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Laguna Talks with LB School Board Member Howard Hills · Laguna Talks

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Speaker 1: Org. This disclaimer is a statement notifying listening audiences that
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Speaker 1: any opinions express on our shows are not representative of
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Speaker 1: Laguna Radio, Inc. Its management, or its board of directors.
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Speaker 2: Hey they are. What's up? Laguna Janis Murray here with news.
0:14
Speaker 2: With the onslaught of summer visitors coming soon, here's a
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Speaker 2: great idea to urge them to clean up their own trash.
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Speaker 2: Add more large brightly colored trash bins big rectangles, orange
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Speaker 2: and royal blue, emblazoned with bright white taglines that read
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Speaker 2: take in the view, take out your trash, and every
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Speaker 2: day is Beach Cleanup Day plus Laguna Live like a local.
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Speaker 2: You can't miss them. Visit Laguna Beach. Started placing seventy
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Speaker 2: two of these bins around town last week. Visit Laguna
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Speaker 2: Beach leader Joanna Bear says it's been proven statistically if
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Speaker 2: your trash cans are colorful, people are more app to
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Speaker 2: you use them. The new cleanup campaign for Laguna Beach
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Speaker 2: will also include a social media campaign to urge influencers
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Speaker 2: and content creators to showcase Laguna Beach with a stewardship
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Speaker 2: and sustainability mindset to respect and protect our coastal treasures.
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Speaker 2: And hey, residents, let's use them too, leading by good example.
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Speaker 2: And I'm Janis Murray for news on one of four
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Speaker 2: seven KXFM. And now here's Dave Jennis.
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Speaker 3: The June gloom breaks up and we have a spectacular
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Speaker 3: afternoon across Laguna Beach. All about sunshine, A hint of
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Speaker 3: a breeze, sixty seven at the beach, sixty nine the hilltop,
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Speaker 3: the canyon sixty eight, sunset seven fifty six. Once that
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Speaker 3: sun goes down, the clouds come building back in fifty
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Speaker 3: nine for the law Wednesday, Thursday, Friday morning clouds than
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Speaker 3: sunshine sixty nine each day.
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Speaker 4: That's my forecast.
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Speaker 3: I'm Meteorologist Dave Murray. Tune in, turn on to k
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Speaker 3: XFM one O four seven Lagunas Community Radio.
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Speaker 1: Hey there, Laguna Beach. It is two o'clock on this
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Speaker 1: beautiful Tuesday, and that means it's time for Laguna Talks.
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Speaker 1: Hey now, I'm your host, Billy Freed. Join us for
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Speaker 1: an hour of similating conversations with influencers, leaders, athletes, artists, whoever,
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Speaker 1: whoever tickles my fancy, and who's tickling my fancy today
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Speaker 1: is school board Member Howard Hills. Howard I'm bringing your
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Speaker 1: mic up here. Let's see if we got volume. Say
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Speaker 1: hello to everybody there.
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Speaker 4: You are glad I was able to find a place
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Speaker 4: because you. I haven't been here since you've relocated. This
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Speaker 4: is a beautiful facility.
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Speaker 1: Thank you. I wasn't clear and when I told you,
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Speaker 1: I guess I need to be more specific now to
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Speaker 1: tell people that we are in our new facility what
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Speaker 1: we're calling Orange Door Studios here on Oak and Glen area,
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Speaker 1: and people can drive by and wave. They can even
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Speaker 1: come up to the window and we'll put them on
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Speaker 1: the air, because that's what community radio is about.
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Speaker 4: Very good, be careful what you asked for me?
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Speaker 1: Yeah, bring that mic a little closer to you or
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Speaker 1: I'm good. Yeah, And it's so or lifted up a
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Speaker 1: little bit, kind of like we want to make sure
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Speaker 1: your volume is out that great. So, Howard, we've known
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Speaker 1: each other a long time. I think I first met
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Speaker 1: you at Fisherman's Cove and you were spinning tales of
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Speaker 1: the days when you used to bodyboard surf. What were
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Speaker 1: you doing over there fishing abalony.
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Speaker 4: I hate to say it, but I probably contributed to
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Speaker 4: the decimation of the abalone When I was like six
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Speaker 4: seven years old. My older brother would go down there
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Speaker 4: with me every day and we'd go spearfishing, and my
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Speaker 4: grandma lived right up on the hill right above it,
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Speaker 4: and so you know, we liked We got a lot
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Speaker 4: of pride from uh bring dinner for my grandma and grandpa.
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Speaker 4: And when we had a bad day and didn't spear
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Speaker 4: any fish, the consolation prize was to go grab a
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Speaker 4: few big abs and bring them up to my grandma.
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Speaker 1: When you're a snail and you taste good, you're doomed.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, well, you know that. In truth, I felt bad
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Speaker 4: about it, But then I've learned that it really wasn't
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Speaker 4: harvesting by people that decimated the abaloni stock. It was
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Speaker 4: a virus that affected them, And oh I didn't know that. Yeah, no,
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Speaker 4: it's really interesting if you get the real story on it.
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Speaker 4: But obviously human harvesting contribute to it. And if we
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Speaker 4: can ever get abaloni back, and there are efforts to
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Speaker 4: try to, you know, regenerate it, the fact that we
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Speaker 4: are now in no take zone is you know, fantastic.
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Speaker 4: But I remember when I was a junior lifeguard. I
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Speaker 4: was in the first group of junior lifeguards in Laguna Beach,
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Speaker 4: and and they assigned us each to a beach somewhere
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Speaker 4: in town. And these people would come down from sam
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Speaker 4: Bernardino and they would just get drunk and they'd leave
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Speaker 4: with a hundred abolloni.
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Speaker 1: You know.
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Speaker 4: Well, and yeah, it was really uh, it was like the.
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Speaker 1: We thought it would never end.
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Speaker 4: It's like the kill off of the buffalo, you know,
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Speaker 4: by by people that didn't understand.
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Speaker 1: I got to interview a gentleman who passed away a
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Speaker 1: year or so ago named Bud Hedrick, you remember. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: So he was such a character because he was in
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Speaker 1: a commercial abalony diver. He'd go out to the Channel
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Speaker 1: Islands in those old I don't know those that look
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Speaker 1: you know, those weird wool suits and the big helmet
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Speaker 1: and dive down. And then in the off season he'd
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Speaker 1: go down to Mexico to surf. And he fell in
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Speaker 1: love with bullfighting, and he took a merchant marine ship
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Speaker 1: to Spain one year to the mother ship and he started.
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Speaker 1: Because he became a bullfighter. He went to bullfighting school.
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Speaker 1: They called him Elle Califoniano. He's the number second foreigner
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Speaker 1: to compete in Spain. And then a long interesting life.
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Speaker 1: But he was telling me that Back in those days,
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Speaker 1: a lot of the abaloney got shipped straight to China,
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Speaker 1: but the catch limit was one hundred dozen a day
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Speaker 1: per person.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, so well, you know, but just mentioning him and
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Speaker 4: those are the kind of people that Laguna has always
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Speaker 4: had and attracted. And you can make a you can
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Speaker 4: just make a long list of the characters and the
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Speaker 4: celebrities and people that came here. I remember, I don't
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Speaker 4: even know if this audience knows that there was a
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Speaker 4: comedian named Jack Benny who was the Seinfeld of his time.
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Speaker 4: I guess now the new generation might not even know
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Speaker 4: about Seinfeld, you know, But you know W. C. Fields,
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Speaker 4: how to house here, Douglas Fairbanks Junior, obviously Davis, and
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Speaker 4: it goes on Raymond Burr and Sterling Holloway and and
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Speaker 4: I met all those people back in the fifties. So
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Speaker 4: but then again, we also have the characters and the
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Speaker 4: and the wanderers and the adventurers and the surfers and
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Speaker 4: the artists. This is the cultural fabric of this community
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Speaker 4: is just.
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Speaker 1: You know, And we had the Laugh Awards You're unfortunately
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Speaker 1: out of town two weeks ago, and we were really
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Speaker 1: I think celeb A lot of it was about celebrating
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Speaker 1: our surf culture and particularly ninety six year old Dick Metz.
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Speaker 1: And you know, he wasn't looking backwards. He was looking
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Speaker 1: forwards at the opening of the Surf Heritage and Cultural
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Speaker 1: Center Shack, which is going to be game changing for.
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Speaker 4: Air to that guy. Yeah, I look at him, and
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Speaker 4: you know, it's just the guy is so healthy, and
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Speaker 4: his mind is there, his body's there, and and his
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Speaker 4: his legacy is he gets to live to see his
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Speaker 4: own legacy in that, you know, and a lot of
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Speaker 4: people don't figure out what they want their legacy to
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Speaker 4: be until it's too late. And he he's had it
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Speaker 4: wired from beginn I got to tell you a story
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Speaker 4: about Dick mets My classmate at Gonna Be High School, Elizabeth,
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Speaker 4: Elizabeth Mason, I guess her name was sorry her last name.
