Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I am not Trevor Carrey. I'm John Girardi filling in
for Trevor today. Thanks to all the guys at Power Talk.
I'm the executive director at Right to Life of Central
California RTLCC dot org, Development director for the Obria Medical
Clinics of Central California OBRIA three sixty five dot org.
If you want to learn more about them. And what
(00:22):
else do I do? I host the John Girardi Show
right here on Power Talk six to seven pm Monday
through Friday. It's four hours of John Girardi Today. And
what else do I do? What else do I do?
I write some stuff for National Review. So let's talk
about mis Dy her.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Now.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
If any of you have been reading about the President
Unified search in the pages of GV wire, you know
that this ultimate decision to pick Misty Herr for the
job seemingly was known. It was gv wire was reporting
on it that the had been made basically a week ago.
(01:02):
I actually had Bill McEwen on my show. Bill McEwen,
who's been a long time observer of and commentator, very
critical commentator on President Unified School District for years. He
came on John Girardi show on Thursday to discuss it
with me, and he was you know, he said, yeah,
of course, mistery here is going to be hired. This
is not a surprise. The board of trustees voted six
(01:25):
to one in favor of miss Her. Susan Wittrop, the
president unified trustee from the Bullard region, was the only
no vote. Now, there's an interesting op ed in gv
wire which gv wire has taken basically this very clear
(01:47):
editorial position against hiring mist Her, and there's a little
bit of it that I'm a little nervous about. Darius
Assimi owns gv wire. He is I don't know. He
seems to have very strong opinions about all this. He
is in a relationship with Susan Wittrup, who's the one
(02:09):
board member who voted no. But I find it hard
to really disagree with the analysis that was coming from
say Bill McEwan, who's the news director from gvwire, who
expressed their editorial against it, or at the very least
expressed their editorial about what was needed from the position.
(02:30):
And there's a good op ed piece by Anthony Hadad
in gv wire which I will retweet out from my
Twitter account, Twitter dot com slash fresnoo or tweet out
I guess Twitter dot com slash Fresno, Johnny at Fresno,
Johnny on x if you want to check that out. Sorry, Elon,
(02:51):
I'm never going to get over the name change. Twitter
was just a better name. Sorry. Anthony Hadadd's piece lights
camera board vote President Unified's carefully choreographed production. I'm not here,
he writes, to talk about the superintendent pick negatively. This
(03:13):
isn't about the qualifications or the contract. This is about
the theatrics. Because when you reserve front row seats, pack
the room with family members of the yet to be
officially named appointee, and ask the public to believe that
the decision wasn't already made, Come on, who's buying that?
(03:36):
So this, this is his description of the board vote,
is okay? I mean, so this happened yesterday. They have
the Board of Trustees meeting and in the meeting room
they reserve the first few rows for miss a bunch
of Misty Hurr's family. The vote was supposed to be
(04:01):
on choosing the next superintendent, the idea being it's not
supposed to have already been made. It's not a decision
that's already supposed to have been made. The Board of Trustees,
the president unified, as is the Fresno County Board of
Supervisors or the presdent City Council or the clovi of
City Council or the City Council, that any city councils.
(04:23):
Local government bodies are governed by this California law called
the Brown Act. And what the Brown Act says is basically,
the Brown Act is basically a requirement for transparency on
the part of local government bodies boards of supervisors, boards
(04:46):
of trustees for school districts, city councils. And basically what
it says is you cannot have a majority of a
board of directors meeting at the same time to discuss city, county,
school district, whatever affairs privately. It basically the idea is,
(05:15):
we want the actual business of the city, of the county,
of the school district to take place in a public,
publicly accountable, transparent forum. We don't want backroom deals. That's
what we don't want. So there are certain exceptions to
(05:40):
the Brown Act. For example, if you're most of the
time with like there are certain things with like city
litigation issues where a city board of supervisor, you know,
a city council or a county board of supervisors might
have to meet in closed session to discuss maybe certain
kinds of personnel things, But the decision of whom to hire,
(06:03):
the vote on hiring, say a school superintendent, that's not
necessarily supposed to be that kind of a thing. The
board wasn't supposed to have like already kind of known
whom they were. I mean, maybe people could have guessed.
