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Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Emery School Board Member Cruz Vargas: An Authoritarian Without Authority

Last Authoritarian Holdout on School Board,
Cruz Vargas Warns that 
President Barbara Inch 
"Must Be Kept Away From the Children"


News Analysis/Opinion
Normally a body of relative comity, the Emery Unified School Board has lately devolved into a place of ugly ad hominem Trumpist vitriol, member Cruz Vargas leading the charge.  His political will thwarted by his colleagues, the City Council and the people of Emeryville, former Board President Vargas used his place at the dais to warn parents and citizens that their newly selected president, Barbara Inch, must be "kept away from the children".
It seems a nadir for Emeryville's last authoritarian political soap box orator, the ostracized and dispossessed board member who sanctimoniously and without a sense of irony, rejects the title 'politician'.   He's here not to play politics he says, rather he's here for the children.

Board member Vargas has become a curiosity.  Among the authoritarian right wing in Emeryville, formerly a syndicate establishment that for decades ran this town, he's the only one of them left standing from what was the entire elected political class.  But following a righteous two year democratic purge at the hands of Emeryville voters, there's now a near total loss of authority for Emeryville's right wing.  It's been a slow motion train wreak that leaves only the impolitic and obstinate Emery School Board member Cruz Vargas standing athwart the rubble of the once mighty right wing power elite.

Mr Vargas has faced a recriminatory and humiliating onslaught from all comers as of late.  But it hasn't been without merit.  This year he was stripped of his Board presidency by a unanimous vote of his colleagues in an epic take down over unnamed behind the scenes transgressions, called out publicly for his lies by the City Council and then in November, Emeryville's voters denied Cruz a sympathetic Board majority he would have needed to build an army of followers to beat back the progressive tide.  Rather than graciously giving way to the will of the voters, an embittered Cruz Vargas is instead howling against the democratic wave that swept the last of his kind away, now telling anyone who will listen that Emery's new School Board president and architect of his demise (at least as he sees it), must be stopped.  It's for the sake of the children he says.  Literally....Board member Vargas announced at the December 12th Board meeting when the new officers were being selected by the Board, positions taken by all members except for him, his new job on the Board is to keep the chosen School Board president, Barbara Inch, away from children.  "For two years I've fought to ensure that we keep politics and politicians away from our children.  Barbara Inch has shown where politics trumps progress." he said.

Abject Politics
It's been two years filled with political drama with Cruz Vargas on the School Board, his authoritarian philosophy of education serving as his guide.  An early supporter of and apologist for former Superintendent John Rubio, Cruz moved to protect the alpha-male schools chief as he drove an authoritarian campaign of disruption leading to the worst teacher retention problem in the Bay Area.  Nine departing teachers inveighed against the Superintendent's bullying and racist tactics at a School Board meeting prompting member Vargas to lead a drive to scrub their outgoing speeches from the official record in retaliation.  Dissenting School Board member Inch was the sole vote to allow the teacher's comments to be part of the record as reflected in the official minutes.
Later, as Board President, Mr Vargas led a drive to stop the Board from endorsing Measure C, Emeryville's $50 million affordable housing bond because the School Board has no interest in helping families move to the District, he said.  Dissenting Board member Inch cast a dissenting vote stating that Emery Unified School District in fact does have interest in having families with children afford to live here. Seventy two percent of Emeryville voters agreed with Ms Inch.
Most prominent over the years was Cruz's failed bid to get the taxpayers to pay for a full time sworn police officer to patrol the school campus; the infamous Emery School Resource Officer (SRO) debacle.  After the idea was forcefully shot down by the entire City Council as a sociopathic exercise in service of the right wing's greater 'school to prison pipeline' syllabus, President Vargas swore a quixotic oath to go around the Council.  Using an emotional pleas to parents, Cruz engaged in a pious go it alone political gambit that came up empty handed.  Countering President Vargas, Mayor John Bauters made a legendary speech calling for evidence-based policy on the SRO issue and to be cautious of politicians using demagoguery in its service.

The downward spiral of the delusional former Board President Vargas is quite a spectacle to behold and his displays of abject hypocrisy would make for some pretty entertaining viewing were it not for the disturbing complete unmooring from reality.  In his failed attempt to derail the vote to make Barbara Inch Board President, she the most popular candidate ever elected to the Emery School Board, Cruz Vargas told the audience at the December meeting (again lacking a sense of irony), "Not every Board member should be president."  The guileless former president Vargas added, "It requires a special level of leadership, presence, demeanor, social skills and composure."   Those being words his Board colleagues believe....and acted upon, when they stripped him of his Board presidency.


EUSD December 12 2018 FULL Board Meeting from Emery Unified School District on Vimeo.
Video Legend:
21:12 - 21:50 Cruz tells his Board colleagues they must protect the children from Barbara Inch.

23 comments:

  1. OMG this is so sick. You can't make accusations like this against what should be your your partners on the school board. What is he thinking? For the children?!? If anybody should be kept away from children its Cruz Vargas! Wheres he get off with this? This is the last thing Emery schools need.

