Big Challenges for Fresno Unified

Twitter dot com slash Fresno Johnny a piece. It's actually an editorial from gv wire, but it seems like the editorial board of gv wire just consists of Bill McEwan and that's it, which is not really This is not a criticism of the piece, because I think the piece is actually pretty darn good. McEwen is an interesting fella. Bill McEwen was a big time editor with the Fresno B for years and years and years. He ran their

opinion page. He had been a columnist for them, and when Darius Assimi decided he was starting gv wire, it seems like he basically poached the best guy he could possibly get from the Fresno B to start his news operation and kind of was a big shake up in the local Fresno news scene. McEwen. I'm sure McEwan's more liberal than I am, and probably my criticisms of Fresney Unified would go a little deeper and more fundamental than McEwen.

I have my reservations about, you know, the whole setup and structure of California public schools in general, and broader criticisms of the whole structure and even frankly just American

public schools in general. But with all that said, McEwen has sort of been McEwen has been a long, long, long time critic of Fresnew Unified, and coming from someone who is at least politically neutral, if not politically just of the left, I think it kind of gives more weight to it that it's not just you know, conservatives

yelling into the wind, it's everybody. I think everyone is seeing that this is a really badly run school district, no matter how you slice it, and that the way in which it's been run and how it's been operating has just not been acceptable. So I want to read some of his editorial, and I want to read some of his editorial, and again I recommend all of you to read it. He writes, we have a simple request of Fresne unifies trustees as they go about the all

important work of selecting the district's next superintendent. Check your egos, alliances and prejudices at the door, put aside any political ambitions you may have, and focus on one thing, which candidate is best equipped to lead an academic revolution that results in tens of thousands more students meeting state standards for literacy and math and exiting the district prepared to

succeed in the workplace or college. And he italicizes a revolution that results in tens of thousands more students meeting state standards because that's what it's going to take, actually to take, Like Fresno Unified, is such a tire iron at such a tire fire, grease fire, whatever kind of fire, dumpster fire that they are pushing through kids, Like tens of thousands more students need to achieves significantly better before this thing is even adequate. That's the level of the problem.

And I think that's a really good way of phrasing it by McEwan. He goes on at every trustee board meeting, someone prefaces a vote or a policy decision by saying it's about the kids. Oh, actually, you know, let me go back to this, he noted earlier in the piece when he says, check your egos, alliances and prejudices at the door. Put aside any political ambitions you may have. There are definitely people on the president Unified Board of Trustees who have political ambitions, and there have been at

least accusations made. I don't know how well some of them. Stories that got published in GV Wire from anonymous sources, specifically about Elizabeth Jonathon Ross, who's a member of the Board of Trustees. Elizabeth Johnathon Ross is the wife of Luis Chavez, who used to be a city council member who is now a member of the President County Board

of Supervisors. A story came out alleging that Chavez was trying to make a deal with the local Mong various local Mong nonprofits to have them back Elizabeth Johonnathon Ross in her special election race to succeed him, as Chavez was leaving the city council for the County Board of Supervisors, with the promise that Elizabeth Johnathon Ross would support Misty her who had been the deputy superintendent is now the interim superintendent support her as the full time superintendent, so

that accusation was made. Whether it's true or not, I don't know, but it does seem as though the Fresident Unified Board of Trustees is becoming something of a stepping stone or is viewed as something of stepping stone for

people who want to jump into local politics. And I will also note one of the things you do have to kind of consider with GV wire, I think it does shade things a little, is that Susan Wittrop, who's the board chair of the President Unified Board of Trustees, is in a relationship with Darius Assimi, who owns GV wire. So I sort of wonder about sort of the ways

in which gv wire seems to support her. But you know, I'm not going to question me kewan though I think McEwan's a pretty a guy who kind of stands on his own two feet as far as what he thinks. So, you know, anyway, let's carry on. At every trustee board meeting, someone prefaces a v or a policy decision by saying it's about the kids. However, in the state's third largest school district, that's important to remember. President Unified is the

third largest school district in the whole state. It's a big, big district. It's rarely, if ever, about the students. That's not hyperbole. It's a fact buttressed by many decades of academic decline and Fresney Unified status as one of the nation's worst performing districts. As evidence, we offer these dismal statistics. The district is forty nine point one points below the state standard in English testing and seventy eight point one

points below the standard in math testing. Following small gains in twenty twenty four, the numbers for students of color are even worse. Truth be told, this betrayal of our community's children has never bothered many in the district's business as usual bureaucracy. Following Bob Nelson's retirement announcement, a majority of trustees wanted to keep the search for the next

