School Board Election Extravaganza!

I feel like this is going to be my least popular post. Please clap. Please read.

Councilor Mitch Green threatened a public institution and won! The Portland Mercury and the DSA gloated! Angelita’s heart grew three sizes that day! These shitheads don’t care about education, so that means it’s time for…

Recalibrate the School Boards with Max Steele

Wait! Don’t go! I’ll put up a cheat sheet after this post goes live. I promise. School boards matter.

Portland Public Schools (PPS)

Our public schools are in a tight spot.

• PPS is facing a $40 million budget deficit. (You can see Superintendent Kimberlee Armstrong address that here.

• The proposed budget looks to “reduce” 242 positions at the same time that the board voted to approve a new higher pay range for senior administrators.¹

• The upcoming School Bond is a mess, and only getting messier.

• Enrollment is declining while costs are going up.

• The expensive anti-racist, POC-centered, equity programming isn’t working.

• In fact, it seems like the more we spend, the worse we do on every metric, for all students.

All I can hear is the sound of a buzzing chainsaw while looking at this image.

Dr. Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown, says Oregon has prioritized increasing spending, salaries and staff, but has not tracked the outcomes of such decisions. “When we spend this money and we don’t get the results, we need to change the course,” she says.

So… maybe when you hear a Portland parent insult “woke crap” you can give them a little grace. They probably aren’t hinting that they hate black or trans people. PPS has been leaning into the DEI/anti-racist/anti-colonialist/progressive/reimagine schools thing for a while now and it is transparently shittier than the previous approach, especially for the kids it was supposed to help.

Oh, and “Teaching Palestine” is back in the news! Now that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the Working Families Party (WFP), and the Portland Association of Teachers (PAT) are running a combined slate of candidates in Portland (Beaverton, we’ll get to you) it’s finally time to teach these kids who their real enemy is. “Israel.”²

Henry Ford and Pat Buchanan would love this shit. If you want to peak at the curriculum and other ideas this group promotes, you can head to their link tree. I’m going to do a much deeper dive on this soon, but for now content yourself with the knowledge that anyone pushing this is either too stupid or bigoted to teach children.

This shit has no place in public schools, and if you let these losers win their way into even more school board positions it will slowly become the standard position for our schools. After that happens? Trust that the Trump administration is waiting for a public school system to adopt Communist/Islamist indoctrination as standard curriculum. You think PPS has money trouble now?³

Okay, enough kvetching. Who am I endorsing?

PPS Candidates

Voter pamphlet for Multnomah County here.

This race was poorly covered vs previous years. Fewer events and opportunities to learn anything about these candidates. I mostly have to go off their stated values and endorsements. Sorry to the reader who cautioned me against “guilt by association.” I agree but what have they given me to work with? Where were the debates and town halls? It’s “just” a school board and voters are busy (as the students say) “crashing out” over Trump.

Green and Red flags:

✅=Stand for Children, Julia Brim-Edwards, financial responsibility, moving past buzzwords, etc

🚩= PAT, WFP, Michelle DePass/Eddie Wang⁴, DSA or its members, Khan Pham, “fully funded schools”⁵

Zone 1

• Christy Splitt (interim incumbent) - Splitt is my favorite candidate I wouldn’t vote for. She’s got Stand for Children, Brim-Edwards, and a few others backing her ✅✅✅ but also DePass, Wang, the whole DSA, WFP, PAT, and so many local assholes. (🚩🚩🚩🚩). Add her support for the bond and all of the “more money for schools” language 🚩 and this is a case of way too many negatives weighing down a good candidate. I need to know I’m not endorsing a rubber stamp for bad actors and I can’t tell that from Splitt. In fact, I get the opposite impression. She’s one of PAT’s “Candidates for Change” and I’m worried the only change we will see is further decline.

• Ken Cavagnolo - bit of a wild card. I don’t love the “populist” branding but I enjoy the responsibility talk, “students first,” and results-oriented goals. No endorsements or funding. He’s going the Jon Walker route and I think it’s an okay comparison.

• Anton Leof - not a contender.

My (cautious/controversial) Zone 1 Pick: Ken Cavagnolo

Mostly as a protest pick and because I want to give a new approach a chance. I need resistance to the DSA’s plans. I think Cavagnolo can at least provide that. Is he likely to win? No, but I’ll get to that at the end of the piece.

Zone 4

• Herman Greene (incumbent) - Greene is an easy choice. He’s already doing the job, and he isn’t in the DePass/Wang alliance. He’s the best board member who isn’t leaving. His endorsements are actually good. ✅✅✅ He supports the bond 🚩but no one is perfect.