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  2. Agree with the first commenter, this is the last thing we need. Vargas needs to step aside and let us move on without all his drama. His side lost and he needs to get a grip. Childish name calling won't do. For the children. Yeah right. They're supposed to be the adults.

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  3. I noticed you did a positive story on the mayor. I wish you could do a positive story on Emery schools. There's always something holding Emery back from doing the best it can. This is self inflicted. We really need to move on past this bickering pettiness. No more talk of doing it for the children. No more talk. Anybody that has to say it isn't doing it.

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    1. We'd do a positive story on School Board member Vargas but he won't let us!

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  4. Good to see you’re finally using the O word in this little bullshit opinion blog of yours. Now you need to get over yourself. Nice how you’ve hung up Cruz over the same stuff you praise in your new idol Bauters. Cruz is the last man alright. The last man making any sense. Why don’t you stick to writing about how great Bauters is and leave the real news to the adults. How many readers you have now? 5? F’n pathetic.

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    1. Nice to hear from you again Rob! It looks like there's still some distress over there on your side in the aftermath of all the electoral defeats you've been handed. But it's good to see it hasn't changed your plucky and indefatigable spirit.

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  7. Note to Readers:
    The commenter above, David Jackson, made several comments, again referring to the Emery School District, in the December 16th story on John Bauters. Those comments may have been inadvertently placed there, intended for this story on Cruz Vargas.

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  20. I just deleted several of my most recent pisse. I had a very interesting interaction while picking my son up from school today. Cruz Vargas spoke to me as i passed him in my way to the car. He expressed that he wished things could have (I'm paraphrasing) been perhaps different. He apologized to me for some things but perhaps not others.

    I was also very, very cognizant of the fact that if I do much as raised my voice or gestured with a bit too much feeling to punctuate what I was saying, that I would have been swarmed by officers who would seem to materialize out of this air.

    Having said that. There are those of you who may still dip your shovels into your bucket full of racist stereotypes, e.g. "angry black man/person",etc, and then toss that shovel full into a person of color when you want to dehumanize a person of color.

    you can achieve this, if you can cause a group of people to be seen as less than human in the eyes of other people then you can justify treating them just about any sort of way. That's a quote I'm using. I say all of that to say that there has been a lot of energy put into painting me as a loose cannon, unstable violent threat. Nothing in my history with this district or in my own personal life history on back through my childhood would indicate that any of that could be true.

    I have said things directly to people and in my posts and while having an individual stand before you and face off with you may be unsettling, it doesn't amount to anything more than bruised egos.

    Cruz Vargas and I spoke for several minutes. A couple of moments. And while he apologized for some things and while I was keenly aware that all eyes were on the two of us, I decided after our speaking, to delete my most recent posts as my last words to Cruz Vargas were, "let's go from here". Chris Vargas indicated that he did no I want things to be the way that they were. I told him that he did not give me any indication that that is how he felt prior to my experience with a district in or after.

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  21. That is, until today. the man reach out to me. I could have looked him in his face and silently walked by. But I stopped and he and I spoke. While I would disagree with some points as I'm sure he would how many points, we both expressed ourselves and shook hands and parted. After having spoken with and shaking this man's hand I feel that it's only right that I remove my most recent posts and utilize those words between he and I seconds before we parted. Move on from here.

    I would like to see more parents reaching out to one another, getting to know one another. I would like to see more parents being involved in the school and I would like to see the school, its staff and administration how much stronger position in strengthening our School and the district. And personally, there are several of us that would like to see arts courses come back. So, Cruz Vargas. I'm quite sure that you're reaching out to me served as a little bit more than just to express yourself to me. Nonetheless, I am glad that our interaction took place. Whatever the mechanisms behind it. I was being honest with you today when I expressed that the incident and everything that took place after that involving the principal, the superintendent, the board and in some ways you in particular, I have been made to feel unwelcome in some ways and buy some and more than that, the fear and anxiety that I experienced as a result of being harassed after this incident simply for exercising my constitutional right to file a complaint.

    The times that you have even, in my opinion, incited some of the unruliness at the board meetings.

    But, whatever or however many reasons there were four you reaching out to me today, I am still happy that you did. We both got a chance to say some things to one another. Maybe that clear the air a little bit. I'd also like to say that despite the deliberate, concocted, hugely false rumor that I'm a violent person. Something that several other people, in the administration and on the faculty combined, used like a weapon against me, you nor anyone else at our school has ever been, at any time or in any way endanger because of me.

    Now, mr. Cruz Vargas, while I firmly believe that you were involved in some of these vicious attacks against me, neither you nor anyone else at our school has ever had to or
    HAS to fear me for any reasons so all the 21 Jump Street/ Streets Of San Francisco/Jason Bourne stuff can stop. You guys are EATINGW taxpayers money.


    Seriously. You can at any time approach me and speak to me without fear of having an ear bitten off. I'm actually fairly easy to talk to. My door is open, Cruz Vargas. Sincerely. Even with my questions about whether or not the only purpose of our interaction was for you to sincerely expressed to me how you feel my door is open.

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