superintendent in house. The very definition of insanity, and that's true. Basically, it was president, so Bob Nelson had been the superintendent of President Unified. He was superintendent throughout all the COVID stuff. Nothing really improved as far as academic scores for kids. Bob Nelson goes on to a nice liness little sinecure gig at Fresne unified and lo and behold, we hear that Misty Hur, the deputy superintendent, is just going to

be bumped up to be the superintendent. And when this happened, people sort of pump the brakes. We're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're just keeping the search in house. This is like the third largest school district in the country, in the state, and we can't, you know, maybe have a broader search here. And it's we're taking someone from the current administration, an administration that's overseen this massive decline in achievement, and just

promoting them. Why are we doing that? Fortunately, then board President Susan Wittrup publicly assailed that plan, insisted on a national search, and community members backed her. The school board then flipped the script trustees Claudia Kazarres Elizabeth Jonathon Ross, who that story had come out about in gb wire, alleging that Luis Chavez had tried to negotiate the deal with the Mongs so that Jonathan Ross would back Misty Her,

et cetera, et cetera. Again, anonymous sources story. I don't know if it's true or not, it was reported though within GBWAR, trustees Claudia Kazaras, Elizabeth Jonathon Ross, Keisha Thomas, and Valerie Davis voted with Wittrop to pause the search and start over in hope of attracting highly qualified candidates

from across the nation. Other small victories have ensued. Working closely with interim Superintendent Misty Her, the board adopted a learning plan with the ambitious fast Track goals for student learning. In addition, the board implemented a policy that states there will be no hiring, promoting, or lateral movement of staff whose performance quote does not meet standards. That was significant in a district where underperforming principles and other administration administrators

often got promoted. The question is are all trustees fully committed to this plan as they're about to hire the next superintendent or is it window dressing to mask a return to the old ways resulting every year in thousands of students who can't read or do basic math. Every trustee has crafted questions for the superintendent finalists. Of course,

here are our suggestions. One which candidate is best equipped to make the difficult decisions needed to help students who will infuse the district with new energy and leverage its men assive size to accelerate student achievement. Who has a history of sending more assets into classrooms while meeting the demands of a union workforce. And that's a big one.

That's a big one, Like a lot of I think the union provides a lot of problems to academic achievement because of the ways in which the union can be protective of teachers who underperform. I you know, the whole notion.

I mean, basically, anytime you try to push any idea that seems to tie academic achievement of students to compensation of teachers, that hey, teachers, who's you know, and with the full understanding that you can have the best teacher in the world if you have a kid who's coming from a totally chaotic home environment or a kid who's just not going to learn that you can have a really good teacher and not necessarily have all the kids achieving at a high level. But certainly there is something

about teacher quality that impacts the outcome of students. If teacher quality has nothing to do with student outcome, then why the heck do we train teachers at all? But when you promote when you propose to the union any kind of ideas about well teacher performance being tied to student achievement or student test scores or something like that,

the union has a conniption fit. So I think this is a good point to raise by McEwan, who has a history of sending more assets into classrooms while meeting the demands of a union workforce. The demands of a union workforce are often, I think, significant hindrances to student learning,

which is why I kind of I don't know. Government employee unions as a concept, I think are highly suspect, and especially in the context of teachers unions, like people have this wrongheaded notion that, you know, the point of a teacher's union is not to teach. That's not the point of the union. The end goal of a teacher's union, like the goal of a knife is to cut. The end goal of a teacher's union is to get more money, more jobs for the teachers, better hours, more pay, better hours,

better conditions, better benefits, et cetera. The point is money and jobs. That's the point of the union. That's why it exists. That's its end goal. If a student happens to learn something. Well, that's a happy accident along the way. But that's not the job of the union to teach people. The job of the union is to represent the financial

interests of adults. And I think too often President Unified has been so driven by the union debates with administration and the fight to get more money that people lose sight of the fact that, no, the school district is not a jobs program for you know, adults with you know, with a education degree or something. The point of a

school district is to teach kids. Who has the savvy to forge partnerships with elected officials and community groups, who believe Fresno's business success hinges on an educated, skilled workforce, Who has the backbone to hold all accountable for their performance without favored special interests or allies. Who has the communication skills to sell more families on the importance of

education and becoming involved in their child's learning. Who has the knowledge and experience to finally fix the special ed program. Who has sat in a superintendent's chair before and produced winning results. That's another good point, like why would we just promote up even with Misty Hurr, who everything I've read about Misty Herr has been pretty good. Actually, she actually seems like a decently impressive person to me, so it's really nothing against her. But you know, she's not