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Speaker 4: She's one of my best friends. She ended up Mary
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Speaker 4: Duke Boyd, and Duke Boyd is the guy that invented
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Speaker 4: the surfware industry. He knew Hoby and we used to
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Speaker 4: see Hobi, you know, shaping his board, you know, when
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Speaker 4: he was still shaping his boards. You know, we just
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Speaker 4: go watch him shape, you know. But anyway, Duke was
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Speaker 4: a friend of Hoby's, and Duke went and, as I
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Speaker 4: know the story, made a pair of trunks out of sailcloth,
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Speaker 4: sailboat cloth, and took him and showed him to Hoby
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Speaker 4: and said that's when he had his shop down and
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Speaker 4: data point, and we would when we were going down
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Speaker 4: to surf and Santa No fre he would stop and
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Speaker 4: actually watch Hoby shape boards. Anyway, he went in and
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Speaker 4: he told Hoby, look, I got these trunks and it's
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Speaker 4: really cool because you know, you get wet and you
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Speaker 4: get out and in five minutes they're dry. And for surfers,
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Speaker 4: the whole thing is you don't want to get a
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Speaker 4: rash because you're you got that canvas trunks that are
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Speaker 4: wet all day, you know. So Hoby said that that's great.
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Speaker 4: You know, if you if you make some more of those,
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Speaker 4: I'll sell them here in the shop. And that and
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Speaker 4: then Duke up. He was really a marketing guy. He
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Speaker 4: turned out to have a great marketing town. He invented
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Speaker 4: you know, body glove and lightning bolts and all those things,
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Speaker 4: but he had the license on those, but his original
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Speaker 4: license was Hang ten surfware, and hang ten was his
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Speaker 4: first And I can remember driving down Forest Avenue with
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Speaker 4: my dad and we looked over at Stuart Davis was
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Speaker 4: the Men's and Boys shop, and there in the window
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Speaker 4: was that hang ten logo that they had put up
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Speaker 4: in the window. And you know, that was the beginning
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Speaker 4: of cook Silver and Volcom and the he was the pioneer. Anyway,
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Speaker 4: I went down to see him in San Clementi and
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Speaker 4: he said, Howard, I got a problem. I had a
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Speaker 4: house on Brook Street at the time, and I had
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Speaker 4: a big garage. And he said, I've got this picture
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Speaker 4: that Greg Nole gave me, and it's a huge half
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Speaker 4: wall sized pitcher of Greg Nole's famous wide stance striped
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Speaker 4: trunks at Yama Ba and it was signed by Dicky
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Speaker 4: by Greg Knowle. And so he said, I don't have
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Speaker 4: any place to put this. I'm moving to Hawaii and he's,
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Speaker 4: you know, do you want this? And I said, sure, absolutely,
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Speaker 4: I got a place in my house where I can
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Speaker 4: put I'm not going to put in my garage because
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Speaker 4: he said, you've got that big garage that's going in
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Speaker 4: my living room. Man. And so anyway, I put it
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Speaker 4: up there and I was all happy with it, and
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Speaker 4: I bragged about it, and people came to look at
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Speaker 4: it and everything, so I thought it was mine. So
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Speaker 4: then one day I'm sitting there and somebody knocks on
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Speaker 4: the door and it's Dick Metz and I knew who
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Speaker 4: he was, and he goes, hey, Howard, I'm Dick mets
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Speaker 4: I go, Dick, yeah, I know you. I used to
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Speaker 4: watch you surf at Brook Street, you know. And he said,
10:44
Speaker 4: you know, Duke told me that he gave me, gave
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Speaker 4: you this big picture of Greg Knowle at Wyama Bay
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Speaker 4: and it was signed by Greg Knowle. And I mean
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Speaker 4: it was like it had to be like six I
10:57
Speaker 4: would I'd say probably five by eight eat or sometimes
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Speaker 4: he's a big five by six is a big picture
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Speaker 4: and black and white. And anyway, he said, you know,
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Speaker 4: we're starting the surf museum down in San Clementy, and
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Speaker 4: h you know, if we if we had that picture,
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Speaker 4: that photo to put on the wall in our surf museum,
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Speaker 4: that would be and it would be preserved forever, you know,
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Speaker 4: and what a pit. And so I looked at him
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Speaker 4: and I said this was not true, but I said
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Speaker 4: it to him. I said, yeah, Duke told me to
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Speaker 4: save it for you, Dick. And because he was I
11:33
Speaker 4: could say he was kind of feeling a little bit
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Speaker 4: awkward about it. I mean, he was I won't say
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Speaker 4: it was awkward, but you know, he was basically testing
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Speaker 4: the waters to see if it might happen that I
11:43
Speaker 4: would and he kind of uh intimated that. I talked
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Speaker 4: to Duke and he thought maybe you know, and I said, hey,
11:51
Speaker 4: I've saved I've been saving it for you's and so
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Speaker 4: we took it out and put it in his truck.
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Speaker 4: And I'm sure it's going to be in the museum.
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Speaker 1: Well, I wonder if they'll be a little plaque donated
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Speaker 1: by Howard Hill.
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Speaker 4: Hey, listen, I'm not I'm not holding up for that.
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Speaker 4: I'm just really excited about this.
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Speaker 1: Would be great to see it, Yeah, you know, And
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Speaker 1: that was going to be my point, is that even
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Speaker 1: though Lagoon is not known for its surf boy, so
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Speaker 1: many legends came out of here and also entrepreneurs. You
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Speaker 1: just said soft goods, hard goods, this is and they
12:16
Speaker 1: were saying it at this you know, award show. Mark
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Speaker 1: Christy got up and Paul nodded and said, Laguna has
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Speaker 1: had an international impact on the industry. So it's a
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Speaker 1: homecoming that the museum's coming here.
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Speaker 4: I remember when Hobe was experimenting with skateboards and he
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Speaker 4: was experimenting with catamarants, and we thought same thing they
12:38
Speaker 4: thought about Thomas Edison. We's you know, I hope he
12:41
Speaker 4: doesn't get wiped out of the those catamarants or whatever.
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Speaker 4: But he was the Thomas Edison of the surf.
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Speaker 1: It's true. Yeah, it's true. So Howard, let's get to
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Speaker 1: the meat of this conversation. You're at Most people your
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Speaker 1: age have lived as full of life as you have
12:56
Speaker 1: would be comfortably retired. But you have chosen to engage
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Speaker 1: in the educational system here, and you have been very
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Speaker 1: focused on getting on the school board, and you got
13:10
Speaker 1: on this year, and it seems like, you know, I
13:14
Speaker 1: guess you tell me when I'm out of line and
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Speaker 1: I'll take it. But there's been a swirl of controversy.
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Speaker 1: You're taking a lot of arrows, and I guess that's
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Speaker 1: the starting off point to ask give us some background
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Speaker 1: on why you have chosen to take this path at
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Speaker 1: your rather golden years.
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Speaker 4: Well, actually you should talk to my therapist if you
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Speaker 4: run get answer. I'm actually not in therapy right now,
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Speaker 4: but I probably should be. It's been tough it's been
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Speaker 4: really rough.
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Speaker 1: I mean, and I want to say that I'm going
13:45
Speaker 1: to interview you today like the person I am, which
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Speaker 1: is somebody that is a low information, you know, a
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Speaker 1: person on school board issues. I really, and I think
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Speaker 1: a lot of people in this town because we don't
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Speaker 1: have kids, kind of disengaged from it. I'm involved in
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Speaker 1: a lot of other issues, but this is one where
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Speaker 1: you know you're gonna have to treat me like I'm
14:05
Speaker 1: a six year old.
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Speaker 4: Yeah, well I know better than that. But first, I
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Speaker 4: guess what I'd like to say about it is that
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Speaker 4: I got very involved in the student government when I
14:14
Speaker 4: was in fourth grade, and I've always been involved. I
14:18
Speaker 4: got elected to be the class representative in the student
14:22
Speaker 4: in the student congress that they had, and at Laguna
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Speaker 4: Beach High School, we had an ASB constitution and we
14:28
Speaker 4: took it seriously and we did a lot of interesting things.
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Speaker 4: Back that was during the sixties and when the student
14:34
Speaker 4: activism was really flourishing and we were part of that.
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Speaker 4: And the first time I attended a school board meeting
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Speaker 4: and spoke on behalf of the students and raised issues
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Speaker 4: about policy and practices. At that time, the big issue
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Speaker 4: was the dress code, and I was there to say
14:57
Speaker 4: this dress code is antiquated, and you're there are people,
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Speaker 4: they are young, there are students that would like to
15:05
Speaker 4: play football, but they can't unless they shave their heads.
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Speaker 4: And so you're not taking advantage of members of the
15:13
Speaker 4: student body who would like to be participating in sports
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Speaker 4: and whatnot because of these rules that you have. And
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Speaker 4: so that was in nineteen sixty seven.
