10-19-05. The Acton Women’s Club first announced the forum in a letter only to Lillian Smith at the Country Journal. It invited the public to come to a School Board Election Candidates’ Forum to ask the candidates questions. What they didn’t say was that the Acton Women’s Club would select the questions which Committee would ask only of selected candidates.
At the form when members of the public requested to ask questions, the Acton Women’s Club refused the public’s request and threatened to forcibly remove any member of the public that continued to demand to ask questions of the candidates.
It went down hill from there. The Acton Women’s Club claimed that Geraldine Davis-Duzick and Charles Brink had failed to RSVP and since all questions were already directed to specific candidates in advance, no individual questions would be asked of them. They would only be allowed to respond to a few questions asked all of the candidates, severely limiting these two candidates’ views from being presented to the public.
Basically, Kathy Howald controlled the meeting through her close relationship with the Acton Women’s Club. For background, one must know that Kathy Howald is deeply committed to be the power behind her three-candidate slate. First, she formed her private club, the CEC (Community Education Committee), where she personally decided who the committee members were. This group was not an official part of the school district. This committee then morphed into the even more secret Recall Committee called "Vision and Planning For the Good of the Kids", which now has morphed into her own slate of private Political Action Committee (PAC) the "Citizens Committed to a Brighter Future for our Schools".
Howald’s slate of three candidates (Mark Distaso, Leona Sexton and Debra Jauregui-Rocha) are being marketed to the voters under the name of "Citizens Committed to a Brighter Future for our Schools". No return address is listed on the ads or mailer. The PAC spares no expense to run their special interest candidates. The first two ads in The Country Journal were for the ADUSD in Aqua Dulce (they don’t realize it’s name is AADUSD in Aqua Dulce). If this PAC does not even know the correct name of our district, can their candidate be trusted with the details to run your schools?
For further information, her advertisement asks the public to contact her and not the candidates. Kathy Howald clearly indicates that she intends to run the board through her candidates, as she is the only person allowed to speak for her candidates. Click here for a copy of the ad.
A number of the public left the meeting when they discovered that the questions were tailored to match the Kathy Howald PAC members’ agendas.
A member of the public wanted to ask Mark Distaso a question on his one-note strategic plan for the future and exactly how much it would cost and what programs he would cut to pay for it. Another would have liked to ask Debra Rocha how she would give her teachers a 6% raise, which they are demanding in their proposed contract, since the school’s budget is already at a deficit.
Since Kathy Howald controlled the meeting, no such telling questions were permitted and these questions remained unanswered. The meeting ended a half hour early, which could have certainly been used for questions from the public, if the Acton Women’s Club had wanted the public to participate.
Privately, at the end of the meeting, Ron Bird asked Mark Distaso who was funding his PAC and when they planned to file the required financial disclosures. Mark responded that he was not a member of Kathy’s PAC.
Please note that on the League of Women Voters website Mark proudly accepts Kathy’s "Citizens Committed to a Brighter Future for our Schools" endorsement. The operative question is: if elected will Mark continue to be a controlled as a Kathy's "Brighter" marionette?
This was a perfect closure for a public forum, that the public was prohibited from participating in.
We all urge Lillian Smith, on her personal forum on October 25th at the Agua Dulce Women’s Club, to concentrate on questions from the public asked directly by the public to the candidates.