CUSD – Election Battlefield
P.A.L.s update

The lack of transparency with which Capistrano Unified School District has operated is legendary. Ask anyone who tried to get a simple question answered during the last several years. CUSD would bury you in documents, delay your answers, add your name to a list indicating that your questions were expensive, investigate your background and respond that you were the problem instead of providing an answer! Those who dared to speak at Board meetings found themselves attacked rather than being provided with a response. A cultural change is required in CUSD to restore the public’s confidence, and this change will only occur because of a new focus on transparency.

CUSD did not truthfully answer questions about costs of the San Juan Hills High School project and the District office. These projects were primarily approved on the consent calendar without public discussion. The public was not aware that there was an alternate school site available in Ladera Ranch for SJHHS.

Parents Advocacy League (PAL) asked all of the CUSD Board candidates about transparency. Transparency is about open government, ethics, and the sunshine laws.  Transparency is a means of holding public officials accountable and fighting corruption. When government meetings are open to the press and the public, when budgets and financial statements may be reviewed by anyone, when laws, rules and decisions are open to discussion, the agency is seen as transparent, and there is less opportunity for the authorities to abuse the system in their own interest.

Open government is the political doctrine that advocates the business of government should be open at all levels for effective public scrutiny and oversight.  The Union-backed candidates’ responses were about themselves. Transparency is about the organization’s willingness to be responsive, not Trustee accessibility. Transparency is about citizen accessibility to information from CUSD, a public education agency. Over the years, all of the old-guard Trustees were available to the public: answers to questions were not available. Transparency is not a subcommittee meeting; it is a way of conducting business. In fact, the subcommittees referred to by the Union-backed candidates (see below) actually made the district less transparent because information was spread out over five or six meetings, making it difficult for the board and public to understand what had been presented.

The Reform Candidates, Brick, Maddox, Palazzo and Winsten, all have great suggestions for making CUSD a transparent agency. The Union-backed candidates didn’t even understand the question. Please take the time to read the responses to this important question. The answers make it clear that there is a choice, and it is time for CUSD to become transparent.

This election is a turning point in this district – the Union-backed candidates are happy with the way things were, and the Reform candidates are focused on the way things can be.

Follow this link (click here) to read the P.A.L.s question about transparency and answers from candidates.