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Speaker 1: You were an advocate for freedom of dress.
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Speaker 4: Yes, and we in fact, so that was nineteen sixty seven.
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Speaker 4: The first time I was in the school board and
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Speaker 4: I was, you know, sixteen, seventeen years old, sixteen years old,
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Speaker 4: and then I got elected student money president and I
15:39
Speaker 4: was the student representative to the school board. And at
15:42
Speaker 4: that time we had a great superintendent. His name was
15:45
Speaker 4: John Ullam, and he was just one of the biggest,
15:47
Speaker 4: nicest guys that you would ever see. He was an amputee,
15:54
Speaker 4: didn't have one of his legs. I might have been Korea,
15:56
Speaker 4: I'm not sure. But he was just a big guy
15:59
Speaker 4: and a jolly guy and didn't feel sorry for himself
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Speaker 4: or anything, you know. He was just a really positive guy.
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Speaker 4: And then we had a school board that had a
16:09
Speaker 4: had a teacher, a retired teacher, which is always good
16:12
Speaker 4: to have an educator on the board. It had a dentist,
16:16
Speaker 4: it had a lawyer, it had a mom, and sort
16:22
Speaker 4: of representing the chamber of commerce, you might say, was
16:25
Speaker 4: the local locksmith, Larry Larry his lock It was right
16:30
Speaker 4: next to the penguin, was the locksmith there.
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Speaker 1: I think I arrived here right at the tail end
16:34
Speaker 1: of his run. Yeah.
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Speaker 4: And so, you know, if you look at the California
16:37
Speaker 4: Education Code model of what a school board is and
16:40
Speaker 4: the fact that you have local control of schools through
16:43
Speaker 4: elected school board, you know, uh, I think that a
16:47
Speaker 4: lot of people think, well, then, you know, we should
16:49
Speaker 4: have all educators on the school board. But I look
16:51
Speaker 4: back on that school board because you know, what a
16:53
Speaker 4: school board's job is is to hold the because the
16:58
Speaker 4: schools are a state age. And see, they're the government.
17:01
Speaker 4: Teachers are agents of the state of California, and the
17:05
Speaker 4: administrators are and they're spending public funds and they're subject
17:09
Speaker 4: to the rules for public spending public funds, which are
17:12
Speaker 4: very different than spending private funds, although that's kind of
17:15
Speaker 4: got a little bit conflated, you know, lately, But at
17:19
Speaker 4: any rate, you know, the job of a school board
17:23
Speaker 4: is to hold the public schools accountable to the community
17:26
Speaker 4: and to make sure that they reflect the values of
17:29
Speaker 4: the community. And so you know, if what happens is
17:33
Speaker 4: if the if the education experts that are the superintendent
17:38
Speaker 4: and the principles and the if they have something they
17:41
Speaker 4: want to do with their authority and with their money,
17:46
Speaker 4: you know, educators. If it's all just educators talking to
17:49
Speaker 4: one another about what we want to do and how
17:51
Speaker 4: we want to do it. And you had the unions,
17:53
Speaker 4: and you add the fact that you have the administrators
17:56
Speaker 4: and their careers, and then you have the teachers, and
17:58
Speaker 4: then you have the employees. There's a lot of interests
18:01
Speaker 4: there there in the nature of public sector interests that
18:05
Speaker 4: the purpose of a school board is to make sure
18:08
Speaker 4: that the community understands what's being done through their schools. So,
18:12
Speaker 4: for example, when you've got I totally recognize the value
18:16
Speaker 4: of having educators on the school boards. But if you've
18:20
Speaker 4: got a situation where you've got a locksmith, or you've
18:22
Speaker 4: got a dentist, or you've got a lawyer, or you
18:25
Speaker 4: got whatever, a contract or whatever, and you know what,
18:29
Speaker 4: something that might seem really really good idea to the
18:32
Speaker 4: unions and or the staff or whatever in the public
18:36
Speaker 4: sector of the school district, if somebody on school board
18:39
Speaker 4: who's not an educator says, well, I'm not sure that
18:42
Speaker 4: the community is going to agree with that. I'm not
18:45
Speaker 4: sure that we ought to do that with the money
18:47
Speaker 4: of the taxpayers, and you know, so that's what that's
18:52
Speaker 4: part of the function of a school board is to
18:54
Speaker 4: have people who are representing the community. And like you
18:56
Speaker 4: you said, you're not an expert on the school you
18:59
Speaker 4: ought to run for school board because it would be
19:00
Speaker 4: really good to have somebody on there. Because the process
19:03
Speaker 4: of the discipline of the educators explaining to non educators
19:08
Speaker 4: who represent the community why they ought to do something,
19:12
Speaker 4: and a lot of times something be like I remember
19:16
Speaker 4: Larry the Locksmith. Sometimes he'd say I don't think I
19:21
Speaker 4: don't think the Chamber of Commerce is going to like that,
19:23
Speaker 4: or or if it's another issue. And so that's really
19:28
Speaker 4: if you look at the Education Code, the model is
19:31
Speaker 4: to have an elected school board. So then you get
19:33
Speaker 4: into the you know, one of the things that a
19:35
Speaker 4: lot of people are saying these days is well, you know,
19:39
Speaker 4: the school board needs to just trust the education experts
19:42
Speaker 4: and the school board should not not question or oppose
19:50
Speaker 4: what the education experts are saying. And that's a strongly
19:53
Speaker 4: held view by some right now. And so I kind
19:58
Speaker 4: of go back to the edge vcation code and the
20:00
Speaker 4: model of the school board that I saw that really
20:02
Speaker 4: worked well. We had fun when we went to school
20:07
Speaker 4: board meetings. School Board meetings were very civil and were
20:12
Speaker 4: people were polite to one another and respect to one another,
20:14
Speaker 4: and we took we respected the school board. I was
20:18
Speaker 4: a bit of a hell raiser. I was a little
20:20
Speaker 4: bit incorrigible, but I never would have said anything to
20:24
Speaker 4: any school board member, whether he was the locksmith or
20:28
Speaker 4: the dentist or whoever. It was like some of the
20:31
Speaker 4: things that are being said to the school boards these days.
20:34
Speaker 4: So what's changed, Well, I think one thing that's changed
20:37
Speaker 4: is that you know, in America right now, whether you're
20:44
Speaker 4: coming from the far right or coming from the far left,
20:48
Speaker 4: if you lose an election, there's a game plan. There's
20:51
Speaker 4: a game book. There's a playbook, and it is number one,
20:56
Speaker 4: disrupt the governing preceding process and disrupt operations of the
21:03
Speaker 4: school if you have to, and you know it's it's
21:06
Speaker 4: important for the governance process to be able to deal
21:09
Speaker 4: with governance issues and sometimes contentious issues, but preserve and
21:14
Speaker 4: protect the classroom learning process from the politics. And right
21:19
Speaker 4: now what goes on and this is not just in
21:21
Speaker 4: Laguna Beaches and school districts all over the state and
21:23
Speaker 4: all over the nation. It's sort of like, if we
21:26
Speaker 4: don't agree at the governance level, there's going to be
21:29
Speaker 4: consequences in the in the classroom. And I'm saying no,
21:33
Speaker 4: you keep the politics of the school board process out
21:36
Speaker 4: of that classroom. But when the unions get involved, sometimes
21:40
Speaker 4: it gets there's there's too much cross pollination or cross
21:45
Speaker 4: currents going on. So but going back to the point
21:48
Speaker 4: number one, you know, we went there was a movie
21:51
Speaker 4: that they showed down at the Cultural Center called The
21:53
Speaker 4: Mom's Club, and it was very interesting because it shows
21:57
Speaker 4: what's going on in America right now, and it's not
22:00
Speaker 4: just public school politics, it's really national politics. You know,
22:04
Speaker 4: when you lose an election, you don't accept the outcome
22:07
Speaker 4: of the election. You don't let the people that one
22:10
Speaker 4: show what they've got and what they want to do
22:13
Speaker 4: and then respond to it and then get ready for
22:15
Speaker 4: the next election. You go in and you disrupt their
22:19
Speaker 4: proceedings you disrupt the operations of the school district. And
22:23
Speaker 4: then number two, you control communications, and you start dominating
22:28
Speaker 4: the communication through the media and through the social media,
22:31
Speaker 4: and you create a narrative that is really a disinformation
22:37
Speaker 4: campaign and this and this is not just about what's
22:41
Speaker 4: going on here. And then I get that the third
22:43
Speaker 4: thing you do is you just politicize everything. And so
22:49
Speaker 4: I think that's a lot of what's going on right here.