Individual board members maybe could guess, maybe they could count heads,
But it just strikes me as really bizarre to have
(06:28):
this kind of coron like a pre understood coronation happening
in a school board of trustees meeting. Hadad continues the
great President Unified production. Watching the president Unified Board meeting
on Wednesday was like watching a high school play where
(06:50):
the ending is whispered from the wings before the curtain
even rises. There was joy, there was hope, there was fear,
there was anger, and somewhere in all of that there
was the glaring realization and this was already sewn up.
And just to really drive it home, the district released
what can only be described as a que sheet on
Wednesday morning, a near itemized rundown of who needed to
(07:12):
be where and when once the announcement was made. The
kind of detailed coordination you'd expect from a dress rehearsal,
not a public process that's supposed to be unfolding in
real time. That's not transparency, that's choreography, and the public
can tell the difference. The President Unified Board is known
for its share of political maneuvering. Some trustees eye these
(07:36):
seats like stepping stones, not public service. That this is true.
We have two members of the President County Board of
Trustees who one of them just ran for a city
council seat and another one is running for a city
council seat at the next election. And if this week
proved anything it's that secrecy is not their strong suit.
(07:59):
If you're going to orchestrate a grand reveal, at least
try not to leak the whole script before opening night.
Gv wires seemed to know the outcome before the meeting.
Maybe that's fresnew Unified's cover story that the front row
wasn't reserved, just occupied by diehard news junkies that got
their insights from some tabloid. It's a cute theory but
(08:20):
it falls apart the moment you hear clapping before the
vote is even called. Nicki Henry, spokesperson for PRESNE Unified,
said the reason people showed up in droves was because
they were simply anticipating what was going to happen. Anticipation
might explain interest, but it doesn't quite explain front row
seating and coordinated family attendants before the vote was official.
(08:43):
That level of preparation suggests more than just a hunch.
Stop treating us like we are dumb. The next section
of the piece goes, let's talk about what this does
to public trust when people show up to a school
board meeting hoping to witness a fair process and instead
find themselves at a coronation. What are we supposed to
believe that it was all just a lucky coincidence. We're
(09:06):
not that naive. Presno doesn't deserve to be treated like
it is. If the board had already made up its mind,
and let's be real, it clearly had, then the vote
was a formality, a show, a box to check, and
the public process or lack thereof, that was just window dressing.
That's the part that stings, because this city is tired
of decisions being made behind closed doors while the rest
(09:26):
of us are handed carefully crafted statements and told to
clap on cue. And that's sort of the again, for
those who don't remember the timeline of this whole thing.
Bob Nelson leaves, He goes off to some sinecureate presno state,
(09:49):
great job at improving not one aspect of Fresne unified Bob,
And the board starts doing its search for new superintendent,
and all of a sudden, Susan Wittrop, one of the
board members, makes a very public stink, very justified public stink,
(10:10):
saying we're only interviewing internal candidates. This is the third
biggest school district in California. This is a huge school district,
and it's one of the worst school districts certainly in
the region. But comparing it against other school districts of
a similar socioeconomic background, this school district is wildly underperforming.
(10:33):
As Bill McEwan noted in his editorial last week in
GV Wire, what the school district needs is a superintendent
who can bring about tens of thousands of students more
tens of thousands more students scoring significantly better in math
(11:00):
and reading, that's what it's going to take. Not a
couple hundred students, tens of thousands of students are below
the state standards. Enormous percentages of the of the students
in President Unified are not college ready, which is, by
the way, the whole theoretical end goal towards which public
(11:23):
education in California is oriented is are we getting this
child prepared to go to college? That's the actual like
the sort of which you can agree with or disagree with.
I happen to disagree with that as sort of the
education model and the education goal, but that's the goal.
The idea is is this person prepared to go to college?
(11:47):
And President Unified is tens of thousands of students behind
its peer districts. And I think the point that Wittrup
made before her vote, after a vote in a variety
of capacities was not misty her is a terrible person,
(12:09):
or even misty her is necessarily a bad pick, or
that she's not going to do a good job. She
actually seems to me, from what I've read, like a
pretty sharp lady and seems to have some good ideas.
And I think people have been for the most part
fairly positive towards her interim stint over this year. But
(12:33):
you've got this massively underperforming school district, why would you
only hire internally? It's this district has been producing all
these bad outcomes. Why not bring in someone else from
the outside who maybe doesn't have the sentimental attachments, doesn't
(12:57):
have a fresh, you know, a new broom that sweeps cleaner.
