One for the locals

(Caro for CC Board of Education)

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First, other than giving his campaign fifty bucks and planning to vote for him, I'm not associated with Anthony Caro's campaign.

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This is Anthony Caro candidate for Contra Costa County's Board of Education:

Speaking as a person tragically and suddenly deep into middle-age, Caro is young. And he really wants to do political things. This isn't a pro or con, just something to note.

Anyway, I represent my colleagues as a rep on our union's rep council, which is sort of like being a representative sent to the House. And yes, I voted to endorse Caro—and endorse him we have.

And while Caro's a good kid with the right intentions, I'll admit that a vote for him is just as much a vote against county superintendent Lynn Mackey

If you're local, you well know that our school district is famously bad at money. But this badness is enabled by Lynn Mackey.

Consider!

WCCUSD is require by state law to put 55% of its "current cost of education" into classroom compensation. Last year, it only spent 52.36%—$11,391,200 less that 55%—which is a lot of money. ("Current cost of education," incidentally, includes teacher and aide salaries/benefits. And we are having a desperately difficult time keeping educators.)

WCCUSD has fallen short of this legal requirement four years running. How?? one might reasonably ask.

Because Superintendent Mackey gives the district a waiver year after year after year.

Incidentally, and this is fun, school districts in California are only legally required to tell the truth about how much money they have once a year. The rest of the time, they talk about "projections" which can basically be whatever they want.

My favorite example of how this works in practice is from a couple years ago when I was trying to get the new Norton of English poetry for my AP Lit classes. That year, WCCUSD projected $75,000,000 for textbooks and other classroom supplies (like science labs). That money was sacred and couldn't be moved to any other line item. But $75,000,000 didn't go as far as you might expect. Not enough for my Nortons, for instance.

But in the report where they had to tell the truth? They'd spent $16,000,000 on textbooks etc. I know the Nortons are expensive, but $75,000,000 – $16,000,000 is still a lot > 150 Nortons. A lot >.

Anyway, Mackey currently has a 3–2 majority on the board and voting for Cato helps fix that problem.

So vote for Cato.

Hey! Do you want more funny money facts?

A lot has been made of the teachers getting a raise the last couple years.

HOWEVER,

as you can see, although we are getting paid more dollars, as a percentage of WCCUSD's entire budget, we are less and less and less:

Anyway, there are lots more fun graphs out there showing the nonsense of WCCUSD's money management, but the important thing here is that Mackey enables this malfeasance and we can't vote her out until 2026.

So this election, what we can do, it break up her board majority and deny her the power to do whatever she wants. Like screw WCCUSD.

Vote Caro for Board.