Egan was right choice

Again, I opened your paper to Mailbag (Nov. 17) only to read

another letter about the loss to our children and to us since Wendy

Leece no longer is able attend to her conservative agenda on the

Newport-Mesa Unified School District Board of Trustees. I now felt

the need to address why I voted for Tom Egan.

Let me preface this by stating that I have lived in the city of

Costa Mesa for 27 years. My three children all attended the schools

from the beginning and graduated from Estancia High School. They all

received excellent educations from this district’s schools.

Leece never had any of her five children attend our schools until,

conveniently, this election year, when she faced opposition. Then,

and only then, did she finally enroll her child at Ensign

Intermediate School. This was a very transparent political strategy

to me, anyway.

Why weren’t our district schools good enough for the education of

her children until now, when she faced such opposition? When she ran

unopposed, she kept her children home to school herself, or in

private schools.

Now the question is, now that she is no longer a school board

trustee, is her child still enrolled?

The most important reason that I and, I presume, many voted

against her is that I am also a teacher in the district.

I teach at Rea Elementary. I was one of the original teachers

selected to help open the school in the fall of 1997. Since that time, our staff has more than doubled.

Under our excellent leadership, Rea has implemented numerous new

programs with the use of technology, and we teachers have worked very

hard to bring up our Academic Performance Index scores by 44 points

this last year. If I am not mistaken, this was the second highest

growth within the district.

Leece was elected to be our representative on the school board and

was to support us, listen to our concerns for our school and for our

students. By law, school board members are supposed to visit the

schools in the district which they were elected to represent each and

every year.

Leece had, I suppose, higher and loftier goals on her agenda than

to take the time to actually set foot on our campus. We have done the

calculations, and since September of 1997, she has perhaps been on

our campus a total of five minutes.

Each and every time she was scheduled for a visitation, she

canceled. It became very apparent to our staff that she had her own

agenda. Our staff and our nearly 800 students were minor

considerations. Her nonverbal communication screamed this message to

us.

When asked about the importance of technology being implemented in

the schools, during the election, and in your paper, she had the

audacity to cite our school as a great example. How would she have

known what we were doing? Perhaps through osmosis?

She did not represent our school, a school in her elected zone,

enough to even step foot on our campus for more than five minutes in

more than five years.

Egan came and spent more than an hour on our campus during his

campaign. He received my vote for obvious reasons. The joke around

our school is that “we will miss not seeing Wendy Leece around here.”

SHARON BAKER

Costa Mesa

Our society laughed in the 1960s when conservatives said that the

liberals wanted a “cradle to grave” society. People in the ‘70s

laughed again when liberals asked for a “Great Society” and a

guaranteed annual wage. Many stopped laughing in the ‘80s for a

while, until George the First said: “Read my lips.” No one could stop

laughing at all in the ‘90s, with Bill and Hillary on their throne.

Today, we can at least look honestly at what was wrought from the

last 40 years of progressive liberalism.

Our children can now look forward to a great job at Wal-Mart,

Wendy’s or McDonald’s after graduation from high school. Socialized

medicine seems a certainty; civil and privacy rights -- as we once

knew them -- are completely gone; major corporations -- not just a

few -- are found to be without any sense of propriety or veracity;

and state governments and corporations across America are going broke

due to pension funds that are running out of money.

Then there is Wendy Leece, the sweetest, kindest person we have

ever known, despised and attacked with impunity by mean-spirited,

power-hungry, back-pocket-leaning liberal school board members. When

one of “their own” disgraced their so-called oath, he was given a

pass. Not Leece. She spoke as she believed, honest and straight.

She has personal values? Oh, they moan, how could that be

acceptable in our Jerry Springer, situational ethics and “think world

village” mentality? Shouldn’t a doctor be sent to go to school with

every child? Think of the jobs that would create.

Leece wanted the original formula, the one that worked for 2,000

years: “Teach your children well.” And teach them with the sense and

opportunity to develop values, which would serve them over a

lifetime, not just until the next new “socialized acceptable”

textbook was released.

The good news is that more than 35% in the school board’s District

4 got the message and voted for either Ed Loyd or us. If one in three

got the message, at least we have hope. Yes, we blatantly supported

Leece and we still do. Honor and character may not mean much to those

who now serve, but they certainly do to us.

Thanks to Steve Smith for saying a truthful, nice word about a

wonderful lady.

RON AND ANNA WINSHIP

Newport Beach

* RON WINSHIP ran unsuccessfully for the Newport-Mesa Unified

School District Board of Trustees this fall.