Vote No on Measure H

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
There's a couple of weird political dynamics that are going
on right now with regards to Measure H. Measure H
is the largest of the various Fresno area school bond measures. Well,
I guess it's actually the second largest. The largest is
the one for the State Center Community College District State

(00:22):
Center Community College District. It I had not really understood
this necessarily about community colleges, but apparently they're kind of
organized in a way similar to K through twelve public
school districts. So you have basically a district State Center
Community College District that oversees many of the community colleges

(00:47):
in the quote center of the state, hence the name
State Center so Fresno City, Ridley College, Madera College, Closed Community,
et cetera. Nonetheless, what we've got right now is every
local school district in Fresno, the community college district, plus
all the K through twelve school districts have bond measures

(01:11):
that are on the ballot for this November. People have
gotten their vote by mail ballots or their drop off
ballots already. Okay, those went out on Monday, so people
are already starting to vote. Measure H is the largest

(01:31):
of the K through twelve bond measures. This is for
Fresno Unified. It's a five hundred million dollar bond measured
to fund we are now belatedly learning a certain series
of projects for construction throughout Presnoe Unified School District. What

(01:59):
is weird? Now? I've gone on and on and on
on this show about how much I oppose these bond measures.
The only reason all of these school districts are seeking
this bond money is because the money is on the
table right now. There's a statewide bond measure, a ten
billion dollars statewide bond measure Proposition two. And basically, if

(02:22):
local school districts pass bond measures of their own, they
can get matching funds from the state. So I don't
think any of these bond measures are coming about from
close Unified, President Unified, et cetera. I don't think any
of them are coming out due to some exigent, urgent,

(02:43):
genuine need. They just had bond measures that they passed
four years ago in twenty twenty. I don't think it's
in response to any genuine need. These bond measures are
coming about because the school districts see that they're money
on the table to be gotten, and so they're aggressively

(03:03):
pushing for the voters to pass bond measures. Because voters
like voting for school bond measures. They always do. The
school bond measures always pass, and I think it's because
fundamentally people don't understand bond measures. They don't understand that
a bond is a loan to a municipal entity, a

(03:25):
loan that you have to repay with interest. That's just
what they are. In the case of Fresne Unified, this
is a five hundred million dollar loan that's going to
have to be paid back over I think it's thirty years,
it might be forty years, thirty or forty years with interest.

(03:47):
The amount that taxpayers within Fresnew Unified are actually going
to have to pay is going to wind up being
more than five hundred million, much more with interest payments.
It's going to wind up being closer to the ball
of a billion dollars a billion dollars in taxes to
get five hundred million dollars of benefit. Now there's this bizarre,

(04:13):
this bizarre thing that I am noticing from AFAR. You've
got Susan Wittrup on the board of trustees for Fresnan
Unified School district. She is the representative for the Bullard
High School region, and I guess Fresne Unified's board of
trustees they are elected kind of on a regional basis.

(04:38):
So you're the representative for Bullard High School, you're the
representative for this. Clovis Unified is switching to a similar model,
and you'll you'll be able to see why. I don't
know that that's a great idea in just a second.
Susan Wittrup, though, is also in a relationship with Darius Assimi,

(04:58):
who's a very wealthy guy owns Granville Holmes and also
owns GV Wire, which is a now becoming more and
more prominent news outlet throughout the San Joaquin Valley. I think,
frankly it's becoming I think it's almost as important at

(05:20):
this point. It's almost as important as the Presno B is.
By this point, I think the Fresno Be's influence is
waning and waning as actual readership of the physical newspaper
of the Fresno B is going down and down. So
Darias Sassimi comes out in opposition to measure h on

(05:41):
GV wire, and then they publish in gv wire as
a news story twenty four questions from Susan Wittrop and
answers from district's staff on the Fresney Unified website. Wittrop
herself is apparently urging a no vote. So this is