• Rashelle Chase-Miller - Horrible endorsements 🚩🚩🚩🚩, progressive bumper-sticker-speak, I mentioned previously that historically she hasn’t been down with antisemitism ✅ and I think she seems very passionate about the work but that’s not enough for me. There is a much better option in this race and he’s already doing the job. She’s also very much in PAT’s pocket.⁶

My (enthusiastic) Zone 4 Pick: Herman Greene

He knows the job and he will at least try to wrestle us back toward a sustainable PPS. This article (also in the footnotes) is a good peak at why I like Greene for this job.

Zone 5

• Jorge Sanchez Bautista - 18 years old. 🚩 DSA candidate. 🚩 We already have a student representative. (am I being mean?) I mean, really? His endorsement list is a nightmare. 🚩🚩🚩🚩⁷ This is a gimmick and I’ve covered him enough already. Stop it Portland.

• Virginia La Forte - Julia Brim-Edwards ✅ and Sharon Meieran ✅?!⁸ Sure she’s got Wang 🚩 backing her but her pitch is good. She’s got teachers, students, other board members. This is easy mode Zone 5! Congrats.

My (regular energy) Zone 5 Pick: Virginia La Forte

She’s qualified and I think she’ll do well. This is how undramatic these decisions should be.

Zone 6

• Rob Galanakis - Mitch Green 🚩🚩⁹, Eddie Wang 🚩, Sam Balto, 🚩 and messaging I can’t stand.¹⁰ Rob loved the 2023 Teacher’s Strike. He was a bike corker for them. He’s a PAT puppet without the endorsement. It’s a hell no.

• Stephanie Engelsman - I really want to like Stephanie Engelsman, but I just can’t get past PAT 🚩 and that picture with Tiffany Koyama Lane 🚩🚩. She’s also got WFP, APANO, all the Same 60 People™ groups 🚩🚩🚩 up against Brim-Edwards, Olivia Clark, and a ton of sane and decent parents ✅✅✅. She did define what she means by “equity” in The Oregonian interview. Specific examples even. Bonus points! ✅

• Simone Crowe - Sierra Club 🚩¹¹, praises “critical race theory” and other controversial/discredited nonsense that succeeded in making Portlanders more racist and getting hucksters paid. 🚩🚩 Environmental activism and social justice are her main forte when we need academic focus and a financial mind. I also wouldn’t be surprised if Crowe ended up being the worst on antisemitism concerns. That’s just a gut feeling.

• Joseph Mains - not a contender.

My (stumped) Zone 6 Pick: Write someone in?

I’m sorry Jonathan and everyone else in Zone 6. I’ve spoken to parents. Some of them really like Engelsman. She has the backing of an awful lot of good people along with the bad. Others really don’t like her. She’s going to win, but I can’t get past my feeling that her split loyalties are going to be a problem. She’s the best of a bad bunch. Zone 6 is the PPS equivalent of District 3, which isn’t shocking considering it falls within District 3. Is it my least favorite part of Portland? Yes. What is wrong with you guys?!¹²

If you want to vote for Engelsman instead of writing in, for example, Portland Stack’s Devin Boone against her will… go for it. I think there are worse outcomes.

Beaverton School District

The DSA is making a run for Beaverton Schools through the Teacher’s Union and the Working Families Party. The “Teaching Palestine” curriculum will be a big early fight.

I don’t live in Beaverton and I don’t pretend to be as up on the political situation but I do have some insiders to help me navigate it.

Working Families Party is backing Karin Stark (Zone 1), Eric McGuire (Zone 2), and Syed Qasim (Zone 5). The DSA has openly endorsed Stark because she’s a card carrying member. The Beaverton Education Association is backing all the same candidates along with Sunita Garg.

There was talk of backing Garg more vocally but she proved idealogically impure… Not good enough to be part of the regime change, and my sources tell me that is the plan. War on the Superintendent! Stop arming Israel!¹³ Ignore those Jewish kids who are being harassed and maybe they’ll drop out!

So we’re left with the Stand for Children endorsements, which are decent:

• Dr. Vân Truong - Zone 1

• Dr. Karen Pérez-Da Silva - Zone 2 (incumbent)

• Sunita Garg - Zone 4 (incumbent)

• Erin Hatch - Zone 5

Have I combed through every aspect of these women’s careers and social media profiles. No, I skimmed. I have Beaverton contacts who back them, a decently trusted org who backs them, and I found nothing shocking. This is pretty easy Beaverton. Don’t fuck this up.

Other District Picks

Here are a few other races I’ve been following.