Because clearly there needs to be some ruthless, severe change
that happens within President Unified, and I think limiting your
search to people within the district may not be the
(13:22):
best idea. So the board did increase its search, it
did expand it. GV Wire reported on some of the candidates,
Some of the candidates that got passed over. One guy
who apparently had been nominated as like a school district
superintendent of the year, like got some kind of national
award for being this amazing superintendent in Oregon and he's
(13:46):
now at a school district in California. You know, I
don't know, seems like a crazy idea to me. It
doesn't seem like a crazy idea to me. And that's
another thing about mister hur Again, It's not a knock
on her. She might be great. I don't know. I
guess it's possible. She's never been a superintendent before. She's
(14:07):
been a deputy superintendent, but she hasn't been in the
big seat. And why would you know? This isn't President Unified.
Is not some RinkyDink tiny little school district. It's a
humongous school district. It's the third largest district in California.
(14:29):
It's got gazillions of dollars worth of property and schools
and budget and tax revenue flowing in. It's got gazillions
of employees. It's got a massively antagonistic relationship with a
with a very active labor union. These are all enormous
(14:49):
challenges that I don't know if you want this to
be someone's first time as a superintendent being this district,
someone with no demonstrated track record of having previously led
a school district. So she might be great. I don't know.
(15:11):
I hope she does. I mean, I guess I hope
she does a good job. Like, like, you know, I'm
not not rooting for her to fail or anything, But
it just seems like such a bizarre process that they
were all dead set on electing her, on selecting her.
They get kind of publicly shamed about only doing an
internal search. They do a nationwide search and they just
(15:34):
pick her anyway, So they wasted all that time, all
that money just to land in the same place they
were gonna land at before. Why not just if that's
what they were gonna do the whole time, why not
just tell Susan witchrop back at the time, go pound sand. Instead,
they spent a whole bunch of taxpayer money on a
nationwide search that they didn't I mean clearly didn't change
the outcome. Now were they open and changing the outcome?
(15:55):
And they genuinely thought she was the best pick. Okay,
that's what they all say. That what they're all saying,
all the quotes from all these different trustees, it's that, oh,
she was the best candidate of the bunch. Okay, I
guess I'll take your word for it.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
This is the tremortary show, Condom Valleys, power Talk.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
The state of California assesses basically academic performance for public
schools with various sort of standardized testing metrics, and it
does so kind of on a district by district basis.
So you can see like this isn't hidden knowledge here.
You can see very clearly how President Unified compares to
(16:43):
other school districts with similar socioeconomic backgrounds, How students of
a certain socioeconomic background compare with other students of similar
socioeconomic backgrounds within say Clovis Unified or Central Unified, whatever.
By every metric, Presney Unified is a disaster. It's got
(17:06):
problems with its relationship with the union. It's got problems
with the left wing politicians in waiting that populate its
board of trustees, who maybe aren't as motivated to fight
the union in ways that they need to. It has
(17:27):
these ridiculous little episodes like when first I remember this
story from about what's been like December of twenty twenty three,
did these complaints? These media stories got written about Preside
Unified teachers being mad that administration wasn't backing them up
for enforcing no cell phone in classroom policies, And the
(17:49):
story noted that President Unified hadn't updated its technology in
classroom policy for like twenty years. So, you know, a
lot of tech war has gone under the bridge from
you know, two thousand and four to now. This little
thing called the iPhone has been invented. Not sure if
you all have heard of it, and President Unified hadn't
(18:12):
update their policy at all. Now the thing was their
two thousand and four policy, though still all the books,
was actually pretty good. It said no use of electronic devices.
It just wasn't being enforced. So you had Manuel Bania,
the head of the teachers' union for President Unified. He's
quoted in this story moaning and complaining about it. Oh,
(18:34):
teachers aren't feeling supported. Brebere're where we're brre And it's like, well,
you just signed that. This was in December of twenty
twenty three. Let's remember, in November of twenty twenty three,
the union had signed its big collectively bargained agreement with
the district, governing pay and all kinds of stuff. You
guys realize, with a collectively bargained agreement, you can put
(18:55):
anything you want in there. Regulator. This this happens in
like sports leagues. Okay, the NFL players sign a collectively
bargain agreement with the owners. It includes stuff other than compensation.