(06:09):
this bizarre thing of Witchrop being on the board, but her,
this person she's in a relationship with, runs this major
media outlet that's covering this whole thing, and she's raised
a bunch of questions and I think merit some real answers.
I think apparently what appears to be happening is that

(06:30):
with Measure H, all of a sudden, just this week,
we're starting to get a finalized list of construction projects,
projects towards which the five hundred million dollars in Measure
H funding will be directed. And the purported rationale I

(06:53):
talked about it a little bit earlier this week on
the show. The purported rationale is to look at it
on an equity basis. That has to be the liberal
buzzwords speak. But I think what they mean is, Okay, well,
we're going to allocate more money for poorer districts. So
as a result, Bullard High School and its sort of

(07:16):
region is not getting much of the funding. They're getting
a small amount of the funding. A huge amount of
the five hundred million. I think about one hundred million
is going to go to Roosevelt. I think McLain is
the other one that's going to get around one hundred million.
So Fresno High is going to get a lot. So

(07:37):
these poorer parts of the district are going to get
a lot of money. There's going to be a whole
rebuild of an elementary school in Calawa. Now Wittrup has
raised these questions, the first and foremost being why is
the project list coming before the board of directors a

(07:59):
President Unified for a approval after the ballots already got
to voters. I mean that just seems completely unacceptable. Voters
already got their ballots and the project list wasn't even finalized.
The next question she raises, why is the bond measure

(08:21):
coming to voters before a permanent superintendent is hired? This
is another question from Wittrop. Now we know why it's
coming before the voters before a permanent superintendent is hired.
For President Unified. So, for those who haven't followed, Bob
Nelson was the superintendent of President Unified he retired, rode

(08:44):
off into the sunset to some nice, cushy sinecure position
over at Fresno State. There was this big push to
hire Misty her as his replacement. Then there was pushback
on that with the idea of, hey, mister Hurd just

(09:04):
happens to be the assistant superintendent. There's no one else
in the country would be better suited as superintendent. Shouldn't
we have a larger search. There's all this soul searching
from the board and self flagellation and oh, we're going
to go through a board retreat and we're going to
figure out what we have to do as a board,
which was sort of I would imagine for voters within

(09:24):
President Unified, you'd think, why do you Why does the
President Unified board need a consultant and a board retreat
to figure out how to do their jobs? Didn't you're
elected officials, You postured yourself as being ready to do
this job. Why do you need extra outside help? Why

(09:46):
do you need an expensive consultant to help you with
your job? So the reason why there isn't a permanent
superintendent when Measure H coming out is because obviously Measure
H is out, because Proposition two is on the ballot.
That's the only reason we're doing Measure H right now. Yes,

(10:11):
in a reasonable world, you would wait until there's a
permanent superintendent before you go to the voters to ask
them for one hundred five hundred million dollars bond measure
for rebuilding all kinds of things, prioritizing different things within
prisoning Unified, you would wait until you had a permanent
superintendent whose vision for development of the district was clear

(10:33):
and in place. But they don't have time to wait
for that. The money is on the table now. They
want to grab the money. Now, that's the whole point
of this bond measure is to grab the money. The
money from Prop two proposition to the statewide bond measure,
the statewide ten billion dollar bond measure. They can get

(10:55):
that money if they raise local bond funding. So gonna
wait around for a permanent superintendent, because that's that's the
tail wagging the dog nature of all of these bond measures.
They're not coming about close. Unified doesn't need four hundred
million new dollars all of a sudden, they want four
hundred million dollars. They are always gonna say yes to

(11:20):
new money, and they see, well, they're state funding on
the table with Prop two. If assuming Prop two passes,
that state money is going to be on the table,
and we only get access to it if we raise
or we get access to more of it if we
raise our own bond funding. So here's Measure A for
Close Unified, Here's Measure H for President Unified. Here's you know,