22:52
Speaker 4: And I don't even cast any aspersions on who's doing
22:56
Speaker 4: what to whom right now. What I'm saying is that
22:58
Speaker 4: this is a pattern. And the Mom's Club movie they
23:01
Speaker 4: showed in Gino, California, how you had the sort of Maga,
23:06
Speaker 4: the Maga right wing people, and you had the parents
23:09
Speaker 4: of the trans kids who were the Mom's Club, who
23:13
Speaker 4: were you know, defined themselves as we're the transparents and
23:17
Speaker 4: that that is to say, we're the parents of trans
23:19
Speaker 4: kids and we don't want the MAGA people coming in
23:21
Speaker 4: and you know, making rules that discriminate against our kids
23:25
Speaker 4: and everything. And you know, this is obviously a huge
23:27
Speaker 4: debate in the country right now, and a huge debate anywhere.
23:31
Speaker 4: Actually here in Laguna, we've been so liberal and inclusive.
23:36
Speaker 4: You know, when I was at Laguna Beach High School
23:38
Speaker 4: and I was doing body president, there was a young
23:42
Speaker 4: man who was a brilliant young guy, and he was
23:44
Speaker 4: outed for being gay. And I just want to make
23:48
Speaker 4: the point about in Laguna we're not struggling with this
23:51
Speaker 4: as they are in some of their diseases. We have
23:53
Speaker 4: a history of not only tolerance, but acceptance and inclusion,
23:58
Speaker 4: and so you know, I just want to tell the
24:00
Speaker 4: story really briefly because I think is that he got
24:04
Speaker 4: outed and his parents just owned him and he was
24:08
Speaker 4: taken in by the community. I was student Boddy President.
24:10
Speaker 1: Didn't we have a sizeable gay community at the time.
24:13
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, We've always had back in the fifties. I mean,
24:17
Speaker 4: my mom had gay friends, and you know, my brother
24:20
Speaker 4: and I would have not gotten dinner.
24:22
Speaker 1: It's not a partisan issue, especially in this town.
24:24
Speaker 4: And so anyway, the point is I appoint I created
24:29
Speaker 4: the position of director of communications for the associate student
24:33
Speaker 4: by and appointed him director of communications. He got a
24:36
Speaker 4: job at the Daily Pilot down downtown with Barbara Criybeck,
24:40
Speaker 4: and he started a journalistic career and he was taken
24:43
Speaker 4: in by doctor Tom Judy, the dentist in town. And
24:47
Speaker 4: so the point is that's not a problem here in
24:50
Speaker 4: Laguna Beach. But what they show in this movie, and
24:52
Speaker 4: i'll wrap this up, what they're show in this movie
24:55
Speaker 4: is this pattern of you lose an election, you disrupt,
25:00
Speaker 4: you undermine, you control communications.
25:02
Speaker 1: It certainly started at the top, if I think we
25:05
Speaker 1: can agree on that, he set the down.
25:07
Speaker 4: It's a national problem.
25:08
Speaker 1: It is, and you know the internet doesn't help, and
25:10
Speaker 1: people hiding keyboard warriors. But I want to you know,
25:13
Speaker 1: so again as a lay person, I think to myself,
25:17
Speaker 1: we apparently, from what I've read, have one of the
25:20
Speaker 1: leading public school systems in the county. I've been told
25:23
Speaker 1: that a lot of people move here specifically for the schools.
25:27
Speaker 1: Sometimes that's counterintuitive, You're like, oh, really, they didn't move
25:30
Speaker 1: here for the weather, the beauty, the ocean. Now, it
25:32
Speaker 1: was the education system. And I think it is a
25:35
Speaker 1: bipartisan We can all agree that all we want is
25:38
Speaker 1: excellence for our kids. And you know, you're walking into
25:41
Speaker 1: hornets nets because parents are so dogged now, especially the
25:45
Speaker 1: competition to get into good colleges and all that stuff.
25:48
Speaker 1: So I guess my question is where are these areas
25:51
Speaker 1: of disagreement that is creating such division and rancor at
25:56
Speaker 1: the board level.
25:58
Speaker 4: Well, it's been going on for a couple of decades,
26:03
Speaker 4: and it primarily has to do with what are how
26:09
Speaker 4: do you define the roles of the board, and how
26:11
Speaker 4: you define the roles of the superintendent and the staff,
26:14
Speaker 4: and you know, all over California. Again, it's not just
26:17
Speaker 4: looking to beach. There's an issue of do you have
26:20
Speaker 4: a week board and a strong superintendent or do you
26:22
Speaker 4: have a strong board and a week superintendent? And I've
26:25
Speaker 4: always said no. If you look at the Education Code,
26:29
Speaker 4: it contemplates a strong board and a strong superintendent, and
26:33
Speaker 4: there are areas of shared powers and there are areas
26:36
Speaker 4: separate powers, and you need to understand it. And I
26:40
Speaker 4: would say that it would be fair to say that
26:41
Speaker 4: over the last ten or fifteen years, we've gone very
26:44
Speaker 4: much in the direction of a very strong superintendent and
26:47
Speaker 4: a very weak board. And so I think people in
26:51
Speaker 4: the community saw that that trend andre there were enough
26:54
Speaker 4: people that were concerned about it that it resulted in
26:57
Speaker 4: a basically the coalition that had been running the school
27:03
Speaker 4: district for about ten fifteen years, they lost the election
27:08
Speaker 4: and they didn't like it. And I understand that and so,
27:12
Speaker 4: but we're not trying to come in. And what I
27:14
Speaker 4: think happened was there was too much of the boards.
27:18
Speaker 4: This is what I ran on when I ran my campaign.
27:20
Speaker 4: I said, we've over delegated board authority to the superintendent
27:24
Speaker 4: and we need we need to reverse engineer that a
27:27
Speaker 4: little bit and get back to a balance because, for example,
27:31
Speaker 4: the education Code and more particularly the bylaws, and by
27:34
Speaker 4: the way, the by laws of the district have the
27:36
Speaker 4: force and effective law. They're like an ordinance by the city,
27:39
Speaker 4: and the board stopped complying with the bylaws, you know,
27:44
Speaker 4: many years ago. And when I ran for I just said, well,
27:48
Speaker 4: I just retired for the second time for the federal government.
27:50
Speaker 4: My wife and I come back to Laguna. I'm just
27:53
Speaker 4: going to hang out and travel and stuff. And people
27:55
Speaker 4: came to me and said, how are the same problems
27:58
Speaker 4: we were having when you ran for the school board
28:00
Speaker 4: previously we're still having and we would like you to run.
28:04
Speaker 4: And sometimes I like to joke and say I was
28:07
Speaker 4: stupid enough that I agreed to do it. Yeah, but
28:12
Speaker 4: I'm actually glad I did it because there is an imbalance.
28:17
Speaker 4: And for example, if you look at the education Code
28:20
Speaker 4: on some issues the education code and the bylaws, which
28:23
Speaker 4: are very important because the bylaws implement the code. It's
28:27
Speaker 4: some issues it's clear the superintendent takes the lead and
28:31
Speaker 4: the president of the board comes in behind the superintendent
28:34
Speaker 4: and they work together, they collaborate, but the superintendent as
28:37
Speaker 4: the lead. On other issues, the board president and the superintendent,
28:43
Speaker 4: the board president really has the lead, and the superintendent
28:46
Speaker 4: comes in and they collaborate and the and that's the model.
28:50
Speaker 4: Well here, what the deal is is that sometimes you
28:54
Speaker 4: get political narratives going that are not really based in
28:57
Speaker 4: law and became what became the narrative of here is
29:01
Speaker 4: that the board president can't act on any issue without
29:08
Speaker 4: the entire board voting on it. And the idea was
29:11
Speaker 4: to basically shut down the role of the board president.
29:14
Speaker 4: And the thing about that is is that there are
29:18
Speaker 4: areas where the board, in the by laws, has delegated
29:23
Speaker 4: certain powers to the president to act in between board
29:27
Speaker 4: meetings on behalf of the board, which you have to do.
29:30
Speaker 4: You can't just have. So they say, no single board
29:34
Speaker 4: member has the authority to act on behalf of the board.
29:36
Speaker 4: The board acts as a whole based on majority vote,
29:38
Speaker 4: which is absolutely true. But where the board has delegated
29:42
Speaker 4: a power to the president, then that is no longer
29:46
Speaker 4: an individual board member acting on individual authority. That's a
29:50
Speaker 4: duly delegated power. And so you've got a lot of people.
29:54
Speaker 4: So then when we tried to correct it, because what
29:57
Speaker 4: happened is over the years there were by law on
30:00
Speaker 4: it's made to kind of slant and move and create
30:04
Speaker 4: this imbalance. So we go back in and we say, well,
30:07
Speaker 4: let's go back to the bylaws the way they were
30:09
Speaker 4: before they got changed and to restore the balance. And
30:14
Speaker 4: the perception is by a lot of people that we're
30:17
Speaker 4: somehow taking powers that the superintendent has exclusively and giving
30:20
Speaker 4: them to the board president. And so there's this big
30:23
Speaker 4: misunderstanding about what we're doing. We're not actually taking any
30:27
Speaker 4: power away from anybody. We're restoring what the bylaws say
30:31
Speaker 4: about the balance.
