Mailbag: Term limits at Newport-Mesa school board isn’t a new issue

Term limits at Newport-Mesa school board isn’t a new issue

Newport-Mesa Unified School District trustee Vicki Snell stated in a recent commentary about school board term limits that she had no issues exploring with the community the advantages and ramifications of term limits, but she did question the hasty timing and politically motivated reasoning behind this important issue.

This is not a new issue. As a board member, I am sure she is aware that I requested on Aug. 26, 2014, that the Newport-Mesa school board place on its agenda a discussion on term limits, candidate spending limits and a rescheduling of meetings to allow working parents to apply for a school board position.

I requested this agenda item with three objectives.

First, some board members have been on the board for more than 20 years, which does not generate new ideas and reflect the thinking of the younger generation.

Second, I requested spending limits for all candidates running for a school board position. Spending limits are necessary because some present board members have spent up to $45,000 in the past to get elected. This limits those who might vie for a school board seat.

My third objective was for Newport-Mesa to reschedule meetings to weekday evenings and an occasional Saturday so that a person might serve on the board if he or she had a job. This is currently the scheduling system used by some large school districts that have many school board members with outside employment.

If Snell or any school board member were really interested in discussing this issue, it could have been placed on the agenda at any time in the past two years.

Discussing term limits is not an election ploy. It is an ongoing issue that the NMUSD board has refused to discuss or place on a ballot, then let the voters decide.　

Martie O’Meara
Costa Mesa

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Those who benefit from white privilege must speak out

I got pulled over last week and I didn’t die. I was nervous and shaking, but not once did I fear I was going to be killed.

And I’m ever so aware now that this is due to my white privilege: never having to think that I could be killed, my only fear being that of receiving a ticket. But if you are black you don’t get the privilege of worrying about what this will do to your insurance prices. Instead you worry if this officer will beat you, shoot you and kill you.

And if it were a one-time thing we could write it off, but it’s not. It’s happened multiple times in multiple cities in our nation.

And despite a popular hashtag and larger attention to a movement, black lives still don’t seem to matter. It seems like every month, or maybe it’s every week, sometimes twice a week, a black person, too often a black child, is killed for senseless, unjust reasons.

This is unacceptable, and still we fail to stop it.　

Why? I hate to admit it, but it may be because too many of us are like me: We don’t fear that we’ll be killed by the police officer who pulls us over. The privilege we carry because we are not terrified for our personal safety blinds us to the injustice among us.

Maybe we feel defensive of our white privilege. Of police officers. Of the latent (or not so latent) racism we know exists in our world and our communities. Maybe even in ourselves.

We’re not bad. Police aren’t bad. But what’s happening now is bad.

And if you’re a person of faith, then you and I have an obligation. We have to do some soul searching and then we have to find our voice, because our black sisters and brothers cannot do this alone.

If you are white and benefit from white privilege, you must speak out. White privilege got us into this mess, white privilege needs to get us out of it. In Christianity we have something called confession. With it comes repentance. Innate in repentance is action. It’s time we confess this privilege, even if we never asked for it. Repent and act to change.

Black lives do matter.

The Rev. Sarah Halverson-Cano
Fairview Community Church
Costa Mesa