Nominating Honig to State Board of Education is risky but worthy
He did more than anyone to raise standards
Jerry Brown had no sooner nominated former California Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig to the state Board of Education this week than the ugly part of the Honig story crept back into the news: In 1993, Honig, possibly the most influential school leader in California’s history, was convicted on a felony conflict of interest charge and forced to resign. Three years later the charge was reduced to a misdemeanor, which now again makes him eligible to hold public office. But it may again haunt him –and haunt Brown for naming him.
The details of the old charges are too long to lay out in detail in this piece. In essence the hard-driving Honig was accused of steering some school district consulting contracts for parent training to his wife Nancy’s nonprofit Quality Education Project, which was headquartered in their San Francisco home.
It was a reckless thing to do, as some of Honig’s friends told him even then, but Honig was so certain that the services the QEP provided were the best thing for the schools that got them that the warnings were ignored.
The felony charge always smacked of a political witch hunt. Honig, a Democrat, never made