(11:42):
the equivalent measures for Central Unified and for Sendard Unified.
And all these school districts are doing the same thing.
For State Center, Community College District, They're all doing this,
so of course it would make more sense to wait
for permanent superintendent, but they don't feel like they have
time to wait. This is the tail wagging the dog

(12:04):
nature of all this. Wit Troup asked the question, and
clearly she's leading this way. Does asking for this Measure
H bond funding create a public perception that the interim
superintendent may be allocating bond funds into certain trustee regions

(12:25):
to secure the permanent superintendent position by catering to a
simple majority of the board. So Wittroup is making the
argument here that the allocation of these Measure H funds
it goes district. It basically goes on a high school

(12:46):
by high school regional basis. Within president Unified, the Bullard
High School and its region get this much, Sunnyside High
School and its region get that much. Mclayane High School,
Roosevelt High School, Fresno High School and its regions get
this much, this much, and this much, and what Wittrop

(13:10):
And by the way, all of the individual Board of
Trustee members of Fresne Unified are elected on that regional basis.
Wittrop is the representative for Bullard High, this person's the
representative for Fresno High, this person's representative for Sunnyside High,
et cetera. And what wit Trop is thinking is, hey,
like you're giving a ton of money to certain districts.

(13:33):
Are you just trying to curry favor with those trustees?
Is that what Misty Hurt, who has clearly wanted the
superintendent job, is she trying to curry favor with those
individual trustee members. This is why, by the way, I
am not crazy about the fact that Clovis Unified is

(13:56):
changing to a regionally based Board of time trustees system,
because this is what happened. Liberals want that for Clovis
Unified because they think it will allow more liberals to
be elected to the Close Unified school Board. What's really
going to happen is this kind of territorial turf war

(14:16):
nonsense is going to start happening right now. All of
the trustees for Clovis High are charged with caring for
all of the schools within Clovis Unified. But if it
turns into regional stuff, which is what's going to happen
for Clos Unified, well, you're the Clovis East regional representative.

(14:37):
You don't care about the Clovis West. You don't have
the same inherent need to care about what is good
for Clovis West. In fact, if it's a question of
allocating scarce resources, you're going to fight like hell for
Clovis East to the detriment of Clovis West. You don't
care what the Clovis West voters think. You're only you know,

(15:01):
you're answerable to the voters in the Closed East region.
That's how President Unified is set up, and it leads
to these kinds of silly turf war tensions and possibly,
as wit Trip's pointing out, attempts to curry favor one
way or another with attempts to curry favor with one

(15:26):
school board member over another to secure a job. Why
wasn't a community bond committee formed to provide input for
the project list? The answer to that was, ah, we
polled the public. We had board workshops back in May

(15:48):
of twenty twenty three, and then April twenty twenty four,
and at the June board meeting. What was the interim
superintendent's process for prioritizing projects, What was the interim superintendent's
process for revisiting the project list? How many revisions have
been made? So there are a lot of these questions

(16:10):
that I think remain unanswered with measure H. But again,
just the John Girardi basic principle, don't vote for bond measures,
just don't do it. More on this when we returned
this is the John Girardi Show on Power Talk. I
want to read some of this piece in GV wire,

(16:32):
this opinion piece written by Susan Wittrup, who is the
president of the president Unified Board of Trustees and now
the President of the Board of Trustees. I think it's
more just kind of like a primus enterpars so first
among equals. It's not like she's got more power necessarily
than the other members of the Board of Trustees. I

(16:54):
think she just kind of runs the meetings. She represents
the Bullard region, and she has a piece that was
published in GV Wire urging people to vote no on
Measure H and it highlights a lot of things that

(17:18):
are a little bit more specific than my opposition. I mean,
my opposition has been mainly, Look, bond measures are just
bad ideas. It's a bad way of funding public projects.
It's you know, it's whatever is the opposite of delayed gratification,

(17:39):
instant gratification. The school district gets five hundred million dollars
and taxpayers have to pay basically a billion dollars for
that five hundred million dollars worth of benefit over the
course of in this case, forty years. Okay, it's a
forty year loan. That's what it is. It's not I
think people have this sort of pie in the sky
idea in their heads. I actually think most voters just

(18:01):
don't know what a bond is. I think they hear bond,
they hear money for schools. They hear sort of positive
sounding things promoted by the school district, read by construction
companies that want the contracts who promote these kinds of
bond measures, they hear the positive things.