been a superintendent. This is the third largest district in California. You mean to tell me we can't find someone who's already been a superintendent of a smaller district, who has had demonstrated results that we can't recruit to come here and work on this. This is Presde Unified's last chance to write the ship. If the next superintendent fails, the community will have no choice but to demand that FUSD

be split into smaller districts more tuned to student needs. Now, that is a proposal I've never heard before, the idea of breaking up President Unified into smaller districts. When we return, we'll talk a little bit more about the union and other sort of obstacles and other really stupid things President Unified has done in the last couple of months. That is next on the John Girardi Show, going through a really great piece from GV Wire, written by Bill McEwen.

It's a gv wire editorial, but I think it's just written by Bill McEwen, so I encourage you all to check it. Out. I retweeted it from my Twitter account Twitter dot com slash Fresno Johnny at Fresno Johnny. But now, one of the things I want to highlight from McEwan's piece is the difficulties that Fresno Unified is going to face from the union and from the union as well as dumb decisions they've sort of already tied themselves to. So let me first start with some of the dumb

decisions they've tied themselves to. And one of the big ones was just this past November, they already passed this massive bond measure. For this massive bond measure, it was tied to a state bond measure. So basically, this is one of the things that's so frustrating about public school funding. All right, So bond measures tend to be one of the big ways in which school districts try to make a grab for money. And let's remember what a bond is. This is my soapbox. I do it every year when

there's every like four year. Pretty much every four years now we're having bond measures, and I bet we're going to continue to see such bond measures as California continues to have a budgetary problems. So what is a bond. A bond is a loan to a school district or to some other municipal entity that has to be paid back with interest. It is a loan to a municipal entity that must be paid back with interest. That is

what a bond is. Basically, what seems to happen, Well, we had President Unified had Measure h Clovis Unified had Measure A this past November, and it was all tied to a state ballot initiative for like a state wide ten billion dollars bond. And then the way that these statewide bond measures get structured, basically it incentivizes local school districts to pass bond measures because basically, okay, here's this pot of state money, and if you raise local bond

measure money, then the state money will match it. So, as a result, when there's a state bond measure on the ballot for everyone in California to vote for, every local school district all of a sudden has a bond measure and it doesn't seem like it's actually tied to existing emergent need. It's tied to the fact that there's state money on the table and the local school district

wants to go grab it. And this is just a characteristic thing of local governments in state government, is that if there is money available from a higher level of government, they will bend over backwards and stab their own mother in order to get it. Okay, the state government will do that. If there is federal money on the table for them to get, they will do anything possible to comply with whatever federal strings are attached to get that money.

And local governments will do that if there's a federal or state buck to be got. Why well, unlike the federal government, the state of California can't really spend into the red indefinitely. Local government can't spend in the red indefinitely. They just don't have that capacity. So if their state or federal money out there to be got, they will get it. So here you have every single school district in the valley with a big time bond measure and it's not necessarily and it's on the heels of we

just they did this. They do this bond measure in twenty twenty four. They just had done a bond measure in twenty twenty like four years prior, and so here's Fresno Unified, still in the midst of their search for a new superintendent, with the board debating all these like big time, big picture strategic ideas and considerations about what direction they want the district to go in, et cetera.

And here they are saying, well, we need to put Measure H on the and we need to have Measure H again to get this state money on the table. So they propose a five hundred million dollars bond measure for Fresne Unified. And let's remember again the nature of a bond. A bond is just a loan. It's a loan that has to be repaid, and it's usually repaid by the taxpayers in the form of property taxes. Well, I just rent. I'm not paying for it, Yeah, you are. Your rent is probably going to go up if your

landlord's property taxes keep going up. Eventually that gets reflected in the price of rent. So it's paid by the taxpayers. It's paid by individual people who live within the school districts, within the school district's boundaries. Regardless of whether you send your kid to a presdent unified school or not, I live within the boundary lines of close Unified. My property taxes are paying for close unified school district in spite of the fact that my kids don't attend a close

unified school district school. So here's President Unified like, yeah, gung ho, let's do a five hundred million dollar thing. It takes them. They didn't even have set yet before people started receiving their ballots in the mail. The people got their ballots in the mail, I think, you know, like a month and a half month before the election, President Unified's steph had not even board, had not set and agreed upon the list of things that the five

hundred million dollars was gonna pay for. That that's how poorly run the whole thing was. And here they are in the middle of actually deciding on all these big strategic ideas. They don't have their full time superintendent, and yet they're gonna get five hundred million dollars for building projects.

