Now remember that
I’ve told you I cut my teeth on liberalism.
You’ll see what I mean as you read this bio.
I attended Carnegie
Mellon (when it was Carnegie Tech) for Painting & Design.
My passion for education reform didn’t begin until my children started
public school. It was then that the dumbing down began in the U.S.
We suffered through new math, feeling good about everything, holding no
one accountable for failure, whole language and more feel-good, first in
Columbus, Ohio, and later here in Florida.
In 1971 I became a
charter member of the advisory committees for North Miami Beach Sr. High and
Highland Oaks Middle in Dade County. Then-Sen. Jack Gordon was responsible for
creating advisories to allow volunteers to participate without having to pay
dues to any group. Sen. Gordon was probably the quintessential liberal in the
Legislature, and one of the most powerful. He was a great friend as long as you
agreed with his issues.
1975-76 I served as
President of the Northeast Dade Association for the Gifted. This really taught
me what parents with money and clout can do for a school as well as for a
special program in that school. We
got the pick of the teaching staff, and paid for computers, etc., ourselves for
Highland Oaks Elementary. Still, political connections protected (and still do)
certain administrators and teachers.
From 1978-1982, I was
a member of the Greater Miami Section of the National Council of Jewish Women,
another classic liberal group. Most of us didn’t know how we had sold our
souls to the big government liberals in exchange for money and political
support. It was a quid pro quo. I
do believe that’s been the genius of the liberal establishment, i.e., ensuring
its continued dependence upon tax dollars and big government by convincing the
grassroots that they’re on the side of the angels. The liberal establishment
keeps close contact with and support for that essential grassroots constituency,
something conservatives can learn from. During that time I was recognized for
coordinating the community coalition which, with the blessing of Sen. Gordon,
brought millions of state dollars to create the University of Miami-Jackson
Memorial Hospital Children’s Multi-Disciplinary Treatment Team for the
treatment of child abuse and the first Crisis Nursery in S. Florida for the
prevention of child abuse.
I was elevated to
Vice-President of Community Services for that effort, and became one of the
pilot Guardians ad Litem in the state. That’s
how I saw what really goes on in liberal circles with tax dollars.
The original executive director was pushed aside for an establishment
endorsed director who then completely politicized the program. Candidates for
office (liberals only of course) visited our meetings during which it was made
clear that this was the candidate of choice.
Donations from the candidates’ funds were made to the program, they
were elected, and more tax dollars came our way.
Never mind that expediency ruled when it came to working with the
children we were charged with representing. Again, the constituency benefited.
It became obvious
that the programs liberal leadership ostensibly supported were being neglected
and were not being held accountable because the only thing that mattered was
staying power. I had no choice but
to resign in protest.
In 1985 I worked with
homeowners’ associations and the PTA locally and statewide to get my plan to
fund crossing guards for the state funded through the Legislature.
For that I was asked to serve as safety chair for the Dade PTA.
I eagerly accepted, because I had two more battles to fight, one
involving a flyover planned which would threaten children crossing to three
schools, and one involving a developer’s plans to put an amusement park on a
contaminated dumpsite next to a school and homes.
Dade PTA had much political clout, and I needed it all.
That put me in the
belly of the beast. I saw firsthand the complete access PTA had to all schools
and the district bureaucracy. The Dade PTA had a free office in the
administration building, free printing, mailing and phones, and participation in
every committee on the district level. I was named to be on the Health K-12
textbook selection committee for the Florida Dept. of Education, on the AIDS
Advisory Committee, and chaired the AIDS Task Force for Florida PTA.
I was elected
president of the Dade PTA in 1988, and ran afoul of the unions when my board
voted to ask for 1/3 non-employee elected parent membership on all
decisionmaking committees. They and PTA sycophants engineered an illegal move to
rescind my election as president 11 months after I had been elected.
No move to rescind is in order (according to Roberts’ Rules, N.R.) more
than one meeting after the original action, but the Florida PTA Parliamentarian
apparently forgot that point!
While all this was going
on, I was appointed in 1984 to be on the Dade Commission for the Status of
Women, another supra liberal group. It lived up to all you’ve heard about
feminists gone berserk. Members blatantly profited from being on the commission;
one actually operated a women’s counseling clinic, with her husband’s
abortion clinic connected to it by a passageway.
These women, too, were
vicious if one didn’t agree with them on each and every issue.
After my ambush by the PTA,
I, along with six other brave souls, founded Independent Voices for Better
Education. In 1990, no one was
talking about education reform, much less the disparity between ethnic groups.
We got involved with all abuses we found in the system. The media was
very slow to admit we were right, but, better late than never.
When the conservatives
began to take over the state, I was appointed by Education Commissioner Frank
Brogan to serve on the Task Force on Educator Contracts & Performance,
dealing with tenure and how to reform it. Frank
Brogan called it “tenure light”, since it was all we could get from a
Legislature that hadn’t yet become completely conservative!
I met Gov. Jeb Bush when he
ran in 1994 and was libeled by the Chiles campaign. They apologized, but not until after the election, of course.
I apologized to Jeb as soon as I got the letter falsely accusing him of
anti-Semitism, and I did all could to help him get elected in 1998.
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