The Signal - Santa Clarita Valley News - Public education is a liberal value:
"'Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. ... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.'
-Thomas Jefferson
Now that our local elections are over for school and water board races, I believe it is prudent to reflect on how these races are conducted in our valley. They, like City Council races, are supposed to be non-partisan but clearly they are not."
As Tim Myers noted recently, there is a "Republican Machine" ("Is Boydston a game-changer?" Nov. 1) that controls the politics here. We even have our own "Karl Rove" in Santa Clarita Valley, master of dirty politics who orchestrates hit mailers, telephone smear campaigns and other tricks and ploys to make sure only those in the Machine are elected.
Lynn Vakay wrote before the election in "Right Here Right Now" who the Republican school board candidates were, strongly intimating that people should vote only for them because they espoused the Republican education platform which I read as a thinly disguised call for privatization, dismantling the public school system through systematic starvation, not educating "them" (immigrants) and vilifying public school unions. Vakay's attack on our public school system strikes me as odd since she is a public school teacher and enjoys a living wage, health care benefits and retirement because of her public school union. She clearly unveiled any attempt by the Machine to pretend these elections are "non-partisan."
"'Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. ... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.'
-Thomas Jefferson
Now that our local elections are over for school and water board races, I believe it is prudent to reflect on how these races are conducted in our valley. They, like City Council races, are supposed to be non-partisan but clearly they are not."
As Tim Myers noted recently, there is a "Republican Machine" ("Is Boydston a game-changer?" Nov. 1) that controls the politics here. We even have our own "Karl Rove" in Santa Clarita Valley, master of dirty politics who orchestrates hit mailers, telephone smear campaigns and other tricks and ploys to make sure only those in the Machine are elected.
Lynn Vakay wrote before the election in "Right Here Right Now" who the Republican school board candidates were, strongly intimating that people should vote only for them because they espoused the Republican education platform which I read as a thinly disguised call for privatization, dismantling the public school system through systematic starvation, not educating "them" (immigrants) and vilifying public school unions. Vakay's attack on our public school system strikes me as odd since she is a public school teacher and enjoys a living wage, health care benefits and retirement because of her public school union. She clearly unveiled any attempt by the Machine to pretend these elections are "non-partisan."
