Carol Herrera has pulled papers for school board!

Carol Herrera went to the Registrar of Voters and took out nominations papers for another term on Monday. Hooray. She is one brave lady. Of course she still has to file in order to be in the race.

(Thanks to Mary Ermis for alerting me about Carol.)

If both Carol and Jim Gibson file on Friday or before, then that is it and Friday becomes the last day of the filing period. There will be no time beyond Friday for other candidates to file. The filing period will only be extended if one or both of the incumbents do not file.

We know from long and bitter experience that Jim Gibson will have someone waiting in the Registrar of Voters parking lot on Friday afternoon to pull and file papers in the last hour of the last day.

Then later Gibson, and the pawn he will manipulate into running against Carol, will announce that they plan to run together as a slate. They will claim that they are the only ones who care about teaching our students to read or lowering the drop out rate. They will falsely claim that the teachers removed the LindaMood Bell program thus depriving students of their only chance to learn to read. Then Gibson and his pawn will tell wild stories about evil school teachers and their evil deeds. All stories made up. All meant to rile up his credulous 'supporters'. Sadly the stories work all too well on the uniformed.

We must be ready to counter with facts at all times. Never take it for granted that Gibson's stories are so outrageous, so over the top that no one could possible believe them, because in the absence of accurate information folks tend to believe what they hear--true or not.

Now will we or will we find another VUSD community member willing to run to replace Gibson? Can we return our board to a time when all five members put our students first? Can we finally be shed of Gibson? All he seems to do on the board is play crass politic games for personal aggrandizement. He gives only lip service to caring about our kids; but his actions are always all about Gibson, not our kids. We ought to easily be able to oust him, but in this district nothing ever is easy.

Let's get ready to fight back against the lies and in favor of FACT based public education.