Laura Capps
Editor’s note: Laura Capps is running unopposed for the 2nd District seat on the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors.
Why do our elected officials ignore their repeated failures?
Laura Capps is running for another public office despite her failures at the Santa Barbara Unified School District board. At no time has the school board ever touted success or progress in academics.
Per STAR testing 65% of Latino students and 78% of black students fail to meet the reading standard. How do they graduate from high school?
After high school what do they do with an “education”?
Do you think Santa Barbara children are given the tools they need to go on to be teachers, doctors, lawyers or astronauts?
“California has the lowest literacy rate of any state.” “Decades of underinvestment in schools, culture battles over bilingual education, and stark income inequality have made California the least literate state in the nation.” “Nearly 1 in 4 people over the age of 15 lack the skills to decipher the words in this sentence.”
See edsource.org/updates/california-has-the-lowest-literacy-rate-of-any-state-data-suggests.
One of the world’s largest economies cannot, will not educate its children. California spends 13% less per student in education than the national average despite having a surplus larger than most states’ entire budget.
Our children have been suffering, long before COVID-19.
In a News-Press article (“Board of Supervisors candidate discusses poverty, economy,” Feb. 18), Laura Capps stated, “As I’ve tried to do on the school board, I want to follow the science and communicate decisions as clearly as possible.”
(See newspress.com/election-2022-board-of-supervisors-candidate-discusses-poverty-economy.)
In two years, Ms. Capps and the district have refused to produce any Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or FDA data supporting their COVID-19 policies despite the public continually asking for transparency. They have only produced CNN articles and opinion pieces.
So what “science and data” is she referring to?
Per the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department, no Santa Barbara children have died from COVID.
At the last school board meeting, an ER doctor stated he has not admitted any children for COVID. The CDC states children have 0 percent risk from COVID.
The News-Press article further states, “Ms. Capps said the goal is to keep people safe.”
Ms. Capps failed to mention that the district’s COVID policies have caused a 51% increase in teen suicides. Assistant Superintendent Frann Wageneck stated the district had “experienced 56 ‘suicide incidences’ ” in just one semester of this school year versus 70 in the entire school year before COVID.
Ms. Capps said she supports mobile COVID-19 vaccination clinics. “I’m an advocate of vaccinations at schools.”
She knows that the highest risk of myocarditis is among school-aged boys. The FDA states myocarditis and pericarditis risk is higher among males under 40 years of age. The highest risk is in males 12-17 years of age after receiving the COVID vaccine. See fda.gov/media/153713/download.
Healthy children are not at risk from COVID, per the CDC, FDA and local doctors, but there are severe risks from the vaccines.
So why is she allowing vaccines that the FDA states has severe health risks to children to be administered on school grounds? Vaccination is a personal choice and should not be endorsed by a public school.
Speaking of safety, I’m sure you read about the group of Hispanic boys who pinned a black boy down, kneeling on his back while saying “George Floyd the ‘N’ ”!
The district tried to ignore this recent incident along with the one where a boy made a video of several black kids dancing overlaid with the sounds of monkeys.
Ms. Capps and the school board cite the need for ethnic studies, but for two decades they’ve been funding ethnic studies. Last year the district paid Just Communities in excess of $300,000, meaning taxpayers have paid them millions over two decades. Doesn’t sound like progress is being made there either.
The parents threatened a lawsuit and informed the press the district decided to hire an entrepreneur with a journalism degree at $1,800 per hour to sit with families who have been affected by racial injustice. They didn’t hire a trained psychologist. They hired a journalism graduate without any competing bids.
In the end our school board is not educating the children, they are not reviewing official data and science when making important health decisions and the level of racial incidents have increased. There were 12 racial incidents in a three-week period this month.
When will things change? When people realize their vote matters.
Brian Campbell
The author lives in Santa Barbara