Players included stuff about, hey, we want to limit practice
time in order to reduce risks of head injuries. We
(19:16):
want to limit full contact practices and do this. But
but but DA. You can negotiate for whatever you want
in a CBA. You can throw that in there. Why
are you complaining about this when you just went through
a CBA you could have included in their requirement, Hey,
we demand that you know an updated cell phone policy.
(19:37):
We demand uh, you know, a commitment to enforcement in this.
That's this tangible way of the existing technology policy. But
but why well, they don't really care about that. They
don't really care about that because they're a union. The
point of a union is not actually to teach kids.
That's not the point of the teachers union. The point
of the teachers union is not to teach kids. The
(20:00):
point of a teacher is to teach kids. The role
of the union is to get more money, more jobs,
better hours, better benefits. That's the job of a union.
It's not actually designed to help kids to learn. So
(20:20):
you need someone willing to deal with an entity like that.
And again, someone who's a first time superintendent, never been
a superintendent anywhere else. Was the deputy superintendent in a
failing administration under Bob Nelson. You have to characterize as
(20:42):
a failure if you care about outcomes. It just seems
like very very short sighted.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
The assistent Trevor Cherry show on The Valley's Power Talk.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Don't know that I've talked about this much on John
Girardi's show. Definitely haven't talked about it here. And this
is a dynamic I have between myself and my good
buddies Jonathan Keller, who co hosts Rights to Life Radio
with me every Saturday, and producer Colton who produces Right
to Life Radio. They are very much tech geeky guys.
(21:22):
No shame in that, and I am something of a luddite.
I don't really like new fangled whiz bang technology. I
live in a kind of state of mutual enmity with technology,
and in particular, the thing I hate is AI. I
(21:44):
despise almost all manifestations of AI. I hate the various
ways that it seems like it's going to be replacing
human interaction. Jonathan Will. I also feel like there are
a lot of people who are techi enthusiastic who want
(22:06):
to integrate AI into various kinds of things that absolutely
don't need it, Like I don't know, you know, like
like social media. Oh use AI in face empowered by
a QuickBooks powered by AI? What do I need AI
to power QuickBooks for you. Put in the numbers and
(22:27):
you track what. No, I don't want it to be
powered by AI. Use AI to write a post on LinkedIn.
I don't want to write any posts on LinkedIn. Frankly,
let alone have AI write one for me. Here's someone saying, oh,
it really helps with the you know, writing a simple
(22:47):
work email. If it's a simple work email, I'll just
write the damn thing. And maybe I'm a little sensitive
because actually the fact that I'm a decent writer has
been actually very helpful to me in a number of
different respects throughout my career. I just find AI to
be hugely obnoxious on a number of fronts as well
(23:10):
as there's a little bit of like, you know, I mean,
I'm really hoping that they don't make generic talk radio
opinion have dot ai because if they do that, then
I am in trouble. But anyway, my wife shared with
(23:31):
me something that is actually a pretty seems like it's
going to be a pretty big scandal because this is
the thing with AI. It's not that good yet. It's
pretty good for certain things. It's really good, but.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Not that good.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Like I'll guarantee you any of you who've Google searched
for anything now sees that Google has that stupid AI summary.
And the thing with AI is that it's you know,
garbage in, garbage out. If you give whatever AI system
you have bad info on the front end, it's just
(24:10):
gonna spit out a bad result. I remember about a
year or two ago when people first started using different
AI platforms for generating images, and I think it was
I forget if it was Google or Microsoft's A. I
think it might have been Microsoft's AI. And people kept
asking them. They kept asking the AI show us a
(24:32):
picture of, you know, a typical a group of Roman soldiers,
and they kept insisting on presenting or no, this was it,
show a typical couple from ancient Rome. And then he
kept insisting on having couples or families or groups of
people with sub Saharan Africans. And it's like, well, Rome
(24:59):
had conquered sub Saharan Africa. You're I'm asking you to
provide me a picture of a Roman family. Like there
wasn't a lot of like, you know, Romans marrying sub
Saharan Africans and they they had equal rights as you know,
Roman citizens. That that that just wasn't happening. This is
totally anachronistic. This is just importing like and people kept
(25:24):
like pointing it out, like this makes no sense, and
the AI kept saying, I'm sorry, you're right, let me
try again, and it would try again, it would still
keep doing it. So I am highly skeptical of AI.
