APS - Who is running for School Board?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, how do we stop people like my Dem. obsessed DINK friends who campaign any and all things blue from pushing Christina down our throats? Anyone who is a parent should vote against her.

You can’t. DINKs and Boomers are the core of the local Democratic Party. Parents of school age children are a distinct minority in Arlington County, and the local party doesn’t see this as a school board seat, they see it as a stepping stone and as another place to put policy priorities in action. One of those things is making sure that schools don’t interfere with their AH policy. For example, They just spent the whole 20m amazon wad on bringing more high needs children into APS, and set aside not a cent for schools or resources to serve them. That’s of course because AH is about an industry of players, not poor kids. But it’s also why the party wants someone like her. The other candidates owe the party nothing. She’d owe the party everything, and do whatever they told her to.

Childless millennials and DINKs won't show up to the School Board caucus. (Or at least that's my hope.) I think there were fewer than 2,000 voters for the last Priddy/Goldstein caucus. More people showed up when they were joint County Board/School Board caucuses, but now that the County Board moved to a real primary election, the School Board is the only race on the caucus ballot. The key to defeating Christina (as someone said above) is making sure there aren't too many split votes. Ideally, you would only have 3 people running and everyone would vote the other two candidates as #1 and #2. Alternatively, people need to just leave Christina off their ballots completely.

Caucus rules here, but below (#9) is most relevant:

https://arlingtondemocrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/2019-SB-Caucus-Rules-1.pdf

9) ?Elimination and redistribution rounds within each stage ? . In the second and subsequent rounds for each stage, the candidate with the lowest number of votes in the previous round will be eliminated and ballots previously allocated to that candidate will be re-allocated to other candidates according to the next highest preference indicated on the ballot. Those ballots will be sorted, stacked and counted (as needed) in the manner described in this Rule. If a ballot does not indicate a next higher preference, it will be set aside for the remainder of the stage and will not be an active ballot in any further round in that stage. If after any round of counting, one candidate has a majority of active ballots, the preference vote counting for that stage will conclude. If no candidate has a majority, another round will commence (again eliminating the candidate with the fewest votes in the current round and re-allocating the ballots accordingly).

[Anonymous]

Try to remain calm and talk to your friend about why Cristina isn't a good fit for SB yet, assuming your DINK friends are liberals. She's not doing this because she is engaged in and informed about progressive politics. She's a tool of the plutocracy that is ACDC.

Have them read up on Teach for America and the charter school movement, and ask if they really think that's what's best for Arlington's kids.

Yes, Cristina is saying they she doesn't support charter schools in Arlington, but if they're so great, why not? And if they're not great, why is she hiding her involvement with them? They're half or more of her career. What does she know about education?

[Anonymous]

I was personally unsure about Cristina's campaign because of some of the things that have already been mentioned. I did email the campaign to see if I could meet with her personally and we had coffee together. I would encourage you all to at a minimum make your consideration on who she is, what you think her capability and impact will be, and from hearing her personally. You are free to vote for whomever you choose, but again I would encourage you to at least hear what she's got to say. She's got one of my votes and I can't wait to learn about where my second vote will go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish Maura would run again. Any chance of that?

No, no and no. I even asked her myself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was personally unsure about Cristina's campaign because of some of the things that have already been mentioned. I did email the campaign to see if I could meet with her personally and we had coffee together. I would encourage you all to at a minimum make your consideration on who she is, what you think her capability and impact will be, and from hearing her personally. You are free to vote for whomever you choose, but again I would encourage you to at least hear what she's got to say. She's got one of my votes and I can't wait to learn about where my second vote will go.

Please, likely story. Are you that lady who was outed for working for her camping on AEM?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Try to remain calm and talk to your friend about why Cristina isn't a good fit for SB yet, assuming your DINK friends are liberals. She's not doing this because she is engaged in and informed about progressive politics. She's a tool of the plutocracy that is ACDC.

Have them read up on Teach for America and the charter school movement, and ask if they really think that's what's best for Arlington's kids.

Yes, Cristina is saying they she doesn't support charter schools in Arlington, but if they're so great, why not? And if they're not great, why is she hiding her involvement with them? They're half or more of her career. What does she know about education?