30:32
Speaker 1: So let's talk about some tangibles then, because I want
30:35
Speaker 1: to say, you said a lot here and nothing is
30:38
Speaker 1: strange to me. That seems to be the way that
30:40
Speaker 1: corporate governance happens in the private sector as well. If
30:44
Speaker 1: you have a strong CEO, the board kind of leaves
30:46
Speaker 1: that person alone when they're failing. The board gets more involved.
30:50
Speaker 1: I think in Laguna Beach where all of these boards
30:52
Speaker 1: are volunteering, and I'm talking about the arts organizations too.
30:54
Speaker 1: You have a lot of clubbiness amongst the board and
30:58
Speaker 1: it feels good. And maybe it's a little different than education,
31:02
Speaker 1: but I'm talking about the arts here where they don't
31:04
Speaker 1: really manage very they don't micromanage. And you guys brought
31:08
Speaker 1: in a guy who looked on paper like a great
31:12
Speaker 1: get you know, he had a big role in Kentucky.
31:14
Speaker 1: I'm talking about Jason Glass, and he was smooth and
31:17
Speaker 1: I'd read his columns in the newspaper and he seemed articulate.
31:21
Speaker 1: And I guess what I want to understand is the
31:24
Speaker 1: particulars of when you feel that the school board president
31:29
Speaker 1: or superintendent is overreaching. There was what they're you know,
31:33
Speaker 1: supposed to be doing, and where you guys need to
31:36
Speaker 1: assume control. Can you give me some tangibles?
31:40
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, it's it's it's interesting because the the
31:48
Speaker 4: subject of micromanagement is an issue that you've mentioned it,
31:51
Speaker 4: and you know it's it's interesting because I see signs saying,
31:57
Speaker 4: don't micromanage the state, This school board should not micromanage
32:02
Speaker 4: the staff, and yet what's really happening is the school
32:07
Speaker 4: board is being micromanaged, that we're being told what we
32:09
Speaker 4: can and we can't address. And so, for example, we
32:15
Speaker 4: I invite anybody to go back and listen to the
32:17
Speaker 4: board meeting on January twenty third, twenty twenty five. In
32:23
Speaker 4: very mild terms, we said, the superintendent has given us
32:27
Speaker 4: this communications plan. Communications is very important to the efficacy
32:33
Speaker 4: of the school board. And this communications plan has some
32:38
Speaker 4: you know, you ask for specifics, so I'm giving you specifics.
32:41
Speaker 4: The communications plan had a lot of strengths to it,
32:45
Speaker 4: it had some so we very mildly said, you know,
32:48
Speaker 4: we should have a governance workshop, a governance meeting, and
32:52
Speaker 4: we should go through this communications plan and look at
32:54
Speaker 4: it because there may be some things that we agree
32:56
Speaker 4: with and that we don't agree with, and we can
32:58
Speaker 4: work with the staff and address it. They went nuts.
33:02
Speaker 4: They basically started screaming at.
33:03
Speaker 1: It, being the parents, the staff, staff.
33:06
Speaker 4: And the parents. And it was clear that there had
33:08
Speaker 4: been a lot of preparation for this because communications was
33:12
Speaker 4: on the agenda. So the piece is right when you
33:15
Speaker 4: kind of we were a brand new and.
33:18
Speaker 1: And you guys, I saw there was a little kerfuffle
33:20
Speaker 1: over Joan culver House and you guys wanting her to
33:23
Speaker 1: be the here.
33:23
Speaker 4: Was more than a there kerfuffle.
33:26
Speaker 1: There were accusations of well.
33:28
Speaker 4: We appointed her and the appointment of her was countermanded,
33:33
Speaker 4: and so it failed and it collapsed, and that was
33:36
Speaker 4: too bad because she would have been fantastic. Yeah, we
33:40
Speaker 4: appointed her with a view towards she's going to bring
33:42
Speaker 4: the community publicly.
33:43
Speaker 1: She said she wanted to retire.
33:45
Speaker 4: Well, it wasn't really the case. She's she expressed, she
33:48
Speaker 4: applied for the job and then she pulled out when.
33:50
Speaker 1: She saw that it was Hornet's nest.
33:52
Speaker 4: The point is it was it was a pre It
33:56
Speaker 4: was a very much pre planned disruption of the process.
33:59
Speaker 4: But anyway, going back to the point about the communications,
34:03
Speaker 4: we were told, literally you stay out of our communications business.
34:10
Speaker 4: This is between the staff and the school community and
34:14
Speaker 4: the board has no role in communications. Well, you go
34:17
Speaker 4: look at the bylaws, and you go look at the
34:18
Speaker 4: Education Code, and you know, the board, every single authority,
34:24
Speaker 4: every single program, every single position in the school district
34:29
Speaker 4: is by delegation from the board. Yeah, you know, And so.
34:32
Speaker 1: Were you troubled by the communications plan that they had.
34:35
Speaker 4: There were aspects of it, but more importantly, all we
34:38
Speaker 4: said is let's have a workshop so we can talk
34:41
Speaker 4: about these things and see if we can all get
34:43
Speaker 4: on the same wavelength, because there were communications going out
34:47
Speaker 4: that we were not at all happy with, including the
34:50
Speaker 4: communication regarding Culver House that was not accurate, It did
34:55
Speaker 4: not reflect what the board's action was in that matter,
34:59
Speaker 4: and it misinformed the media, and then the media got
35:02
Speaker 4: caught up in a false narrative, and so we very
35:06
Speaker 4: much wanted to say, you know, we didn't say, well,
35:09
Speaker 4: you know, because of that, we're going to change anything,
35:12
Speaker 4: or somebody's going to get fired and nothing like that.
35:14
Speaker 4: We just said, let's have a workshop and let's sit
35:17
Speaker 4: down and talk about this. And they said, no, we're
35:20
Speaker 4: not going to have a workshop. We're not going to
35:22
Speaker 4: have anything. You stay out of this. And it was
35:26
Speaker 4: really kind of astonishing to me. But the point I.
35:30
Speaker 1: Met with resistance, You and Sherry, you know, as the
35:33
Speaker 1: new board members, there was pushback.
35:35
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, they terminated the former you know,
35:38
Speaker 4: there's a law that was passed a couple of years
35:40
Speaker 4: ago before where they provided where there's been a superintendent
35:46
Speaker 4: in place for a long time and then there's a
35:49
Speaker 4: new board elected, and there is the potential for disagreement.
35:53
Speaker 4: You know that some people might have run against policies
35:55
Speaker 4: that the superintendent was carrying out. And it's section three
35:59
Speaker 4: five one five zero that they added to the Education
36:02
Speaker 4: Code that says there's going to be a cooling off
36:04
Speaker 4: period that a new board can't fire a superintendent until
36:09
Speaker 4: they've had kind of a cooling off period. I think
36:11
Speaker 4: it's like thirty days, but just to see if the
36:14
Speaker 4: superintendent and the new board members can sit down and say,
36:17
Speaker 4: these are our concerns and have a chance to benefit
36:20
Speaker 4: from the superintendent's advice and experience, and then the school
36:24
Speaker 4: board would remain as it always is, able to terminate
36:30
Speaker 4: the superintendent for cause, terminate the superintendent without cause, and
36:34
Speaker 4: pay out the contract, or terminated by mutual agreement. Those
36:38
Speaker 4: are the three ways that that can happen. And that
36:40
Speaker 4: was the case before we got there, and it'll be
36:42
Speaker 4: the case after we leave. But the point is they
36:46
Speaker 4: didn't follow that process. They terminated him before we went
36:50
Speaker 4: on because they thought that we weren't going to be
36:53
Speaker 4: able to get along. Valoria, Valoria, and so.
36:57
Speaker 1: So they terminated him. The previous board, Oh, yeah, you
36:59
Speaker 1: guys before we came in. And so what that I
37:03
Speaker 1: get that. How do they presume that you're not going
37:05
Speaker 1: to get along?
37:05
Speaker 4: I mean, well, obviously I have been very critical and
37:08
Speaker 4: other people have been very critical your vocal, but I
37:10
Speaker 4: was open minded to In fact, we met with the
37:13
Speaker 4: guy and we had a perfectly civil meeting. And it's
37:16
Speaker 4: it's kind of too bad because it might have been
37:19
Speaker 4: that if we laid out what our proposals and thoughts
37:22
Speaker 4: were and recommendations and we talked about it, he might
37:24
Speaker 4: have said, you know, you got a good point there,
37:27
Speaker 4: So a process of collaboration could have begun. But that
37:31
Speaker 4: was preempted. And so what they did is they paid
37:33
Speaker 4: him out under his contract, but they kept him on
37:38
Speaker 4: for actually four months.
37:41
Speaker 1: This is getting very expensive.
37:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, it was. But the point is it was
37:45
Speaker 4: a rough beginning and it wasn't by accident. Again this
37:49
Speaker 4: pattern of disruption.