It's it's almost like these people they watch dystopian science
fiction movies like The Matrix or Terminator or whatever, and
(25:49):
they're like, you know, what would be really great is
if we created something like the thing that was the
main villain enslaving and killing all of humanity from the
Matrix or Terminator or whatever. It boggles my mind. Had
(26:09):
just the enthusiasm with which people will like say, yes, absolutely,
let's do it. Let's turn to more AI. All right now,
this is the story that is hugely, hugely problematic for
the legal community. So the Bar Exam, the California State
(26:34):
Bar Exam, the bar Exam is a test that is
administered twice a year, only two times a year, once
in the summer, once in February, and anyone who's graduated
from a law school goes they have to take the
(26:54):
bar Exam, and if they pass the bar Exam, they
become a licensed California lawyer. Bar exam is a really
stinking hard exam, and in California. California has one of
the most difficult bar exams, at least at the level
of percentage of people who pass. Now there's some people argue, well, actually,
(27:16):
the California bar exam is not necessarily that much harder
than other states. It's just that California has a lot
of people taking the bar exam for whom English is
not their first language. A lot more immigrants try to
take the bar exam in California than in you know,
it's say, you know, Oklahoma or something. But I know
(27:36):
when I took it. When I took the bar exam,
I think the passage rate was like under fifty percent.
And you had people from really good law schools who
were like failing the bar exam at least, you know,
failing it the first time they took it. And it
is it actually contributed the California bar exam was getting
(27:59):
so difficult, or at the very least the passage rate
was so low that it led to the state legislature saying, ugh,
maybe we need to kind of reform this or whatever. Well,
(28:19):
here's a real problem the state Bar. The California State Bar,
which rights and administers the Bar Exam, has admitted that
they employed a company to have a non lawyer use
(28:39):
AI to draft questions that were given on the actual
bar exam. They then paid that same company to assess
and ultimately approve of the questions on the exam, including
the questions that the company themselves authored. This is a
(29:06):
big flippin' deal, okay, because let me let me describe
to you what the questions on the bar exam are like.
Imagine like the longest essay question you've ever gotten. Okay,
It's a huge, big, long paragraph of some elaborate situation. Okay,
(29:34):
let's you know, Uh, Mike drove his car and smashed
it into Brian's house. Uh. But Mike, you know, was
being distracted in the car by Joe, who was smoking marijuana.
And after they crashed, the police officer went into the
(29:56):
car without getting permission first and grabbed the marijuana. And
this happened in the end of the identify all of
the legal issues and all the causes of action from
this elaborate, long situation, and you might have The individual
questions are written usually to test your knowledge and your
(30:17):
grasp of maybe one specific area blaw. So this essay
question is a torts question. This essay question is a
contract question. This question might be a criminal law slash
criminal procedure question. This might be a property law question. Okay,
and it's not very many essay questions. But it takes
(30:40):
a really long time to read through it a really
long time. Don't know why I'm talking, like President Trump,
a really long time. It takes a really long time
to read through it, a really long time to analyze
what's going on. Some people like wind up writing an
outline for the essay answer they're going to give. You
have about three hours to answer. I forget how many
(31:03):
it is. I think it's like five questions. It's a
really intensive and difficult process. So that's like the essay
portions of the Bar exam. There's also a multiple choice
section where you have to answer certain number of questions
that have sort of neatly timed out things. To have
(31:26):
this be done by AI rather than human beings is
a disgrace. It is a real assault on the integrity
of the legal profession that we might be approving or
flunking people from the Bar exam. On the basis of
a test not written by a lawyer, not written by
(31:47):
even a human being. I'm gonna keep talking here about
this utter disaster that's happening in the California legal community.
