Orange Trustee Clarifies Funding

For two weeks, I have read letters to the editor attacking my views. Certainly people are entitled to disagree with my insistence that public schools should be used to promote quality education rather than to promote social welfare clinics. However, I must respond to the rather amusing letter from Bill Lakin (May 5). Lakin claims that Howard Ahmanson, state Sen. Rob Hurtt and the Educational Alliance “funded [my] campaign.”

The truth is that Educational Alliance donated $500 to my campaign one month after I was already reelected to the board of trustees last November. If a donation of $500 “after the fact” constitutes financing a campaign, then just how would Lakin portray the more than $30,000 spent by the unions in Orange Unified to support the opponents of fellow trustee Maureen Aschoff and me?

Most people in Orange County are probably unaware of the tens of thousands of dollars the unions pump into individual school board races throughout the county, which overwhelms any contributions made by conservative groups like the Educational Alliance. In fact, most of your school board members in conservative Orange County have been “financed” by the public employee unions.

I would encourage voters who plan to cast ballots for local school board races this November to find out which candidates have accepted contributions from the unions and are therefore beholden to their personal political agendas.

BILL LEWIS

Orange