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School board wraps up musical chairs
by Robb Fulcher
The best thing about musical chairs is that there are lots of winners, and the worst thing is that the one and only loser stands out a bit. With four Hermosans vying for three open seats on the city school board, voters will leave only one of the candidates without a place to sit when the campaign music stops Nov. 6.
The candidates have expressed broad agreement on issues facing the school district, and tend to stress their individual qualifications for office. However, they also tend to describe their opponents as people who also carry pretty good qualifications, themselves. In alphabetical order, they are:
- Linda Beck, who manages state-mandated testing as it concerns bilingual education for Los Angeles Elementary School. She previously taught kindergarten through third-grade in the Los Angeles Unified School District for about a decade, holds a master’s and doctor’s degree in educational administration from UCLA, and trains other teachers at Pacific Oaks College. She has worked as teacher and lecturer at South Bay Adult School, volunteers in her kids’ Hermosa classrooms once a week, and manages the Scrip fund-raising program for View School. She has three kids attending Hermosa schools.
- Greg Breen, who serves as senior tax director for Candle Corp., an El Segundo mainframe software company. He is a financial donor to the Hermosa Beach Education Foundation and Friends of the Hermosa Library. He was graduated from Claremont McKenna College and UCLA Law School and is a part-time faculty member for master’s program at Golden Gate University, and a member of the Board of Visitors for Loyola Law School. He has two kids attending Hermosa schools.
- Jim Hausle, who oversees 200 people as a program manager at Raytheon Corp. in El Segundo. He serves as a volunteer in the classrooms and at PTO events, chaperones dances and activities such as the Nature Bowl academic quiz, coaches youth baseball, basketball and soccer, and was previously active in YMCA, Indian Guides and Princesses, and Trailblazers. He has three kids attending Hermosa schools, and has been attending the school board meetings regularly for the past five years.
- Lance Widman, a professor at El Camino College for 30 years who has served on the college’s budget committee for the past decade and represents faculty on the health benefits committee. He served on the Hermosa city council from 1974 to 1982, is executive director of the South Bay Center for Dispute Resolution, a member of the Hermosa Beach Historical Society and Sister City Association, and volunteers for 1736 Family Crisis Center. He has one child in the school district and one who was graduated from it.
Beck, Breen and Widman have been endorsed by the 80-member Hermosa Beach Educators Association, which includes teachers, aides, and clerical and maintenance workers.
All four candidates have expressed cautious support for construction of a gym at Hermosa Valley School, and agree that City Hall should help secure funding if a gym is built. They also agree that the need for a gym should be weighed against anticipated needs for new classrooms and other facilities as the student population continues to grow. All four candidates want to at least consider accepting funding from the Beach Cities Health District, which wants to build the gym and then hold some of its classes and meetings there after school hours.
All four candidates agree that the old North School site, which is owned by the district and leased by the private Sea Sprites preschool, cannot be refurbished as is for district classroom space. All four candidates have said the school district should continue to retain ownership of the site, possibly to erect a brand new school there in the future. ER