This was posted by PCRA Member Mark Klang on his own blog and is re-posted here.

Conservative Betrayed Blog

Lets set the players:

Senator Barack Obama – Liberal Democrat and the Democratic Presidential Nominee.

Rocklin School Board

Greg Daley – Registered Republican but votes as a Democrat.

Steve Paul – Registered Republican but votes as a Democrat.

Todd Lowell – Registered Republican but votes as a Democrat.

Wendy Lang – Registered Decline to State but votes as a Democrat.

Camille Maben – Registered Democrat and votes as a liberal Democrat.

The Rocklin School Board has a majority of registered Republicans but they have more in common with Senator Obama on education.

Senator Obama does not believe in school choice. He does not support charter schools. The teacher’s union supports him. Senator Obama believes that the teacher’s union knows what is best for your children. Obama and the teacher’s union believe they are smarter than you when it comes to educating your children. This is exactly how the Rocklin School Board thinks. The President of the Rocklin School Board, the uneducated Steve Paul, will tell you he knows what is best for your children. He thinks he is smarter than every parent in Rocklin. Over the last 2 elections, the teacher’s union has donated over $20,000 to the current members of the Rocklin School Board. The teacher’s union does not donate money to school boards to represent your children. They donate money to school boards to push their liberal agenda.

While most of RUSD schools do a good job, some parents still want the choice of which school they want their children to attend. Some parents prefer to send their children to a school outside of Rocklin. If a parent wants to send their child to a school outside Rocklin, they must get permission from the Rocklin School Board. That is called an inter-district transfer. Approximately 2 years ago I attended a school board meeting when a mother got up in front of the Rocklin School Board requesting that her daughter be able to attend a school in Roseville. The mother was nearly in tears because that night the Rocklin School Board did not approve her transfer. Greg Daley told the mother “we are bound by our own rules.” I would like to inform Mr. Daley that he and the other board members came up with those rules. How does Mr. Daley and the other board members know which school was better for that mother’s daughter? THEY DO NOT.

Today, the RUSD conducts inter-district transfer appeals in closed session. They are afraid to let the public know what is really going on. During their July 16th meeting they turned down an inter-district transfer request. We will never know why because they are hiding behind their closed session policies. I would assume they told the parents, do not worry, we know what is best for your children.

The Rocklin School Board does not support charter schools. Their comments at the public hearing last month, regarding the Western Sierra Collegiate Academy’s second attempt for a charter, demonstrated that they think they are smarter than you when it comes to educating your children. Support for the charter comes from both Republican and Democratic leaders. Congressional candidates Tom McClintock and Charlie Brown support the charter. Assemblyman Ted Gaines supports the charter. It is a shame the Rocklin School Board and the Rocklin City Council opposes school choice. Not one member of the Rocklin City Council would stand up for school choice. Let’s not forget that Councilman Scott Yuill is an advisor to the Western Sierra Collegiate Academy. If you ever wanted to see an example of an empty suit, Mr. Yuill is it. How could anyone with any type of character volunteer to be an advisor to the charter but never speak up in public to show his support?

Note to the Western Sierra Collegiate Academy, you are losing credibility by keeping Mr. Yuill on your advisory committee. I would like to see the Western Sierra Collegiate Academy show some backbone and dump this resume builder.

Camille Maben, and Greg Daley have pulled their papers to run for re-election this November. I recommend you attend a school board meeting between before November. Ask these 2 board members if they know the names of your children. One must assume they would know their names because they will tell you they know what is best for them. During the 2006 election these 2 board members accepted money from the teacher’s union. Ask them if they support the union, or support your children. By their votes on the board, they march to the tune of the teacher’s union.

Mark Klang
Conservative Republican

Yesterday’s post about the draft report from the Education monopoly in Rocklin was an apt harbinger.

Steve Paul allowed legal counsel to rail on the WSCA charter proposal for an hour in the meeting last night. He then refused to allow the WSCA folks a rebuttal.

The entire Rocklin Unified School board voted 5-0 against the charter.

They hid behind the report as expected citing defeciencies in the WSCA charter.

State law requires a 60 page report, the WSCA’s report was 700 pages.

Look for some fireworks as those who want school choice are not going to take this affront laying down.

The listed reasons are:

A. The Charter School does not have a facility in which to operate.

(sounds like a Catch-22, but the school is not legally required to have a building – however, the educrats are saying you have to have a building to get a Charter.)

B. The proposed charter school presents an unsound educational program for the pupils to be enrolled in the charter school

(This is establishment jargon that relates to the red herring questions the board members asked when the charter was presented.)

This document I received is full of lawyer speak and is intended as a basis behind which the Rocklin School Board members can hide.

They mention an unviable budget in addition – I think we need to open the district’s budget up to the same hair-splitting scrutiny as in this report.

The level of detail in this 20 page report released by Kevin Brown’s staff should outrage anyone who has followed government waste. Districts in the area have missing money they don’t know the disposition of – but when someone wants to bring in educational choice, the audit is amazingly detailed.

I have read the financial issues brought up in this report and have found that the establishment officials are using their own set of assumptions designed to get the desired result.

This is absurd. The school board need to be held accountable for what they are about to do tonight.

E-mail vicepresident@placer-cra.org for a copy of the report.

Mark this one as unbelievable – informed sources in Rocklin have called and e-mailed this blogger.

Recently, Ted Gaines and others attended a School Board meeting over a Charter for a new High School in Rocklin. Gaines, Doolittle and Chalie Brown(!) (the Tin Soldier) all have publicly endorsed a Charter for the 7-12 Western Sierra Collegiate Academy.

The amazing part is that a new Charter School would bring jobs to Rocklin. It would not impact current facilities.

At the previous school board meeting, the questions asked by the school board were amazing – one about low achievers by Camille Maben (a liberal Democrat who works for the CA Dept of Education for a day job) and English as a Second Language Education by Greg Dailey.

It appears to this blogger that the school board was grasping for Red Herrings to deny a charter to the school. Rocklin is 99% white or something like it and has almost no need at all for ESL… low achieving students have a variety of special options (way more than average students do) and it is a standard teacher’s union attack against Charter Schools to bring that issue up.

In the past, the Rocklin School board has made life difficult for the Rocklin Academy – including forcing the Academy onto two separate campuses (to drive costs up?) and limiting access to Rocklin Academy by opposing expansion and mandating that 20% of the students come from outside of Rocklin.

The 20% mandate effectively limits the size of the academy because most kids want to go to school in their own neighborhood – and, Rocklin taxpayers paid for a facility their own children are precluded from using.

The dramatic irony here is my sources have told me that at this time the board is expected to vote on the Charter for WSCA as follows:

Democrat Camille Maben: Yes
Democrat Wendy Lang: Yes
Republican Greg Dailey: No
Republican Todd Lowell: No
Republican Steve Paul: No

The Placer GOP endorsed all three Republican members at one time due in no small part to their professed support of Charter Schools. As you see from the above, the Republicans are going to be on the wrong side of the issue!

I am in possession of their candidate questionnaires from 2006 and they paint a very different picture than what is about to occur on Wednesday.

Please come and make sure they see you when they vote – This meeting will start at 7:00 pm at the Rocklin School Board District Office (2615 Sierra Meadows Drive, Rocklin) on Wednesday Jan 16th.