Speaker 2 (18:21):
Oh, we're just out here supporting our students.

Speaker 1 (18:24):
So yeah, we're out here supporting our students, and they
don't stop to think of what a bond actually is.
Bond is sort of just one of those words that
I think we hear and that we don't actually have
a very clear definition in our heads. A bond is alone,
that's all it is. A bond is a loan to
a governmental entity that the governmental entity has to pay

(18:44):
back with interest. And governmental entities don't generate their own money.
The only money governmental entities get is through taxes, through
taxing you. In the case of school districts, they get
that tax money from property taxes. And if you think, well,
I'm a renter, so I'm not paying property tax, yes

(19:05):
you are. Why do you think your rent keeps going up?
You know your landlord is accounting for what he has
to pay in property taxes. That is baked into what
you pay in rent. And I think that's part of
why these bond measures pass is because one it's a
small increase in percentage, it's sort of buried in your

(19:26):
property tax statement. You're not looking at it all the
time the way that you're looking at you know, honestly,
if if Chevron and gas companies like that really wanted
to stick it to California, you know what they could
do to basically overthrow California stick government immediately. Instead of
just the normal dollar, you know how on any gas pump,

(19:50):
you've got the amount of gallons of gas and the
amount of dollars. If they set up a third little
window showing the amount of gallons, the costs of the gallons,
and then the amount of taxes. If they did that
and people could see in real time on the screen

(20:12):
how much they were paying just in California state gasoline taxes,
there'd be a third American. There'd be a second American revolution,
or at least a California revolution, let's put it that way.
People don't see their property taxes day in and day
out like that the way they do with you know,

(20:32):
just at least you know, seeing gas at the pump.
That's why people get more angry over gas prices rising
than they do over various other kinds of things rising.
I'm convinced it's because you see that, you see the
dollars going way faster than the number of gallons, and
it's the psychological thing that drives people nuts. People used
to be that way with ATM fees all the time
because you'd see it right there on the screen. But

(20:57):
people don't really see that with these property tess especially
if you don't pay, especially if you rent and you're
not seeing property tax kind of built into your rent payments. So,
especially in a school district like Presney Unified that has
a lot of voters who are lower income, who don't
own their homes, I think it's a very easy sort

(21:21):
of cell. It's very easy pitch.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
Oh yeah, this is increasing property tax on your landlord,
not on you.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
It's well, yeah, it's on me. It's not like the
landlord just eats it. He has to increase rents now,
Susan Wittrop's p You know what, I've been yammering too long.
In next segment I'm going to go through Susan Wittrop's
piece again. The superintendent Fresney, not superintendent, the head of

(21:51):
the board of trustees for Fresney Unified her arguments against
Measure HS, the bond measure defund her own school district.
So that'll be next on the John Girardi Show. This
is the piece in GV Wire written by Susan Wittrup,
who's the head of the board of trustees for Fresney Unified,
in which she's telling people to vote no on Measure H,

(22:12):
which is the five hundred million dollar Presdney Unified School bond.
And I thought it was kind of fascinating that a
school board member would actually urge a no vote on
a bond. It's a rare thing and frankly something I
actually admire that Susan Witchrup's done. I'll confess I haven't
at various times been very enthusiastic about her, but I'm

(22:34):
pretty impressed by this. So let me go through this
as a school board trustee, She writes, I don't make
the recommendation no lightly because I recognize that our schools
in Fresney Unified are aging and dilapidated, and we will
need a bond measure passed in the near future. However,
the process to put Measure H on the ballot you
received this week was sloppy and deeply flawed. Measure H

