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Board Meeting Summary - 5/15/2024: Cell Phone Ban Finally Approved. Plus Racial Hiring Quotas? More Failed Academic Plans, and a Pass on Electrification.

Writer's picture: Scott DavisonScott Davison

Approving a Cell Phone Ban - 6 Months Later

With zero fanfare or discussion, the new Board Policy to prohibit cell phone finally was approved by the Board on a 4-1 vote. Ironically, Trustee Vurbeff - the original proponent of the plan, voted no despite supporting the plan due to the new policy being lumped in with a handful of additional board policies which were quite problematic. Instead of splitting up the vote on each policy, Trustee Rallings asked for a vote to approve all at once.


To recap: in elementary and middle school, phones will be expected to be put away and turned off all day. In high school, phones will be put away and out of sight during class, but can be used at lunch or on breaks.


Why did it take 6 months for this policy to come to fruition? It's interesting to see how much an unwilling Superintendent and Staff can delay changes that they don't want. When they DO want a change (like the next policy), they'll push it through immediately.


How About a Racial Hiring Quota? Approved Immediately!

Trustee Vurbeff voted against the revised cell phone policy because it was lumped in with a bunch of other board policies, including BP 4111/4211/4311 on Recruitment and Selection of employees. The policies were being amended to state that "students benefit when district staff reflects the racial, ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity of the district.


How do you have staff "reflect" the race and ethnic diversity of the district? You have to specifically select staff based on their race and ethnicity. Yes, normally you would call this "unconstitutional race-based hiring," but until enough lawsuits are filed, the trendy term for this is "ethnoracial matching." There are actual studies on this where people unironically endorse this practice. When you hear the proponents of DEI programs claim that students need to "see themselves" in their teachers and educators, they literally mean having a Hispanic child taught by a Hispanic teacher. But does that mean a white child should be taught by a white teacher? Of course NOT! THAT would be racist!


How would this be implemented, if not with explicit racial quotas? If the student population is 50% Hispanic but the teachers are 75% white, should we fire teachers and send out applications for Hispanic teachers until we evened out the numbers? If the students shifted to a more white population, should we then fire those Hispanic teachers and go back and hire more white teachers?


The reality is that this policy is blatantly unconstitutional and blatantly racist. It is illegal to hire anyone based on their race, but that is essentially what this policy calls for. The reality is this policy actually furthers racism by telling children that they can only learn if a teacher look like them, or came from the same country.


So why didn't the Board even blink an eye at approving a policy like this? Because it was "vetted" by the lobbyists and Sacramento policymakers at the California School Board Association (CSBA), and despite most of us thinking we elect individual school board members to think critically and represent our local values and interests in our school district, most of them just pay dues to CSBA and let CSBA tell them what to do.


LCAP

Once again, the Board rejected another effort by Trustee Vurbeff to address some abysmal scores in our middle and high school students. Once again, the Superintendent and Staff did not support any changes. And once again, since the Superintendent is unwilling to admit that secondary students are struggling far more than elementary school students, only the elementary students were slotted to receive additional academic interventions.


If you have a middle or high school student, I don't know what to say other than: elections are coming! We need trustees who are willing to push the Superintendent to affect real change for our kids, and a Superintendent who is willing to push for bigger improvements instead of trying to quietly ignore failing academic metrics that are having real impacts on our public education system.


Electrification

A citizens group has been pushing the Board to pass an "Electrification Resolution" committing to changing all CUSD facilities, vehicles, etc. to electricity. The resolution included some potentially costly requirements to electrify the district in a fairly short amount of time, without any regard to the cost. Yes, we have the highest electricity rates in the nation, and there was zero indication of the potential cost impact for this.


Legally, anyone can bring a resolution before the Board, and the Board is free to amend it however it likes before deciding whether to pass it or not. However, this particular resolution had numerous problems and it appeared no one was willing to sign off on it, so it failed.

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