There are quite a few candidates this year for three spots on the Santa Ana Unified School District’s Board of Education. The O.C. Voter Registrar has finally put up all of their statements online. Below I am reproducing them in picture format, with links to each statement. I also added their campaign websites and/or email addresses, if they were not mentioned in their statements. If I could not find their campaign websites via Google.com, I noted that as well. Here are their ballot statements:
Irene Ibarra – Campaign Website – Click here to email.
Gloria Alvarado – Campaign Website
Mike Gonzalez – No Campaign Website
Cecilia Aguinaga – Campaign Website
Jose Hernandez – No Campaign Website. Click here to email.
Rob Richardson – Click here to email
The last candidate, Gregory Barraza, does not have a statement available. You may email him at this link.
Ok, so there are two incumbants who look pretty qualified but who also contributed to the plan to lay off one-half of the 1200 or so non-Teacher, non-Administrator employees who perform a variety of duties in the district and then bring them all back to work making less money, doing the work of two or three positions, without health benefits. In other words ONE TERRIBLE PLAN! So out they go (besides they got us into this financial mess to begin with).
Now, who takes their place? Obviously the ballot statements dont tell us anything that we can use to make the choice so we are left to rumor and inuendo to give us the information needed. Good thing SAUSD is experienced at operating with rumor and inuendo (mentiras?) to go on. I hope some people share their real experiences with these folks to help people decide. My only experience is with Celia and all I can say is she seems tireless in her efforts to promote her candidacy, and is usually positive and upbeat about the situation of the day.
Anonyms,
Obviously you don’t really know Cecelia. Try talking to any one of her current or former co-workers. They can certainly shed light on what kind of a person she is and more importantly if she is even qualified. One word comes to mind whenever I see or hear of her and that is, “Fake”.
I invite all voters to chat with the candidate of their choice, and from my knowledge and experience with Irene Ibarra, I can honestly say she is the most qualified of the bunch. I’ve known her for almost ten years now and she the most capable of serving on the SAUSD from any other candidate that I have seen in a very long time. She brings in a lot of practical experience from her business that handles multi-million dollar contracts. She knows how the system works and will not be fooled by double-speak from Staff and Administrators. Perhaps that is why she is feared not only by the incumbents but also by the current administrators.
I’ve met three other candidates from this list but they are not even worth mentioning for your consideration.
Thanks QT this is the kind of information people need to go vote. Unfortunately many voters never get to meet they representative and vote based on what they read and hear.
I like reading your posts and find you to be thoughtful and intelligent in your writing. Please share your views on the candidates you met. If enough people do this then others will have more information to use in basing their opinion and vote on.
In reading each others posts we do get to know one aspect of each other and that can assist us in evaluating opinions expressed here. So tell us what you really think QT, we can handle it.
This really puts a damper on residents and parents like myself who are oblivious to what is going on with SAUSD. (But I’ve recently decided to be more in “the know” especially with my daughter attending a Santa Ana elementary school). Anyway, I have no idea who these people are. All I have to go by are there statements, whether or not they wrote it themselves. And unfortunately, their websites don’t say much about their personal/business lives either.
I can’t see myself voting for the two who are currently on the board. They definitely did not impress me with their statements. Only one did – Roman Reyna. He seems to have accomplished a lot more than everyone else on a community level. But even still, I don’t want to just vote for him just because everyone else was vague.
I guess my next move is to email them and find out more about them.
Mary, if you find out anything please share it here.
Hernandez does have a campaign website, it is http://www.josealfredohernandez.com.
If anything, I would encourage the voters to speak to him and Reyna, out of all of the candidates they are the most qualified. Plus, Hernandez has done an impressive job of not letting the SAUSD boat sink in this economic crissis that the country is going through.
Some candidates don’t even have a BA!! Now call me crazy but how can they be governing a board that deals with the education of our children when they don’t have one?????????
Anon 8:54,
Thanks for the link. When I tried to find his website it did not come up on google.com. I searched for “Jose Hernandez, SAUSD,” and his site did NOT come up at all. His webmaster needs to fix his tags.