37:51
Speaker 1: Disruption you know. But let me ask you one thing,
37:53
Speaker 1: because it keeps coming into my mind that in the
37:56
Speaker 1: case of the performance of a school board of superintendent,
38:00
Speaker 1: you guys have the metrics, it's right in front of you.
38:02
Speaker 1: How well is the school doing? And it feels like
38:05
Speaker 1: to me from what I've heard as an outsider, that
38:07
Speaker 1: there's disagreements over the baseline. I hear that our schools
38:10
Speaker 1: are performing extremely well as well as public schools in
38:15
Speaker 1: Connecticut and Massachusetts, you know, high education regions. Kids are
38:19
Speaker 1: getting into Ivy League schools. And then I don't know
38:22
Speaker 1: if it was you or somebody else who basically came
38:24
Speaker 1: in as a reformer to say no, our schools are not.
38:27
Speaker 1: I mean, one issue that we definitely have is a
38:29
Speaker 1: shrinking attendance and that's driven by rising real estate costs
38:33
Speaker 1: in my.
38:33
Speaker 4: View, well, it's driven by a lot of demographics and
38:36
Speaker 4: a lot of issues. But I would say this it
38:40
Speaker 4: is true. First of all, my family, my grandkids attend
38:46
Speaker 4: the top of the world school They were a fifth
38:48
Speaker 4: generation of my family.
38:49
Speaker 1: And you guys have all benefited.
38:51
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we've benefited. And I love these schools. I
38:54
Speaker 4: love this community, and I love the parents, and I
38:56
Speaker 4: love the kids, and so I feel very good about
39:01
Speaker 4: our schools and towards our schools. I went up to
39:03
Speaker 4: the El Morrow Talent Show a few weeks ago, and
39:06
Speaker 4: it was the most fantastic thing. They did, such a
39:09
Speaker 4: great job, and the most important thing about that was
39:12
Speaker 4: how the students who were in the audience supported the
39:15
Speaker 4: students who were performing. It's just, you know, they wanted
39:18
Speaker 4: to make sure that whether they got it a one
39:21
Speaker 4: hundred percent right or they got it ninety percent right,
39:24
Speaker 4: the point is they cheered for their fellow students and
39:27
Speaker 4: that something's going on in the schools that's very, very
39:30
Speaker 4: good when you've got that kind of a community. And
39:32
Speaker 4: so I love that. I want to nurture that, you know,
39:35
Speaker 4: and I want the board to nurture, and I want
39:36
Speaker 4: the teachers to nurture, and I want the community to
39:39
Speaker 4: nurture it. But you know, when you get into this,
39:42
Speaker 4: you know, tip for tat back and forth about what's
39:45
Speaker 4: good and what's bad. One of the problems is there
39:48
Speaker 4: got to be a culture here in which if you
39:50
Speaker 4: said anything negative about the schools, it was taboo. And
39:54
Speaker 4: you know, anybody that would say anything about the schools
39:58
Speaker 4: was hurting the reputations of the schools. And then people
40:00
Speaker 4: aren't going to want to bring their kids here for
40:02
Speaker 4: the schools, and then property values are going to go down.
40:04
Speaker 4: I mean, one of my colleagues on the school board,
40:08
Speaker 4: she's made that point many times that this is about keeping.
40:11
Speaker 1: The issue for the entire community.
40:12
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, And I believe that public school values come
40:16
Speaker 4: before property values when you're running the school district. And
40:20
Speaker 4: the fact of the matter is we've got great schools,
40:23
Speaker 4: great campus. I was looking at a picture of the
40:24
Speaker 4: other night from nineteen twenty down in the US Bank building.
40:27
Speaker 4: They got some great pictures on the wall and they
40:29
Speaker 4: have a nineteen twenty shot of downtown and you can
40:32
Speaker 4: see the high school up there on the hill. And
40:34
Speaker 4: I'm going, what a wonderful thing that this community in
40:37
Speaker 4: nineteen twenty made that commitment. And my grandmother was on
40:41
Speaker 4: the Laguna Beach High School PTA in nineteen thirty six
40:44
Speaker 4: when the high school went to that campus, and my
40:47
Speaker 4: uncle had been attending my uncle's in his period, they
40:52
Speaker 4: had been attending in Tustin. They're getting bust to Tustin.
40:56
Speaker 4: So this is a great story, a great legacy of
40:58
Speaker 4: these schools are great. But you know, one of the
41:00
Speaker 4: things is let's create a situation where we can be
41:06
Speaker 4: honest about the strengths and the weakness.
41:08
Speaker 1: Is sure And what had you run on? Transparency was
41:12
Speaker 1: one of your pillars? Or was it accountability? Oh?
41:14
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you know, go watch the meeting on January
41:18
Speaker 4: twenty third, twenty twenty five, when we said, you know,
41:22
Speaker 4: we think there are some things that we should have
41:24
Speaker 4: a governance workshop on and talk about how we can improve.
41:28
Speaker 4: And the one of the union representatives said, you're attacking us,
41:34
Speaker 4: you're attacking the staff. I said, we're not attacking. This
41:36
Speaker 4: is that we want to work with the staff. And
41:38
Speaker 4: she said, your job is to protect us, you know,
41:41
Speaker 4: and I don't know. Our job is to have the
41:46
Speaker 4: school district accountable to the community. So, I mean, there
41:50
Speaker 4: was just this whole really negative, kind of poisonous situation.
41:54
Speaker 4: But so for example, you said, you've heard people say
42:00
Speaker 4: the number one school in school system in Orange County.
42:03
Speaker 4: Well that's true, and that's good, but that's comparing us
42:08
Speaker 4: to students that spent the school districts that spend half
42:11
Speaker 4: as much per student and have you know, thirty five
42:15
Speaker 4: percent math or science or literacy, and so do we.
42:23
Speaker 1: Have more funding howard because of property taxes?
42:25
Speaker 4: That's the whole story. This is a this is a
42:27
Speaker 4: basic aid district, which means that we don't we don't
42:31
Speaker 4: have the budget assigned to us by Sacramento based on
42:35
Speaker 4: average daily attendance. And that's that's one of the original problems.
42:38
Speaker 4: Is we get our money direct, we get our we
42:42
Speaker 4: get our tax dollars, we get we get our property
42:47
Speaker 4: taxes basically refunded to us for purposes of the schools.
42:51
Speaker 4: And it's about it's about seventy eight million dollars a
42:55
Speaker 4: year for twenty three hundred kids. And so our average
42:59
Speaker 4: cost per student year is half of what the districts
43:03
Speaker 4: that we're saying we're number one in Orange County. Well,
43:06
Speaker 4: that's comparing us to districts that have half as much.
43:09
Speaker 1: Better You're okay, So there's a curve here that obviously, and.
43:12
Speaker 4: So then the question is what about comparing us to
43:15
Speaker 4: La Joya and Palo Alto and Carmel and some of
43:19
Speaker 4: the other districts where they're basically that matter of Newport Mesa,
43:23
Speaker 4: you know, because we've got a situation where we have
43:25
Speaker 4: about we vary between like forty nine and fifty three
43:30
Speaker 4: percent math proficiency for kids graduating from the high school.
43:34
Speaker 4: And that's better than a lot of schools in Orange
43:37
Speaker 4: County and enables us to say we're the best school
43:39
Speaker 4: in Orange County.
43:40
Speaker 1: But if you.
43:40
Speaker 4: Compare us to other districts that have comparable resources we're not.
43:45
Speaker 4: And the thing about it is is that you know,
43:48
Speaker 4: you add on to the top of that that you know,
43:52
Speaker 4: we really need to focus on math, and we really
43:54
Speaker 4: need to focus on science, and we need to really
43:58
Speaker 4: do what we need and can do for the students.
44:01
Speaker 4: And one thing I've always said, people get into this
44:04
Speaker 4: kind of artificial choice between we're doing. We're either good
44:08
Speaker 4: at social emotional learning and promoting wellness, inclusivity and empathy
44:14
Speaker 4: and all these qualities that we all support and value,
44:17
Speaker 4: and so we have to find the right balance between
44:20
Speaker 4: that and then the traditional academics. But one thing that
44:25
Speaker 4: I believe individually is that one of the best things
44:31
Speaker 4: you can do for student confidence and well being and
44:34
Speaker 4: identity and strengthening and character is to make sure you're
44:39
Speaker 4: creating enough opportunities and you're putting enough resources behind success
44:43
Speaker 4: and academics. In other words, if you're a fourteen or
44:46
Speaker 4: fifteen year old and you can succeed in sports, succeed
44:50
Speaker 4: in classroom, and it's succeed in academics, that is really
44:53
Speaker 4: good for your social emotional well being. And so we
44:57
Speaker 4: shouldn't be bifurcating that we should be we should be
45:00
Speaker 4: combined in that we should have an integrated strategy.
