The stakes of the November 2024 Election for the Carlsbad Unified School Board are the highest they’ve ever been. With the recent resignation of Superintendent Churchill, the winners of the two contested Board seats will be key to selecting the new Superintendent.
Option 1: Electing Jen Belnap and Laura Siaosi will create a 3-2 majority of independent parents focused on improving academics, maintaining fiscal responsibility and restoring trust in public schools.
Option 2: Electing Alison Emery and Ejehan Turker will shift the Board to a 4-1 majority of union-funded Board members beholden to a highly politicized special interest group which advocates for eliminating standardized testing, draining fiscal reserves and pushing failed progressive political causes that have divided Carlsbad and led to an exodus of families from CUSD.
Community-Supported Candidates
Jen Belnap (www.belnap4cusd.com) and Laura Siaosi (www.laura4cusd.com) are the independent, parent and community-backed candidates. They are both PTA moms of current and former CUSD students who have been tireless volunteers in our Carlsbad schools and community for many years. They have the support of teachers, current Board Members and countless Carlsbad families.
Jen Belnap is running in Area 2 (Green), and Laura Siaosi is running in Area 3 (Red).
Special Interest-Funded Candidates
The union-funded candidates are Alison Emery (Area 2) and Ejehan Turker (Area 3).
Alison Emery - Area 2
Emery, a teacher and union representative in Solana Beach, tells her kids and parents on her school website that "I grew up in Encinitas." But now that she's running for office in Carlsbad, she tells Carlsbad voters: "I grew up in Carlsbad."
It's not hard to figure out which one is a lie. Being dishonest about something this fundamental is extremely problematic for someone who wants to hold public office, and for someone who serves in a position of trust with children.
UPDATE! (10/20/2024): It turns out Alison Emery's dishonesty doesn't end with her geographically-challenged childhood. On Friday, Emery was caught cheating on her Candidate Q&A for San Diego Union Tribune when the UT reporter determined that a significant portion of her answers were generated by Artificial Intelligence (as in ChatGPT).
Yes, the same AI tools that teachers like Emery prohibit their students from using at school to generate substantive answers to classroom assignments is the tool she used to generate substantive answers to one of her big assignments as a school board candidate.
Sadly, instead of admitting to what amounts to digital plagiarism, she tried to minimize it by claiming she only used it to shorten her answers. She then criticized the use of AI by saying it shouldn't take away and individual's voice. But that's exactly what it did for her, by generating answers on critical issues like parental notification policies and solving chronic absenteeism, as shown by the analysis tool used by the UT, which identifies each sentence that was AI-generated.
There are so many questions raised by a teacher choosing to use AI to generate substantive policy positions for school board. Not only does she know better than to do something she tells her students not to, but it additionally calls into question whether she is knowledgeable enough about the issues facing school districts to analyze the problem and come up with her own solution.
Will she use AI to generate her comments at Board Meetings and decide how to vote?
Ejehan Turker - Area 3
Ejehan Turker, an "ethics director" at a biotech company, is known primarily for her hostile and derogatory comments on social media, like claiming conservatives “don’t deserve the privilege of teaching” and making crass jokes that a local pastor probably likes looking at young girls. Her campaign website unironically says she brings “a positive attitude and a willingness to learn from diverse perspectives.”
Issue 1: Conflicts of Interest & Corruption
As with any school board candidate endorsed by a union special interest group, their campaigns are substantially funded by union money ($13,000 as of 10/14). They have also campaigned with and received donations and endorsements from the current CUSD Board President Kathy Rallings, who gets paid over $200,000/yr as a union negotiator for the California Teachers Association, the parent organization of CUTA, the local CTA chapter. Does anyone else think her $200K CTA salary might influence how she votes when the CUTA asks for a raise - which then increases their dues - which then pays Kathy's exorbitant salary?
Sadly, the corruption is far worse. The California Fair Political Practices Commission recently found that Kathy Rallings violated state conflict of interest codes three separate times by failing to disclose her CTA income.
As an "ethics officer," Ejehan Turker also claims a key platform of hers is “ethical leadership,” although she refused to answer whether Kathy Rallings should face discipline or censure for her FPPC violations.
But the real question is, who would Emery and Turker be more loyal to: the parents and students they are ethically bound to serve, or the union interests who funded their campaigns and love to claim that "we want these seats" for the union?
Issue 2: Student Safety and Anti-Police Views
Both Emery and Turker proudly support and are endorsed by a group called “Moms Demand Action,” which touts itself publicly as a “gun safety” group focused on the “safe storage” of guns. But once you peruse their website, you will find that they push for the removal of School Resource Officers (SROs) and support the “reimagining of police,” based on their false belief that the institution of policing is systemically racist toward minorities.
These aren't just fringe views on the website, however. Several of the campaign volunteers for Turker and Emery work at Moms Demand Action, and post about how “the institution of policing is itself racist,” the same Critical Race Theory extremist rhetoric that led to rampant crime and the decline of many cities in recent years.
Emery and Turker might claim to care about student safety, but the groups they support favor policies which will make our students less safe.
Issue 3: The Myth of Teachers Unions Wanting Smaller Class Sizes
CUTA printed flyers for voters which claimed both Emery and Turker would push for smaller class sizes, the #1 request of both parents, students and teachers in a district survey from March 2024. Great idea! Many high school classes have over 40 kids per class!
The problem is, smaller class sizes requires more teachers, which requires more money for more staff, not raises for existing staff. So when CUTA negotiated a new contract with CUSD in April 2024, they took an $8.4 million raise…and zero reduction in class sizes. In fact, CUSD admitted that they were cutting $5 million in salaries – approximately 37 teachers – to pay for the raise. How would that reduce class sizes? It wouldn’t, of course.
What about the teachers with large classes? The new contract now gives them a BONUS for teaching large classes.
What about the students in large classes? They received nothing.
Would Emery and Turker really vote to reduce class sizes, or would they follow the union directive to get the maximum raise possible, regardless of the impact on students? We can take an educated guess, but what we do know is that neither Belnap or Siaosi would feel bound by special interest groups to vote a certain way.
Voting for Balance
At the end of the day, union special interests have an agenda on almost every issue that comes before the Board, and those agendas have now expanded far beyond simple issues of compensation to politicized topics over removing standardized testing, policing and parental rights. The CTA even took a position to oppose Prop 36, the statewide ballot proposition to crack down on the California crime wave. How does that benefit teachers or students?
By electing Jen Belnap and Laura Siaosi, the Board will have a majority of trustees not beholden to any special interests and focused on pushing for academic excellence, student safety, and actual reductions to class sizes.
The School Board election is buried in the middle of your ballot, so don’t forget to make it all the way through, and vote for the change we desperately need in CUSD.