David Douglas, Position 3

My pick: Deian Salazar - I know Deian. I met him on the campaign trail in his run for City Council, and when he exited the race to throw support behind Terrence Hayes, I was impressed. He has plenty of annoying endorsements (Latino, APANO, etc)¹⁴ but also plenty of impressive ones (Sharon Meieran!). He’s involved in the broader political picture. He pops up at events, he gives public comment at the county and during budget listening sessions. He’s a fierce defender of SUN Schools. The guy shows up, and he’s broadly popular in liberal and progressive spaces. I like that he might be a bridge builder in winning back some of these orgs that I don’t trust anymore.

His main opponent is Sara Ruth Epstein. She’s the Working Families Party pick and even without that negative, I think Deian edges her out.

Multnomah Education Service District, Position 2

Now this one’s wild. Why do I care about this position? Why would you?

Because Erica Fuller is running, that’s why. She didn’t make it into the voter pamphlet, but she’s on the ballot (as far as I know.) Fuller is a card carrying DSA member and (full disclosure) connected to a number of people who spent a troublesome amount of time trying to fuck up my life. She was part of the 2017 Women’s March takeover.¹⁵ She has been at every one of these shitty rallies with the DSA lately. This is an anti-endorsement. Pick anyone else. Susie Jones seems perfectly qualified.

If you want to meet Erica and pick her brain on policy, you could probably go to the DSA Afrosocialist Education Committee’s book club group reading session for Wretched of the Earth. (no YTs)¹⁶

Radical communists belong in group reading sessions and on TikTok, not local government. Erica was a promising young activist back when I met her 1 million years ago. Now she’s the same stale anticapitalist, she/they, America is the greatest terrorist organization in the world, blah blah blah. NEXT.

The Risk of Oversimplifying

A reader was dissatisfied with my claim that you can probably just knee-jerk vote against the Working Families Party and I accept that criticism. Allow me to offer you a more positive rule of thumb:

You could probably also vote for the Stand for Children endorsement list. It’s the same list as the Oregonian’s for PPS. I know they endorse a few of the same candidates as the Working Families Party, but not the worst candidates. We’re playing fast and loose for the lazy voter, here. This is for your friends who can’t be bothered to do any reading but don’t want to vote for nutcases or incompetents.

I would consider Stand for Children’s green flag over WFP’s red flag if I had to. In both cases for Portland (Splitt and Engelsman), you could do worse.

I’ll drop a cheat sheet in a few days for those who want to send it around. I’ll also leave this piece as is - even if the DSA starts rolling out more endorsements. The cheat sheet will be live-updated.

I didn’t get to the School Bond because the piece is already too long. I’ll put something together ASAP. Maybe I’ll ask Devin to collab if she doesn’t disavow me over the write-in campaign idea.

1. Wonderful idea guys.

2. The enemy of love, life, and freedom. The greatest evil that has ever crawled the earth. If you dig deep enough, it’s always them.

3. PPS doesn’t have funding issues, it has money management (and all forms of management) issues.

4. DePass and Wang represent (to me) the status quo and credulous support of the Superintendent. I don’t believe their voting record or rhetoric shows a way out of our current predicament.

5. See #3. They are funded but we need accountability and oversight.

6. From The Oregonian endorsements:

“But as a parent leader who prominently embraced the teachers union’s narrative of the strike despite public information to the contrary and whose campaign has received more than $10,000 from the teachers union, she doesn’t project the independence necessary for a board member whose constituency is students.”

7. The deck is stacked with antisemites, morons, and useless bureaucrats. Councilor Olivia Clark what are you doing there?! Who in your office do I need to have a sit down with?

8. Imagine I am hitting Andy Chandler’s hype button so hard right now.

9. 🚩x2 because of how much this dude loves Mitch Green.

10. From the Multnomah County Voter Pamphlet:

“The ultimate cause of our failing schools is the same as homelessness, the climate crisis, and faltering democracy: a decades-long ideological assault on civic society, without an effective response. The challenges we face are existential.”

What?! The “right wing” broke our schools? In Portland? If he means the rising tide of bullshit Marxist theory slowly eating away at the health of our institutions… maybe he’d have a point.

11. Me and Sierra Club have beef.

12. I actually know what’s wrong with you and we’ll talk about it someday soon.

13. No clue how many missiles Beaverton Public Schools sends to Israel but one is probably too many.

14. I look forward to the day we can recapture those groups and be proud of the endorsements.

15. The one where they lost all of the money. Fuller didn’t steal it, she just trusted the woman who did. To her credit, she tried pretty hard to get it back.

16. Whiteys: You’ll be happy to learn that part of the decolonization process you are to be subjected to would involve encouraging the drug addicted homeless population (lumpenproletariat) of your city into orgies of violence against you. (the oppressor) I can never stress enough how often these people justify and fantasize about mass killings.

“What did y’all think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays? losers.”