I'm no Cristina supporter but the charter school argument is a bad one for her opponents. TFA as an organization is pro-charter, but tons of the teachers themselves aren't. They were 21-year olds who signed up for a feel-good, give-back teaching program before they graduated college. They wanted to help inner city kids, etc. It's a big leap to say all those people are pro-charter. Cristina has said she doesn't support charters in Arlington. What else do you need on this issue? Weak arguments weaken stronger ones. Put this one aside.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
When I vote for a school board member, I think about what would happen if I have a problem and need to go to office hours. Who is going to listen, care about the problem and want to help?

Based on what I've seen, Symone is NOT this person. She would probably just call me a racist or privileged.

+1 I'd never expect to get help from her for my affluent white kid.

I would feel fine asking her for help with my affluent white kids, assuming I wasn't bringing her an affluent white kid problem. I wouldn't go to her to complain about cutbacks to the lacrosse program, but trouble getting support for a kid with mental health issues? I think she'd be all over that.

I don't think she suffers fools (or racists) gladly, but I think she can see beyond her own privileges to help those without (as opposed to Twin Fancier NVD). No, she's not always tactful about calling people out on their BS, but she reminds me of the SNL bit with Tina Fey and Amy Poehler: Bitches get things done.

I shall now wait for people to complain that if you can't get along with others, you can't get anything done. I agree, but I don't think marginalized people are required to be endlessly patient with whiners (eg people in the school year start debate who want breaks to allow them to go on nice vacations at bargain prices)

I think my question for her would be, whose voices should be heard in a discussion of what to do with a school in a historically black neighborhood, white parents of school-aged kids who live in that neighborhood, or the older long-term black residents of that neighborhood and other black residents of Arlington who won't be sending kids there?

Or to freshen that question up for 2019, whose voices should be heard in a discussion of what to do with an immersion school in a historically Hispanic neighborhood that is underenrolled and where there is no room or budget to build another elementary school and where other parts of the county are overcrowded so moving schools is the only option go with me here--parents of kids who attend that school now, or other residents of Arlington who won't be sending kids there but say they speak for minorities?

Or, whose voices should be heard when the SB establishes boundaries that exacerbate rather than alleviate concentrations of poverty (mostly people of color) in the western part of the county.

[Anonymous]

So how is Symone divisive? I worked with her on school poverty concentration issues and she get it - concentrated poverty in schools is bad for everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So how is Symone divisive? I worked with her on school poverty concentration issues and she get it - concentrated poverty in schools is bad for everyone.

Could you start a separate thread on that work? Because as near as I can tell, that work didn’t see the light of day.

[Anonymous]

I'm voting for Cristina. The detachment in this forum is humerous. If some of you did your research you would see that she actually has 10 years experience in education, many more years in education than most of the other candidates (combined?). Besides Sandy, she would be the only other person (on the board or as a candidate) with classroom experience. I'm looking forward to change on the school board. They have been failing for years with the same o same o approach.

[Anonymous]

Charter schools are few and far between in Virginia. Get over yourselves and your implicit bias. It's showing, and from the sounds of it, not one person on this thread has commented on a personal interaction with her.... so let's hear the facts and base a decision off of that instead of the hearsay.

[Anonymous]

Looks like her campaign found us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm voting for Cristina. The detachment in this forum is humerous. If some of you did your research you would see that she actually has 10 years experience in education, many more years in education than most of the other candidates (combined?). Besides Sandy, she would be the only other person (on the board or as a candidate) with classroom experience. I'm looking forward to change on the school board. They have been failing for years with the same o same o approach.

Is she actually in her 20s or is that just hearsay? What's the timeline?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm voting for Cristina. The detachment in this forum is humerous. If some of you did your research you would see that she actually has 10 years experience in education, many more years in education than most of the other candidates (combined?). Besides Sandy, she would be the only other person (on the board or as a candidate) with classroom experience. I'm looking forward to change on the school board. They have been failing for years with the same o same o approach.

Is she actually in her 20s or is that just hearsay? What's the timeline?

To expand on this, how does this add up to 10 years? https://www.linkedin.com/in/cristina-diaz-torres-87a52548/

[Anonymous]

Sounds like cristinas campaign found this thread!