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Paso Robles school board election has consequences

March 21, 2023

Ron Cuff

By Ron Cuff

Math proficiency levels at the Paso Robles Joint Unified School District, a “district of excellence,” are currently at 28.57%, more than 10% below California’s average and more than 20% below the national average.

As with all government run schools, the district is largely controlled by the teachers’ union. The union spends thousands of dollars on and campaigns for their hand picked school board candidates. They, in turn, are pressured into voting for higher staff pay and benefits and supporting a multitude of partisan political ideologies.

A mere eight weeks after retired Marine Lt. Colonel Kenney Enney was selected by the Paso Robles Board of Trustees to fill a vacancy, members of the teachers union, guided with a wink and a nod by San
Luis Obispo County Superintendent of Schools James Brescia, targeted Mr. Enney for removal.

San Luis Obispo County Clerk Elena Cano coached the school district’s union employees on the best way to remove Mr. Enney. He was removed from the board after just 60 days in the seat due to a petition
circulated by union school employees.

We might ask, why would union school district employees target Kenney Enney? After all, he is a college instructor with two masters degrees, a Marine combat veteran, and the former commanding officer of a large, prestigious military training unit in Monterey. He is 100% qualified to serve on the school board.

What egregious action might he have possibly taken during only three school board meetings?

Perhaps it was that he began asking questions about the district budget. Or, that he started exploring strategies to improve educational outcomes, classroom management and student safety. Or, perhaps it
was because he wanted to preserve parental rights and increase board communication with parents and community members.

No, it appears that Lt. Colonel Enney had to go because he wasn’t singing on key with the union school board members. Subsequently, a special election, at a cost to taxpayers of nearly $500,000, is now scheduled for April 18, 2023 to determine who will fill the vacant seat.

Beginning on March 20, everyone registered to vote within the Paso Robles Joint Unified School District will be mailed a ballot. A vote for the union backed candidate, Angela Hollander, is a vote for the status
quo: classroom chaos, substance use in student bathrooms, fights, gang activity, and abysmal educational outcomes.

In contrast, a vote for Kenney Enney can have far reaching, positive
consequences for Paso Robles youth.

Let’s make a good choice. Vote for Kenney Enney.

Ron Cuff, a retired U.S. Navy commander, is a Paso Robles resident. He co-founded SafeLaunch in 2020. The group works to prevent adolescent exposure to alcohol and other drugs known to cause substance use disorder and addiction. 

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Can I collect 500 signatures and force a $500,000 special election for any board member? Sounds easy, and fun. Not like the Paso schools are doing anything anyway. Might as well bankrupt it. It’s a jobs program to ensure societal failure.


7

Public school teachers are fundamental to the success of our nation. All patriots should be doing everything they can to build and support a robust public school system, equal to the best in the world. Let’s not be selfish cheapskates when it comes to educating our children. Let’s give our teachers respect and support they deserve. Their jobs are among the most important in our world. Love our teachers.


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Agreed! Anyone who believes that people go into the teaching profession out of greed or selfishness has been spending too much time listening to their preferred echo chamber. In my experience, public school teachers are the best!

Anyone who believes the answer to a struggling public school system is to pay teachers less and give less money to schools is clearly planning to destroy public education. So your true solution is to turn our schools over to churches and for-profit corporations. When those educational corporations start paying teachers a fraction of the already-low salaries they currently make and offer no pension or heath care…what kind of people will line up to teach our kids?

Lastly. There already is school choice. You don’t like your local public school? Move somewhere else OR put them in a private school OR teach them yourself! That’s a lot of choices that don’t involve destroying public schools for the rest of us that aren’t sitting in your exact media ecosystem.


-9

That’s not “school choice”, and you know it.


School choice, is my deciding where the money allocated for my child will be spent, be it a private school, parochial school, home schooled, or a public school that does not bow down to current social winds, but prefers to teach the 3 R’s. It should be my choice, to make sure my child receives an actual education, and not the latest way to dye hair pink, or pierce their eyebrows. Ask kids today, how many states in America? What’s the capitol of the USA? Who did we win our independence from? When was the war of 1812 fought? More than likely, you will get a blank stare.


Remember when kids went to school, and they learned how to read and write, complete a mathematical equation, discovered that there is only man and woman, boys took classes that fixed cars, along with metal shop, wood shop, agriculture shop (many of those here in SLO county). Girls took Home-Ec and science classes. Later on, boys figured out they needed to know how to cook and sew, and a lot of girls liked working on cars. That didn’t change their life goals, only enhanced them.


Those kids went on to build the industrial giant that is the USA, put men on the moon, created and designed things unimaginable 200 or even 100 years ago (though I’m still holding out for my flying car), communicate with the world at the touch of a phone screen, and invented the frosted blueberry Pop-Tart.


Not a single one of them, thought that pink hair, and boys pretending to be girls, was the way of the future. And they learned those skills that brought them success in life, at schools who’s teachers loved teaching them.


No. Paso does not need teachers who go on strike for higher wages. Paso, nay, ALL schools, need teachers who commit to teaching fundamental skills required for societal success.


3

School choice…. don’t vote for anyone that is not in favor of giving parents a choice… the public school system is failing… now LAUSD is going on strike?… greed and selfishness abound inside teachers unions….


19

Yes, I get it. You don’t want your tax dollars going to public schools and the greedy teachers.

How do you feel about the tax dollars we spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Was that $4.2 trillion well spent? You don’t like the powerful teachers unions but what about the salaries, pensions and ongoing medical costs of our military personnel…..are those excessive? We’re talking about people like Ron Cuff retired U.S. Navy commander and retired Marine Lt. Colonel Kenney Enney.

If only we could bring the tactical and procurement expertise of the military to bear on our public schools I’m sure we would be on budget and accomplish the mission with a minimum of friendly fire and collateral damage.


-10

Good article telling the truth about the California Teachers Union.


19

…If you speak off the cuff, you say something without having prepared or thought about your words first…

Thanks for the insight Ron.


-19

Ron, I 100% agree, the candidate from the left is just more of the same, the education machine has rubber stamped her as a last minute “same ole thing” .


27

Great read!


20

I see what you did there Ron. You sort of glossed over why the recall election happened (goodness, he sang off key!) and attributed the recall effort to those greedy and lazy school teachers. Kenney Enney himself publicly identified the petitioners as people who didn’t want a conservative.


Doesn’t it seem more likely that the citizens didn’t want their kids being led by a culture war ideologue that can’t spot the BS in their FB feed? Is this nonsense about transgender teens and furries needing litter boxes really still funny to you people? Seriously! Old folks just stay off the Facebook or just use it to post family pictures….unless you want to run for a school board….in which case, post away and show us who you really are!


-47

Notice how this author carefully avoids saying what positions his chosen candidate is taking on issues. He is basically saying vote for my guy because I don’t like the other candidate and I’m not gonna tell you what my guys going to do when he gets in office because if I told you, you might not want to vote for him. Oh, and another thing, lots of people hate his candidate, so much so that there was a petition circulated to remove him, because his approach with so polarizing. We already had one disaster on the Paso Robles school district board, extremist Chris Ahrend. Do we really want another polarizing, divisive disliked board member?


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