45:03
Speaker 1: For Okay, And just so in case you're just driving
45:05
Speaker 1: by and tuning in, we're talking to school board member
45:08
Speaker 1: Howard Hughes, Howard Hills here at KXFM with your host
45:13
Speaker 1: Billy Freed, and we're digging in deep. So Howard, Okay,
45:16
Speaker 1: I'm with you on you know, excellence in the community
45:20
Speaker 1: and how we compare to other communities that are this
45:23
Speaker 1: well funded. So what's the fix? And if we can
45:27
Speaker 1: get a little more specific? And I understand you may
45:31
Speaker 1: be under some kind of NDA, but can we understand
45:34
Speaker 1: the riff that occurred between you and doctor not you,
45:37
Speaker 1: the board and doctor Glass and why that lasted so short?
45:41
Speaker 1: Was such a short run?
45:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, let me just say that everything I've said
45:45
Speaker 4: so far and everything I say in the ensuing discussion
45:50
Speaker 4: is my personal opinion.
45:51
Speaker 1: Does me too?
45:52
Speaker 4: Doesn't represent the views of the board.
45:54
Speaker 1: Same with the radio station. You and I are just
45:56
Speaker 1: two guys talking.
45:57
Speaker 4: Right, And I think that the fix is that, you know,
46:03
Speaker 4: we've appointed a new superintendent and he just got through
46:08
Speaker 4: with eight years as superintendent up at Palo Alto, and
46:12
Speaker 4: five of those eight years that he was up there,
46:14
Speaker 4: it was a number one rated high school in the
46:16
Speaker 4: state of California.
46:17
Speaker 1: Sounds like a great guy.
46:18
Speaker 4: And he's the former principal of the high school here.
46:21
Speaker 1: Okay, so we got a good pick. He did five years. Well,
46:23
Speaker 1: what happened with the other guy?
46:25
Speaker 4: Well, I you know, I was asked that question by
46:28
Speaker 4: Los Angeles Times. I don't know if you saw the
46:30
Speaker 4: article that they did, but I basically said, he was
46:32
Speaker 4: a great guy. You did, and he had a lot
46:34
Speaker 4: to offer, and.
46:36
Speaker 1: You wrote, I guess I got the quote here. He's
46:38
Speaker 1: a great guy, and he had some very very strong
46:40
Speaker 1: qualifications as an educator and a lot to offer in
46:43
Speaker 1: that regard. But I think it was difficult for him
46:46
Speaker 1: to put those strengths to good use in a situation
46:49
Speaker 1: where there was so much political strife.
46:51
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that all of us. That's true of
46:54
Speaker 4: all of us. We haven't been able to put our
46:56
Speaker 4: strengths to the best use because of all the disrupt
47:00
Speaker 4: and chaos. And I don't know if you saw what
47:05
Speaker 4: happened up at Thurston School on the fourteenth, but it
47:09
Speaker 4: was pretty extreme.
47:09
Speaker 1: I did, And I you know, I'm not going to
47:11
Speaker 1: weigh in on seeing kids do that. I do know
47:14
Speaker 1: that the little bit I heard that d Perry was
47:17
Speaker 1: pushed to the ground apparently was not the case. She
47:20
Speaker 1: came out and said, but regardless, I get that there's
47:23
Speaker 1: but the point is there shouldn't be this.
47:25
Speaker 4: We talk about disruption that was out of control. I'm
47:28
Speaker 4: not going to go into it right now. But I
47:30
Speaker 4: was there and I was targeted, and I know what
47:34
Speaker 4: happened to D. And that's eventually, I think going to
47:38
Speaker 4: be that's going to be established because speculation about who
47:42
Speaker 4: did what to whom, we need to get all the facts.
47:44
Speaker 1: But that all happened after Doctor Glass wasn't to say terminator.
47:49
Speaker 4: Because of it.
47:50
Speaker 1: I mean, but the point is that you obviously had
47:53
Speaker 1: a personal issue with him, because we've all seen the
47:55
Speaker 1: video of you asking him who he reports to, and.
47:59
Speaker 4: Well, no, that that's a very interesting situation because what
48:02
Speaker 4: I've been told by people that went viral, by the way,
48:05
Speaker 4: I know, and what I've been told by people is
48:07
Speaker 4: that if I try to explain that what was really
48:12
Speaker 4: going on there, that it just makes it worse for
48:14
Speaker 4: me that I'm just you know, in.
48:15
Speaker 1: Harvor, your your defenses, you really couldn't hear.
48:18
Speaker 4: I went to the Harvard Kennedy School Government. And one
48:22
Speaker 4: of the things when I was when I was a
48:24
Speaker 4: general counsel of a federal agency. One of the things
48:29
Speaker 4: that was part of my experience there was getting to
48:33
Speaker 4: go up to Harvard and do the Senior Managers and
48:36
Speaker 4: Government program up there. And one of the things that
48:40
Speaker 4: Professor Zimmerman always told us is when you find yourself
48:43
Speaker 4: in a hole and you don't know how you got
48:46
Speaker 4: there or how you're going to get out of it,
48:49
Speaker 4: put down the shovel. Stop digging. Yeah, And so I've
48:54
Speaker 4: been told just Howard, don't do any more digging about that.
48:58
Speaker 4: The fact of the matter is that everybody that's on
49:03
Speaker 4: that board knows that you can't hear because of the
49:07
Speaker 4: acoustics of the room. And in fact, the Superintendent Glass
49:12
Speaker 4: had ordered the staff to figure out what the problem
49:15
Speaker 4: was and to get it fixed about three months earlier.
49:19
Speaker 4: And after all that happened, I was at the same
49:24
Speaker 4: place on the dais and Sherry Morgan, the President, was
49:28
Speaker 4: three feet from me, and when she turned her head
49:32
Speaker 4: in that direction, I could not hear what she was saying.
49:35
Speaker 4: And that's the reality. They've now changed it.
49:38
Speaker 1: So the point is, I know the internet can make
49:40
Speaker 1: anything look different.
49:41
Speaker 4: So the point is I'm not going to get into
49:45
Speaker 4: it anymore because it's just it's a loser. But the
49:47
Speaker 4: reality is is that I could not hear what he
49:51
Speaker 4: was saying, and.
49:52
Speaker 1: I'm going to accept that.
49:53
Speaker 4: Yeah, so anyway, and he knows it and everybody there
49:57
Speaker 4: knows it. But the point is that really wasn't between
50:00
Speaker 4: him and me. That wasn't a big thing.
50:02
Speaker 1: Well what was the big thing? Because here's a guy,
50:05
Speaker 1: here's a guy that when I saw what he gets made,
50:08
Speaker 1: when he gets paid, I'm like, oh my god, this
50:10
Speaker 1: guy makes more than the city manager. He's probably the
50:12
Speaker 1: highest paid UH state official in Laguna, and he came
50:16
Speaker 1: highly recommended, and it seemed like there was so I'm
50:21
Speaker 1: just speculating here a guy that comes in with big,
50:25
Speaker 1: a big resume, wants to exert control and you guys
50:30
Speaker 1: felt like what you had said before, you have a
50:32
Speaker 1: strong UH superintendent and what maybe historically was a weak
50:38
Speaker 1: board that would cave. But I guess I want to
50:41
Speaker 1: understand specifically the things that he wasn't doing that you
50:45
Speaker 1: wanted him to do besides communication, but like as far
50:48
Speaker 1: as advancing education, where did he fall down in your view?
50:52
Speaker 4: Well, I think that it's kind of a misstated premise
50:57
Speaker 4: because I don't think anybody had the attitude of that
51:00
Speaker 4: he did something wrong. I mean, you can people do,
51:04
Speaker 4: and can and will have their different opinions about what
51:09
Speaker 4: the board did right and wrong, and what he did
51:12
Speaker 4: right or wrong, or what people in the community did
51:14
Speaker 4: right or wrong, or what the staff did right or wrong.
51:17
Speaker 4: Within a discussion of I'm Howard Hills, did I screw
51:22
Speaker 4: that up? Yeah, you know, I did screw that up.
51:25
Speaker 4: And so within the context of this, we can have
51:29
Speaker 4: discussions about who did what and who what was successful
51:33
Speaker 4: and what wasn't successful. But I think you know, you
51:36
Speaker 4: got to remember those three ways that super under California code,
51:40
Speaker 4: there's three ways that superintendents leave. One is without cause
51:44
Speaker 4: and you pay them out with cause, you don't pay
51:47
Speaker 4: him out, or by mutual agreement. And I think what
51:50
Speaker 4: can be said is that sort of the consensus that
51:55
Speaker 4: was reached was that, you know, it would be in
51:59
Speaker 4: everybody's citrus to move on down the road. And that's
52:02
Speaker 4: about as much as I can say about.
52:04
Speaker 1: You guys weren't getting along in some capacity because you
52:07
Speaker 1: decide mutually to part ways, which does indicate after, you know,
52:11
Speaker 1: he moved his family out here and after ten months
52:13
Speaker 1: something made a left turn.
