Patty Anderson--phony claims

The North County Times announced their endorsements for Vista Unified School Board--Stephen Guffanti, Patti Anderson and Dr. Steve Lilly in an article found here:

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/10/02/opinion/editorials/zb2bd4a5d70d95625882574d30065cb15.txt#blogcomments

Dr. Lilly is a good choice but Patty Anderson and especially Stephen Guffanti would just continue to add emotionalism to the board meetings and drag their feet on finishing the third high school.

Worse is the campaign of deception Guffanti's group is running about the failure of Patty to be endorsed.

They incorrectly claim the following:
FALSE CLAIM(1) Patty should have been automatically endorsed because she is a member of the CTA regardless of her views on public education or her other qualifications. (Ridiculous on its face. This claim/charge does not pass the smell test.)
FALSE CLAIM(2) Since she was not endorsed, there had to be a conspiracy. It had nothing to do with her poor interview or her lack of knowledge about and/or her support of public education.
FALSE CLAIM(3) Senior CTA leadership coached her to help her answer the questions--implying that senior CTA leadership wanted her as a candidate. (Both are blatantly false. There are no coaching sessions for anyone. CTA staff has other business to attend to. They do not bother themselves with local endorsement processes)
FALSE CLAIM(4)VTA leadership was responsible for not endorsing Patty. (not true, the president of the VTA was not on the VTA-PAC committee and I do not believe the vice president was either. VTA-PAC is a separate group of people. They only make recommendations that are presented to both the Executive Board and the Representative Assembly for approval. The Representative Assembly meeting can be attended by anyone and anyone can ask questions. It is very public, fair and democratic.)
FALSE CLAIM(5) This blog is a product of the VTA. (Not true, I am retired. I have contacts at the VTA from my years as a teacher. I worked hard on four bond issues trying to get a new high school built and darn it I will continue that effort even if my children have long ago graduated. Guffanti's group has delayed and stalled the construction of our third high school for six years. Now they want to control the board and kill the new high school. I will do all I can to stop them including writing on this blog.)

Here is the Guffanti's anti-education group blog comments following the article above:

CTA Sister[-] wrote on Oct 4, 2008 2:20 PM:Yes, the failure of the VTA leadership to endorse one of their own is very telling! Those that fail to work with their brothers and sisters in the CTA are also known to eat their young. All teachers need to be very careful when dealing with their VTA leadership. We are watching this campaign very closely. Yes, Patty Anderson was "coached" by Senior CTA leaders before her interview at VTA. But, VTA leadership has their own "hidden agenda". If they'd endorsed Anderson they would have nothing to fear from her, now would they!

Here is a response to the numerous deceptions in that blog comment. The response was sent to the blog at 10:00pm on October 3, 2008. I post it here as the blog editor often does not allow responses to inaccurate Guffanti Group comments to be posted on the blog. Can you say biased?

To CTA Sister--You are a phony. You know nothing about the endorsement process, the CTA or the VTA.

Patty called the CTA first (San Marcos office?) and asked them to endorse her. CTA is the state organization. The CTA personnel she contacted told her that only the Local endorses. It was suggested that she go through the Local endorsement process. She did, but she was not picked by the VTA-PAC interview committee as one of the top three candidates.

Both the VTA Executive Board and the Representative Assembly scrutinized the VTA-PACs choices and reasons for those choices and came to the same conclusion as the VTA-PAC interview team.

Being a union member does not give a free pass to an endorsement. Endorsements are given based on experience and stance on pro public education issues. The
VTA endorsement process is remarkably fair, democratic, and not biased against any candidate.