They don't even know exactly what they're gonna fund. Set on, we're gonna and then finally they set on, we're gonna have this this five hundred million, have it, build this, this, this, this, and this when so now you're going to saddle that strategic vision on whatever new superintendent you bring in. It's putting the cart before the horse. And again let's remember it's a five hundred million dollar loan. Five hundred million is just what the school district gets. The taxpayers have

to pay five hundred million plus interest. So and the interest over the life of the loan, I think it was about thirty year loan. The interest amounts that the taxpayer is going to pay about a billion dollars for this five hundred million dollars worth of benefit that Fresne Unified is getting a little I think a little under a billion dollars. So this is the kind of venal

money grabbing incompetence at fresnean Unified. All right, when we return, I want to talk a little bit about the union and challenges that the district faces with achievement from the union. That's next on the John's Roady Show. I want to talk more about Fresney Unified, sort of inspired by the really good editorial from GV Wire written by Bill McEwan about the challenges President Unified faces as they're trying to

finally hire their full time superintendent. And I want to talk about the challenges Presney Unified, and we know the problems at Fresne Unified. They're you know, student academic achievement in English is like forty nine points below the state standards. Student academic achievement in math is like seventy eight points below the state standard, which is almost incredible and one of the big challenges they face. And I think any public school district that has a unionized workforce faces is

from the union itself. So let me chalk just first about the whole concept of a union. Why I don't think it makes sense for within government unions, the unions of government workers. Let me put it that way. Labor unions as a concept developed in ways that I think are very reasonable, and I think is a good concept in and of itself. If you have a massive corporation with a massive workforce, and maybe the work is not super skilled labor or partially skilled, not quite skilled labor,

et cetera. Like a good example is General Motors. All right, General Motors, there's a bunch of people who work the line. Any one individual person does not have great negotiating power against General Motors. That one person might more desperately need

a job than General Motors needs that one person. That one person might be deemed by GM to be more or less repla, but the job that is offered to that one worker might not be as easily replaceable, and the risks of not having that job available are much bigger to that one individual person. So as a result, there's this real imbalance when it comes to negotiating a fair wage. A fair wage, fair and safe working conditions,

fair and safe hours, et cetera. If all of the members of the workforce get together and pool their resources in representation, they can negotiate with the management at General Motors on a more even playing field. If all of the workforce is telling General Motors, listen, you need all of us here, and if we stop working, your whole operation falls apart and you suffer pretty badly. Your shareholders suffer pretty darn badly. And your job as management is

to maximize value for your shareholders. All right, So let's come to the table and let's get a deal done that keeps things honest for the workers and allows you to still make a profit. That there's two sides whose interests compete. Whatever profits are made at General Motors. Management has an incentive to want to keep as much of the profit for itself and for its shareholders. Labor wants to keep as much of the profits as they can

for paying them. You have two sides with different opposing incentives, and by unionizing the workforce, you give the workforce a greater ability to have an even playing field and representation. All right, that's how it works in private industries, in the private sector, and frankly, I'm supportive of the concept of labor unions within the private sector. Now, I don't think every union behaves well or fairly in every single

respect all the time. I don't think every business behaves well or fairly in every single business and all the time. But that's the concept makes sense. When you're talking about government workers, though, the concept ceases to make sense because it's not like you have to your First of all, this is not an enterprise. Usually when it comes to government work, the point of the enterprise is not to generate revenue. It's not to make money. It's taxpayer money

that is being expended on some task. Let's focus on public schools. It's not like the enterprise of president unified school district is a profit making venture where management and labor are trying to both have an interest in getting as much of the profit as possible. No, it's just taxes. It's taxes. There's no shareholders who are trying to get the most value out of it that management is representing. No, in this case, it's the government negotiating with the employees

whom the government hires. And very often so in a private sector union thing, it's two people on opposite sides of the table. When you're talking about a government union workforce, the government official who's on the one side of the table might have no real incentive to not give away the store of the taxpayer's money. It's not his money at the end of the day. And because government worker unions can give political contributions, can endorse or oppose candidates

for office. In fact, the politician on the other side of the table from the labor union might be wanting to totally give away the store to the union. Heck, in certain cases, labor unions in California have just cut out the middleman. They've run former labor union officials to high government offices. They run labor union members to be candidates for school boards. That's why I always do this