(22:56):
simply is not ready your ballot, states quote. The school
board has identified detailed facilities needs of the district and
has determined which projects to finance from a local bond.
The most recent revision of the still unapproved construction project
list came out on Friday, so a week ago. Today.
The board will vote to approve the project list with

(23:17):
no public discussion on Wednesday, two days after residents began
voting on Measure H. Since the item is on the
consent agenda, there was no community bond committee formed to
provide input and o resite to the development of the
project list, so the voters got it before there was
actually a detailed list of construction projects actually approved. She

(23:42):
continues with the section called hastily thrown together raises taxes
for forty years. President Unified could take lessons from neighboring
school districts. I've been talking with their trustees about how
their districts prepared for bonds. Both Clovis Unified and Central
Unified have bond measures on the ballot. In Clovis Unified,
the project list was developed by district staff and a
community bond committee based on priorities set by the board

(24:05):
well in advance, without any involvement from board members. That's
the way it's supposed to be to safeguard the project
list from becoming politicized. In Fresnow Unified board members met
directly with facilities staff multiple times and dictated where bond
funds should be allocated for projects. Woh, that's a juicy

(24:30):
bit of info. So okay, So what she's saying is
when Clothes Unified developed its list of things, staff put
together the proposed list, then it was presented to the
Board of Trustees. Then the Board of Trustees voted on
the project list. What Wittrip is saying is that, no,
apparently they met with some board members. Some board members

(24:52):
were dictating what kinds of projects they wanted, So they
were manipulating the process on the front end with staff
and then presenting that to the board. And that's more
egregious I think within Presne Unified, because Fresney Unified trustees
are elected on a regional basis. So I'm from the
Bullard High Region, I'm from the Sunnyside region, I'm from

(25:13):
the Fresnoe High Region, I'm from the McLean region. I'm
from the Roosevelt region. You had what wid Trip seems
to be saying here is that people were trying to,
you know, hog more funding for their region over and
against some other region. She continues, there have been at
least three revisions to the project list since the item

(25:35):
was pulled by staff from the agenda at the last
board meeting. The only public discussion for the original project
list occurred at a board meeting in August. Where is
the list of projects by schools that voters need to
see before they vote? In Close Unified, every school in
the district placed signs with a QR code before voters
received ballots so that the public can easily access information

(25:55):
about improvements planned for the schools in their neighborhoods. For
both Cloes Unified and Central Unified, timing for the bond
was intentional, so there will be no tax rate change.
Their bonds pick up where previous bonds drop off, so
the cost is neutral to taxpayers. I hate that argument.
By the way, I'm not to interject myself into wip's

(26:18):
piece here again, this is Susan Wichrop's piece, the president
of President Unified Board of Trustees. Just to interject here,
I hate that Close Unified does this actually, because what
Close Unified does with their bond measure is say.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
Oh, well, well, here's a four hundred million dollars bond measure.
It won't increase your taxes, well, yeah does.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
Our taxes would naturally decrease once prior bond measures that
we're still paying for right now, once we finally pay
them off, our taxes should naturally decrease. But what you're
doing is then what Close Unified is doing is basically saying, well,
we'll just contain you to have your taxes be high

(27:01):
forever and pretend that it's not a tax increase. No,
you're still taxing us more. You're preventing a natural tax
decrease from happening. Don't act like you're getting money from nothing.
This word gain Close Unified does is doing with Measure
A that that annoys me, and they've done it with
prior bond measures as well. If it passes, which continues,

(27:26):
Measure H will result in a sharp increase to the
tax rate over the next forty years. While Fresno families
are still struggling to recover from their summer PG and
E bills, their property taxes will increase to the highest
tax rate Fresno taxpayers have ever seen. She then talks
about her opinion that they should have a permanent superintendent