52:15
Speaker 4: Well, I will tell you this much. There was nobody
52:18
Speaker 4: on the board or in this community that spoke more
52:20
Speaker 4: positively about him than I did. I was quoted in
52:24
Speaker 4: you know, Erica Richie quoted me and the Register saying,
52:27
Speaker 4: this is the best person we could have gotten, and
52:30
Speaker 4: it's good that he's it from out of state, and
52:32
Speaker 4: we're going to get a new beginning, a new start
52:34
Speaker 4: and everything. You know. Again, nobody, in fact, there were
52:39
Speaker 4: people on the board that were not happy with the
52:42
Speaker 4: selection and criticized it. I was really standing up for
52:47
Speaker 4: and supporting it, and I still think it was the
52:51
Speaker 4: right intent and right purpose that we had. And again
52:56
Speaker 4: I took him and his family out and got them
52:59
Speaker 4: all standing up on boards, you know, and I really
53:01
Speaker 4: liked them a lot. But I think that he and
53:06
Speaker 4: his family and the board and the community we all
53:09
Speaker 4: had h well, some people, as I say, didn't like
53:13
Speaker 4: the selection, but for the people that did support it,
53:16
Speaker 4: including me, we all had expectations about what was going
53:19
Speaker 4: to happen and how it was going to happen. And
53:21
Speaker 4: I think that when he moved into the role. It
53:27
Speaker 4: was a lot more complicated and there was a lot
53:30
Speaker 4: more controversy than we ever anticipated or that he ever anticipated,
53:34
Speaker 4: and so out of that comes some disappointments, some problems,
53:38
Speaker 4: some questions about how we're going to go forward and
53:41
Speaker 4: is it going to work, is it going to get better?
53:43
Speaker 4: You know, one thing, when you have a relationship like that,
53:46
Speaker 4: the interest of the kids are at stake here and
53:48
Speaker 4: you can't sit around and say, well, for political reasons,
53:51
Speaker 4: we're going to just see if this works out or something.
53:53
Speaker 4: If it's if something's not working for him or for
53:57
Speaker 4: the other constituencies and stakeholders, the board has to take
54:02
Speaker 4: all of that into consideration and say is it fair
54:07
Speaker 4: to him to invest more? You know, he did bring
54:10
Speaker 4: his family out here. But the point is we worked
54:13
Speaker 4: out a settlement that he thought was fair, that we
54:15
Speaker 4: thought was fair. And in their words, it goes back
54:19
Speaker 4: to the Harvard thing. If you're in a hole, put
54:21
Speaker 4: down the shovel, and so we put that. I would
54:24
Speaker 4: say that what we did is we put down the shovel,
54:26
Speaker 4: so we didn't dig ourselves any deeper in a hole.
54:28
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, we're good on that topic. Let me
54:31
Speaker 1: we're closing in, And I want to ask you a
54:33
Speaker 1: bigger question overall in education, and that is, do you
54:40
Speaker 1: ever see the movie Waiting for Superman?
54:44
Speaker 4: No?
54:44
Speaker 1: I did? Have you heard about that movie?
54:45
Speaker 4: Yeah?
54:46
Speaker 1: So it's about a black kid who used to watch
54:49
Speaker 1: television and think Superman was going to come to his
54:52
Speaker 1: home and save him. And the education system failed him
54:56
Speaker 1: because they had, you know, those schools in the inner
54:59
Speaker 1: city to call him drop out factories and so on
55:01
Speaker 1: and so forth. And there's a scene when he's looking
55:04
Speaker 1: through the window at a teacher and he goes, his
55:07
Speaker 1: name is Jeffrey, Canada, and he goes, you know, there
55:11
Speaker 1: is something about watching a great teacher teach that is
55:17
Speaker 1: it's a performance, it's magnetic. It's just it's life changing
55:22
Speaker 1: for a good student. So my view is the way
55:24
Speaker 1: you make a school better is it's simple, get better teachers.
55:29
Speaker 1: And I guess I'm curious to know in your view.
55:32
Speaker 1: I would think theoretically it's not easy to attract the
55:35
Speaker 1: best teachers here because if we're at the same pay
55:38
Speaker 1: level as let's say Irvine, they can't afford to live
55:41
Speaker 1: in Laguna, They're going to live Inland. It's going to
55:43
Speaker 1: be an easier commute for one thing, and then coming
55:46
Speaker 1: into an environment like this where there's a lot of
55:48
Speaker 1: turmoil and a lot of acrimony, and it's like, I
55:51
Speaker 1: don't want to walk into that. But number one, would
55:54
Speaker 1: you agree with that? And number two, how do we
55:57
Speaker 1: And is it the job of the supervisor to set
55:59
Speaker 1: the tone and do the marketing to attract the best teachers?
56:03
Speaker 4: Well, first of all, I will tell you this one
56:07
Speaker 4: of the teachers at the in the school system right
56:11
Speaker 4: now that is that we have a lot of disagreements with.
56:17
Speaker 4: And it's tough and it's difficult because we feel very
56:21
Speaker 4: strongly and passionately about what about what ought to happen,
56:28
Speaker 4: and we're not in agreement on it. But he is
56:32
Speaker 4: a brilliant teacher and he's he's I really admire him
56:36
Speaker 4: as an educator, without without question, and it's a he's
56:41
Speaker 4: an example of the kind of teachers we need in
56:43
Speaker 4: this time. One of the things that d Perry and
56:45
Speaker 4: I have worked a lot on is we're part of
56:47
Speaker 4: this county county wide effort to get more curriculum for
56:52
Speaker 4: students who aren't going to go to college and who
56:55
Speaker 4: are maybe going to go into the arts or into
56:58
Speaker 4: industry or into you know, tangible uh, tangible productivity, you know,
57:05
Speaker 4: and make sure because you know a lot of them
57:07
Speaker 4: are going to end up making more money than the
57:08
Speaker 4: kids that go to college, right, you know. And I've
57:11
Speaker 4: had kids that have done I have five kids and
57:14
Speaker 4: twelve grandkids, and I've seen it all, you know, the spectrum.
57:17
Speaker 4: I had a daughter that went to Stanford, and I
57:19
Speaker 4: have another daughter that went to Saddleback, and they both
57:22
Speaker 4: have had wonderful lives. And so it's there's no one
57:25
Speaker 4: size fits all, you know. So you got to have
57:27
Speaker 4: real diversity in that regard, and so you recruit teachers
57:30
Speaker 4: that can respond to the needs of the students. And
57:33
Speaker 4: I think we have fantastic faculty here. I think that
57:38
Speaker 4: there have been some controversies, you know there there, but
57:42
Speaker 4: we really goes back to what I said very early.
57:45
Speaker 4: We can't let the governance issues where we have disagreement,
57:49
Speaker 4: that where everybody in good faith has serious disagreements, we
57:53
Speaker 4: can't let that into the classroom. And our teachers, when
57:56
Speaker 4: they're in the classroom, they're unsurpassed, sacred, they're they're fantastic.
58:02
Speaker 4: And what I really don't like to see is seeing
58:05
Speaker 4: some of the teachers getting sucked into politics, because that's
58:11
Speaker 4: not good for anybody. And uh so we all have
58:15
Speaker 4: to be cautious stewards of the bifurcation between the governance
58:21
Speaker 4: process and what goes on in the classroom. And I
58:23
Speaker 4: think that's broken down in recent years and in recent months,
58:27
Speaker 4: and we got to restore that because the relationship. And
58:31
Speaker 4: I'll tell you, my kids in Washington, d C. Schools
58:35
Speaker 4: had the most wonderful teachers. And it's not about money,
58:39
Speaker 4: it's not about you know, uh, it's not about privilege.
58:43
Speaker 4: It's about the teacher and the student. And my kids
58:47
Speaker 4: went to schools in d C where they had to
58:49
Speaker 4: go to metal go through metal detectors to get on compass.
58:52
Speaker 4: And so I've seen it all across the spectrum, and
58:55
Speaker 4: we have nothing but to be grateful for what we
58:58
Speaker 4: have here and we will will always be able to
59:01
Speaker 4: market our schools and the correlation between property values and
59:07
Speaker 4: school that's just not sustainable in reality. We've got great schools,
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Speaker 4: we've got great teachers, we've got great parents, and we've
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Speaker 4: got most of all great students and they're doing all things.
59:18
Speaker 4: So I think that nobody around here needs to wait
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Speaker 4: for Superman. I think that we've got we've got Superman
59:25
Speaker 4: here and the super women in our schools, but we
59:30
Speaker 4: can't allow the schools to fall under and fall into
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Speaker 4: bad habits of governance. We've got to restore good habits
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Speaker 4: of governance. And when you have a situation where you
59:44
Speaker 4: have a by law, I'm going to just give you
59:45
Speaker 4: a very specific example. You asked for specific examples. You
59:48
Speaker 4: have a by law that says that the board's action