” Egan said.

Incumbent Judy Franco, running against Shelby Cove, said the

biggest challenge facing the district is the state budget.

“This year, the state cut over $1.1 million from education [in

Newport-Mesa Unified, which will bring a new set of budgetary issues

to the table next year,” Franco said.

Loyd proposed that, as district schools surpass the state averages

on tests, trustees should lobby Sacramento for waivers to reduce the

amount of time spent testing.

Leece called the tests a “necessary evil” and focused on the

positive aspect of using them as indicators of students’ strengths

and weaknesses. She also said the district has to work harder at

preparing students for college admission tests like the SATs.

“We need to do more so that the rigor on the [state] tests can be

translated to college tests,” Leece said. “I want to make college an

open-door reality to minority and lower-income kids.”

To the question of how the board can better support teachers, Ron

Winship, also challenging Stokes, said he is the only one to propose

paying teachers more to teach at “underperforming” schools, which he

described as “dangerous.”

“Where it’s more dangerous, you need to pay teachers more money,”

Winship said. “We’re not going to get more money from the state,

because they don’t have it.”

Winship also said he doesn’t believe teachers need special

training or multicultural education.

Cove, who mostly limited every statement she made to a sentence or

two, said she thinks she can help the teachers gain better support

through the district’s Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment

program.

The last question of the evening involved the candidate’s opinions

on whether creationism should be included in the state framework.

Currently, it is not.

Franco said that creationism does not belong in science class, but

would be appropriate in a history of religion class. Leece continued

her crusade to get intelligent design, a movement that questions

Darwinian evolution with research in biochemistry, included in the

science curriculum.

“It is a cutting-edge issue, and our science textbooks are out of

date,” Leece said. “They don’t discuss the full range of theories.”

Cove said that if the district is teaching one theory of

evolution, it should teach all theories, since “our goal is to get

kids to use their brains and foster critical thinking.”

The gaffes of the evening came when Loyd accused Stokes of looking

the other way eight years ago when former business services director

Stephen Wagner embezzled $10 million from the district. The

embezzlement happened 10 years ago, and the amount was close to $4

million.

Also, Winship referred to the district’s graduation rate as 40%,

when it is closer to 97%, according to trustee Dana Black, who

attended the forum.

Linda Sneen, who will replace Jim Ferryman, attended the forum,

but did not participate.