(27:49):
first before voting on such a massive bond measure. Hire
a permanent superintendent first, which are brights? I met and
spoke with several voters of the last few weeks to
solicit input and submitted twenty four unanswered questions to interim
Superintendent Misty Her about the district's process for prioritizing projects
and allocating bond funds. My questions and responses from the

(28:11):
district staff should be posted for the public at the
President Unified website before Wednesday's board meeting. Moreover, in the
big scheme of priorities for this school district, measure h
is out of order. Conducting a national search and hiring
a permanent superintendent must come first. Until the President Unified
School Board can actively demonstrate a focus on student outcomes
and hire a permanent superintendent, a bond measure should be

(28:33):
out of the question. Several months ago, I called out
another flawed process when a narrow majority of the boards
sought to limit the superintendent search to internal candidates. The
community weighed in and pressured the school board to conduct
an external search for the best, most qualified leader. Your
voice made a difference and changed the trajectory. Use your
voice now to reinforce it. In fact, a no vote

(28:54):
on Measure H may help accelerate the school board governance
training that's in progress by communicating the expectations and values
of the community. In other words, you can't expect Presney
Unified trustees to make the changes that are obviously needed
by continuing to reward poor decisions as the ultimate stewards
of taxpayer money. The board shouldn't be focused on the
educational should be focused on the educational outcomes of our

(29:17):
students while creating policies in a culture that demands operational
excellence at the district. A plan I support and voters
should insist upon is for the board to conduct a
national search and hire a permanent superintendent. The district needs
to show evidence that student outcomes are improving and that
a basic level of operational competence has been restored. This way,

(29:38):
taxpayers know exactly how their hard earned tax dollars will
be spent over the next forty years. All of this
must be completed well before ballots arrive in homes. Only
then can the public feel confident that President Unified can
be trusted to deliver what is promised both with their
children and their tax dollars. Again, that's the piece by
Susan Wittrop those published in GV Wire urging a no
vote on Measure H. She's right, but I think again

(30:02):
one of the things she's not mentioning is she's saying, well,
why are we having a vote on this before a
permanent superintendent is hired? And this is the reason why
is part of the ridiculous tail wagging the dog nature
of all of these bond measures that are before all
of the voters throughout the San Joaquin Valley. The reason
they're having a vote on it now is because the

(30:27):
money's on the table from the state now. It's being
put before the voters now. This bond measure is put
before the voters right now because Proposition two is on
the table. Proposition two is the statewide bond measure, the
state wide ten billion dollar bond measure for K through

(30:50):
twelve school districts as well as for community college districts.
K through twelve school districts can get more of that
money if they raise matching funds locally through local bond measures.
That's why Measure H is on the ballot right now.
It's not rocket science. That's why it's because of the

(31:12):
screwed up nature of how public school districts do their funding.
This is what happened last time. In twenty twenty, there
was a statewide bond measure for public schools funding, and
so all local school districts had to bond up. And
this just reflexively happens every time there's a state bond measure.

(31:32):
The local school they the way they structure it because
this is how the California Teachers Association runs this state. Okay,
if they don't feel like they got enough money, if
the California Teachers Association, the teachers' unions that run Sacramento,
and yes they run Sacramento. Public employees unions are the

(31:52):
most powerful force in Sacramento. And the biggest of those
public employees unions is the teachers. They run sec cremental.
They are the single most powerful public the single most
powerful special interest lobbying entity, political donor, influence makers, power brokers,
whatever you want to call it. In Sacramento. You look

(32:15):
at the donors who gave to Gavin Newsom, no single group,
certainly during his recall when there were a lot of
like there was a lot of loose limitations on well,
so there are certain dollar limitations on what you can
just give to Gavin Newsom for governor. But a lot
of those dollar limitations didn't exist during the recall because

(32:37):
you weren't technically voting for Gavin Newsom. You were you
were campaigning on No on the recall measure. So the
people who gave gazillions of dollars to the No on
the recall Gavin Neussom measure, like the teachers unions were
the single biggest group and it wasn't even close. And
you could see right there just based on the dollar
amounts and just adding them up like, okay, yeah, the

(32:59):
teachers unions, they've got the most clout. The teachers' unions
basically were mad that Gavin Newsom didn't allocate enough money
for public schools in this last year's budget. Gavin Newsom
is caught between a rock and a hard place. Teachers
unions want ever more and more and more and more
money for public schools, much of it going into their pockets.