ran every single election cycle. If you see a billboard for a local school board board of trustee race and it says endorsed by presno teachers, people will think to themselves, oh, well, this person's running for the school board and they're endorsed by the teachers. That must mean well, the teachers must know what's good for schools, So I should vote for that person. No, if anything, it should make you instinctively not vote for that person, because at some point, supported

by presno teachers means supported by the teachers' union. And so what that means is, at some point there's going to be a negotiation between the board of trustees of the school board, the board of trustees of the school district, and the teachers, and you basically want both sides of the negotiating table to be staffed by the same party. That's what you're voting for when you vote for a school board member who's trying to decide how much of

your money to give away to the teachers. Okay, so the whole concept of a government worker union just kind of falls apart. There isn't a greedy capitalist manager trying to builk teachers out of money. If you know, the taxpayer doesn't want most taxpayers don't want teachers to be

poorly paid. They want teachers to be paid decently. How many politicians have earned brownie points by saying, we want to do what we want to help support teachers, and we want to pay for teachers salaries and like like that. That's a very popular thing. Local spending on teachers, State spending on teachers salaries has always been a popular thing. The kinds of incentives that exist within a regular private sector management versus labor debate just don't exist now here.

We have a teachers union going up against management, management that might not be super incentivized to builk the to you know, really tightly safeguard the taxpayer's money, and the teachers union winds up. What winds up happening is that

the negotiations between the union and management wind up dominating policy. Okay, it's hard to have rigorous achievement, it's hard to have a policy of demanding better student performance by demanding better teacher accountability if you've already negotiated collectively with the union that people are only going to get fired after this this this, this, this, this, this, this process that makes

it very hard to fire anybody. You're it winds up that these labor negotiations about how adults are going to get paid money wind up dominating what's the whole enterprise of this thing. The whole point of this enterprise is to teach kids. It's a public good enterprise. It's not supposed to just be a jobs program for adults. It's supposed to be a public good enterprise of educating the

next generation of citizens. And the discussion and so much of the policy is dominated by whatever, by the collectively bargained agreement, and sometimes the teachers so little care about the educational outcomes. I remember there was a story about teachers were all complaining. It was like a story in the Bee about the lack of enforcement of any cell

phone policy. President Unified has a cell phone policy. It was written in two thousand and four, so it's a little antiquated, you know, hasn't caught up to the reality of smartphones. But the policy is very simple. Electronic devices in the classroom, no personal electronic devices in the classroom. That's all it is. And teachers feel like, well, the district's not backing us when we try to enforce it.

And it's that article came out and those criticisms came in like two months after the big collectively bargained agreement was signed between the teachers and a fresident unified administration back in like November of twenty twenty three. I'm sorry, if the teachers Union was so upset about their inability, if teachers were so upset about their inability to enforce the cell phone room in classrooms, why not make that part of the CBA. You can put whatever you want

in the CBA. It's something that has to do with workplace conditions. Hey, we demand a greater we demand a new policy with clear enforcement mechanisms and commitment to enforcement on the part of the district for the cell phone policy. Bah blah, blah blah. But you could put that in the CBA. They didn't. Why because I don't think the Teachers Union really fundamentally cares about the teaching side of it. What they care about is money, and so I mean,

I just think it's a really tall order. I think the existence of the union and the fact of how committed it is to adults jobs rather than the actual enterprise of this taxpayer fund adventure, which is educating kids. I don't know how successful any new superintendent is going to be in turning the Titanic around here when we return, Might there be a Democrat Donald Trump on the horizon?

Stephen A. Smith. That's next on the John Girardi Show. Well, I am a little starting to be a little afraid of the twenty twenty eight presidential elections, and specifically of one person. No it's not AOC. No, it's not Kamala Harris. Dear God, of course know the person I'm afraid of a little bit, just a little bit, kind of the way that maybe a Democrat would have been a little afraid of Donald Trump around twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen is Stephen A. Smith. Some of you maybe know who

Stephen A. Smith is. Stephen A. Smith is the wildly popular sports commentator talking head from ESPN. He's a big loud mouth and he talks like this. He's very opinionated. And before you say that's ridiculous, someone who's never been in politics before, a big loudmouth from New York, who's never been in politics before, who has a really brash, abrasive personality, Who would ever vote for someone like that

for president? Someone with an enormous ego, who doesn't care what anyone thinks and is willing to Just does any of that sound familiar, don't think it's crazy. Donald Trump has demonstrated the pool of who we think can win a presidential election is bigger than we think that'll do it. John Girardi Show, See you next time on Power Talk