Long Beach Schools

I posted the following after reading about the "rules," for a discussion about School Reconfiguration with the community.................................................... It clearly sounds like the Superintendent has already made up his mind and this community forum is a mere technicality. These rules are designed to limit free speech. As a former member of the Board of Education for 9-years, 5 of which I served as President, it is my opinion, that its time for the David Weiss to leave this district. The proposed changes are not about education, or whats best for children. There must be a hidden agenda. Our Governor just announced major changes to Pre-K, including funding, changes to state testing and the implementation of Core Curriculum. The proposed changes are also NOT about saving money because the incremental savings are so low I don't even trust the numbers. So what can we do - (1) Vote OUT members of the board of education that support the proposed changes, (2) Vote down the Budget, (3) attend school board meetings and ask lots of questions and demand answers, (4) call for the unions to vote "No Confidence" in the abilities of David Weiss and demand his resignation, (5) take a look at David Weiss's contract and see if he is guaranteed life time health care benefits after 5-yeaars of service. Please take a look at my earlier posting on this subject from December 2013. I worked very hard for 9-years to stop the back room deals and the wholesale hiring of friends and neighbors and to control costs while providing an excellent public school education. Children only have 1-chance at an education, and my opinion is clear to me, that the hidden agenda of David Weiss and this Board of Education is more important than the children and to me - thats wrong. To my former colleagues on the Board of Education - we used to fight for what was right, we used to fight to hire only the best and brightest and, and we used to fight to do the right thing. If my comments upset you, thats' good. I hope that you will consider what our core values used to be and how hard we all worked together to set policy and provide the best education possible to our students while conservatively controlling the budget to protect our resident taxpayers. If any of the members of the Board of Education have questions or comments, please feel free to call me at any time.