(33:24):
But Gavin Newsom, that's the rock and the hard place
is math. We don't have much money. California has been
facing budget deficits the last two years. Why because revenues
from taxpayers are not matching the costs that we have
to spend money on, or that Democrats have basically gotten

(33:48):
the state used to spending. We had this bumper year
in twenty twenty two when we had this big influx
of federal COVID money. We had a budget surplus, and
everyone thought happened Days in Sunshine were here to stay. Well,
they weren't. The economy wasn't great. A bunch of people
who make a lot of money in capital gains and

(34:10):
a lot of high income earners left California between twenty
twenty and today, and tax revenues are outpacing spending burdens.
So the teachers unions didn't get enough money for schools.
And the way that Newsom sort of wiggled himself out
of it to placate the teachers unions was by pledging,

(34:30):
all right, I'll support a statewide ballot initiative for a
statewide bond measure, and then all the local school districts
they can do their own, you know, bond measure funding.
That's the only reason why Measure H is on the
ballot right now. It's on the ballot right now for
reasons that have nothing to do with anything reasonable for
Presne Unified, WI. Trop's totally correct. Yes, it's unreasonable to

(34:52):
have a five hundred million dollar bond measure for a
school district that hasn't even hired its permanent superintendent, where
maybe you have a superintendent who has a different vision
for ways in which the district should go that would
impact the allocation of funding for all this different construction projects.

(35:16):
But no, we're going to let the interim superintendent who
interim that means for the meanwhile, the interim superintendent is
going to guide the process for these five hundred million
dollars worth of construction that's going to impact the school
district for years, for forty years to come, at least,
as taxpayers have to pay this off for forty years,

(35:37):
increasing property taxes in the Presdent Unified region for forty years.
So of course she's right that it doesn't make sense
to do this now. But the reason why it doesn't
make sense to do it now is it's the same
reason why none of this makes sense for any of
the school districts in not just President Unified, but Closes Unified,

(36:00):
all the school districts that are doing bond measures right now.
It's not in response to any exgent need necessarily that
the school district has. It's only in response to their
state money on the table because Gavin Newsom, because the
teachers' union's got angry at Gavin Newsom. That's the only
reason we're doing these this bond measure right now. That's

(36:21):
why we're doing another bond measure four years after we
just did one to close out the show. Just a
reminder that maybe there could be a different paradigm for
all of this with public schools. That's next on the
John Girardi Show. With all this brew haha over measure
h and you know Susan Wittrap, the head of the

(36:44):
board of trustees for President Unified, actually urging people to
vote no on measure age. It just makes me think,
you know, parents, does it have to be this way?
Do you need to send your kid to a public
school that not only is it questionable how it's being led,

(37:06):
how funding is going, how it's being spent, but just
a school district that in general, and any of you
listening to this who are maybe Christian or have a
more conservative leaning worldview, a school district where the curriculum
is set up to actively oppose you a curriculum that
actively hates you and your beliefs and what you believe

(37:28):
in and what you stand for, and is communicating a
different moral vision from yours. Homeschooling's out there, man, and
let me tell you it is producing better results than
President Unified. Is two thirds of these kids in President
Unified can't read or do math at grade level. So

(37:49):
the idea of giving five hundred million dollars for this enormous,
badly run venture that can't even educate kids, that is
failing to educate kids at a staggering level, it's beyond
me why anyone would vote for that. So anyway, vote
no on all these school bond measures, any bond measure,
Just no, Just say no. That'll do it. John Dierready

(38:10):
show see you next time on Power Talk