Well, you had to know that moving the School Board elections to November in this all Dem-party town (where the Perils of One-party Rule have long Become a Reality) that it wouldn't be long before the differing factions within the party would fight to infiltrate and politicize the School Board to gain control over all that money that comes with $300 million School Budgets and a whole bunch more that is sitting in reserves being hoarded - the bulk of which comes from your property taxes.
A mistake that has led to the inept political leaderships of the last two Board Presidents of Doug 'Mr. Hospitality' Schneider and Jerry 'ReferenDumb' Shi, aka Mr. Shi-shed - inexperienced and clueless and close-minded and dictatorial, respectively.
Both failing to move the school district forward and properly dealing with the most critical issues before them and being resident and taxpayer unfriendly to boot. You can see a list of their failures in previous posts.
Be that as it may, we are now faced with a continuation of this nonsense with the slates put together for this November 8th election.
First of all, you should not allow this political nonsense to go on and immediately Remove all the Incumbents when they come up for reelection.
So, you should not continue to Reward Failure or carry it forward by reelecting Shivi 'the Chameleon' Prasad-Madhukar, Kevin 'the Hand-Picked' County Guy' Hajduk and Shannon 'the Shi-bot' Peng. One who places her own political survival on the Board over the Best interests of all the Stakeholders, one who came out of nowhere with help from the County Super and one who does nothing but mimic Mr. Shi-shed.
You should Never Vote for Slates. Slates are put together for the benefit of those running and/or the forces behind them - it's Not for your benefit.
You should always Vote for People Not Slates.
Anyway, let's take a look at these slates now. There are 3 different slates and Christo running alone.
Column 1 consisting of Incumbents Kevin Hajduk, Shivi Prasad-Madhukar and Newbie Manasi Mathur. This slate is obviously being pushed by the County and the last thing you want to happen is for the County to take over the School Board. They've already taken over the town with their Malleable Marionette 'Mr. Shrink-flation' and you can see how well that's working out with all that ridiculous $pending, including raises for 'Mr. Shrink-flation' and the Edison Clowncil.
Giving this slate a majority will bring us one step closer to an appointed school board and do you really want 'Mr. Shrink-flation' via his puppet masters picking the school board members and a couple Clowncil members to sit on the Board of Estimate for Budget purposes? Most of this Clowncil probably don't even understand their own Muni-budget much less the complexities of a school budget.
So, don't be foolish and give this slate an opportunity to expedite a County takeover of the School Board.
Next we have Column 2 consisting of Joe Romano, Shannon Peng and Vishal Patel. Most of us know Joe Romano and for those who don't know him, you can see his name tops the lawn signs around town because he's being used to try and get the south-side vote for Mr. Shi-shed. This slate is being pushed by Mr. Shi-shed and the local Bhagia Dems in the fight with Column 1 to regain control of the School Board.
Giving this slate the majority again would be just plain stupid. You'd have to be a glutton for punishment. Mr. Shi-shed leadership was dictatorial and totally anti any opinion that wasn't his own - and that includes both the Public and Other Board Members. He wasted years with that Ridiculous $189 million School Board Referendum that was To Much a Financial Burden for To Little a Solution that would of doubled the School tax rate for the next 30 years. Here's a guy who claims to of saved the taxpayers millions but Never Saved the Taxpayers Anything.
So, don't be foolish and give this slate an opportunity again to waste anymore of your time or money.
Next we have Column 4 consisting of Yash Pandya, Minesh Patel and Nisha Banginwar. Can't really take this slate seriously.
I still remember Pandya's last run for the Board with this Big-ass truck going around town with his Mug all over it. Looks more like he's more of a showboat and attention getter and seems to be more interested in breaking into local politics than local education.
So, doesn't seem like you want to give this guy an opportunity to use the school board as a stepping stone to something else.
Finally we have Column 3 - Christo Makropoulos. We all pretty much know Christo and what he does around town. He goes around trying to fight and report corruption in this town where he see it. And to be honest, while he may sometimes be his own worst enemy at public meetings in getting his points across - he hasn't always been treated fairly either when he tries to do so.
We might not like how he goes about doing things or how he may express his concerns and beliefs but you can't deny he's very knowledgable and he's all about free speech. You don't have to agree with that he has to say but he certainly has a right to be heard.
Now, we all have to deal with the hand we're dealt with all these candidates and the forces behind them - so, in this Dem-party political cesspool over there on Mythomania Lane, I couldn't think of a better candidate in this pool of candidates to take on the Board of EdDems than Christo. Exactly the type of guy you'd want in the back room to counter the nonsense when they go into closed session.
If your goal is to put an end to the Dem-party political nonsense and put the Kids back ahead of the politics, then you have to make sure that none of these slates gets a majority and control of the School Board.
For me, that means the best chance to keep that from happening is Voting out the Incumbents by going with Christo, Romano and one from the Pandya ticket.
Here's what it looks like to me:
Anyhoo, but what do I know - I still can't figure out why this has been allowed to go on for so long in this town.