As I mentioned last segment, basically the state California State
Bar Exam. This is the exam that's used to qualify
(32:07):
new lawyers. You take the Bar Exam after you're done
with law school and you're officially a licensed California lawyer,
your legal career begins. Apparently, some of the questions on
the bar exam, and it seems like these are the
shorter multiple choice questions. I was sort of thinking before
it was the longer essay questions, but apparently and these
(32:28):
shorter multiple choice questions, though it's very jam packed with
little details of Mike is in a contract with so
and so, he delivers some of the products but not
all of the product, does he need to demand and
can he pay back with you know, and here's for
multiple choice answers. So they're very difficult, these multiple choice
questions on the bar exam. Apparently some of them were
(32:48):
written by non lawyers utilizing AI some company that was
farmed in We are now learning that the California State
Supreme Court did not know that this was happening, and
apparently the State Bar associated the State Bar Association's Committee
(33:17):
of Bar Examiners say they didn't even know. So it's
it's a complete disaster that you've got a non lawyer
utilizing a non human to write questions that are gonna
make or break that are you know, could make or
(33:38):
break somebody's career or certainly in the next six months,
that's for darn sure. Like, you know, you fail bar exam,
you might not be able to get that job. You
fail bar exam, the job that you thought you had
maybe now you don't have out of law school. Like
it's a huge flipping deal, and you got to eat
(34:01):
up another six months of your life waiting for the
next sitting, then another two months of your life waiting
for your exam results. And maybe it's on the basis
of these dingleberries from California deciding to farm out writing
bar exam questions to AI. And that's the thing that
just blows my mind. Probably to get this company, whatever
(34:24):
company they got, to use their AI to utilize it
for the sake of the bar exam, they probably had
to shill out more money than they would have had
to shill out if they just got some law professor
to do it like There are law professors who do
stuff like this on a pro bono basis.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
I'm sure they assist at Trevor carry Show on the
Valley's Power Talk
I am not Trevor Carrey. I'm John Girardi filling in
for Trevor today. Thanks to all the guys at Power Talk.
I'm the executive director at Right to Life of Central
California RTLCC dot org, Development director for the Obria Medical
Clinics of Central California OBRIA three sixty five dot org.
If you want to learn more about them. And what
(00:22):
else do I do? I host the John Girardi Show
right here on Power Talk six to seven pm Monday
through Friday. It's four hours of John Girardi Today. And
what else do I do? What else do I do?
I write some stuff for National Review. So let's talk
about mis Dy her.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Now.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
If any of you have been reading about the President
Unified search in the pages of GV wire, you know
that this ultimate decision to pick Misty Herr for the
job seemingly was known. It was gv wire was reporting
on it that the had been made basically a week ago.
(01:02):
I actually had Bill McEwen on my show. Bill McEwen,
who's been a long time observer of and commentator, very
critical commentator on President Unified School District for years. He
came on John Girardi show on Thursday to discuss it
with me, and he was you know, he said, yeah,
of course, mistery here is going to be hired. This
is not a surprise. The board of trustees voted six
(01:25):
to one in favor of miss Her. Susan Wittrop, the
president unified trustee from the Bullard region, was the only
no vote. Now, there's an interesting op ed in gv
wire which gv wire has taken basically this very clear
(01:47):
editorial position against hiring mist Her, and there's a little
bit of it that I'm a little nervous about. Darius
Assimi owns gv wire. He is I don't know. He
seems to have very strong opinions about all this. He
is in a relationship with Susan Wittrup, who's the one
(02:09):
board member who voted no. But I find it hard
to really disagree with the analysis that was coming from
say Bill McEwan, who's the news director from gvwire, who
expressed their editorial against it, or at the very least
expressed their editorial about what was needed from the position.
(02:30):
And there's a good op ed piece by Anthony Hadad
in gv wire which I will retweet out from my
Twitter account, Twitter dot com slash fresnoo or tweet out
I guess Twitter dot com slash Fresno, Johnny at Fresno,
Johnny on x if you want to check that out. Sorry, Elon,
(02:51):
I'm never going to get over the name change. Twitter
was just a better name. Sorry. Anthony Hadadd's piece lights
camera board vote President Unified's carefully choreographed production. I'm not here,
he writes, to talk about the superintendent pick negatively. This
(03:13):
isn't about the qualifications or the contract. This is about
the theatrics. Because when you reserve front row seats, pack
the room with family members of the yet to be
officially named appointee, and ask the public to believe that
the decision wasn't already made, Come on, who's buying that?
(03:36):
So this, this is his description of the board vote,
is okay? I mean, so this happened yesterday. They have
the Board of Trustees meeting and in the meeting room
they reserve the first few rows for miss a bunch
of Misty Hurr's family. The vote was supposed to be
(04:01):
on choosing the next superintendent, the idea being it's not
supposed to have already been made. It's not a decision
that's already supposed to have been made. The Board of Trustees,
the president unified, as is the Fresno County Board of
Supervisors or the presdent City Council or the clovi of
City Council or the City Council, that any city councils.
(04:23):
Local government bodies are governed by this California law called
the Brown Act. And what the Brown Act says is basically,
the Brown Act is basically a requirement for transparency on
the part of local government bodies boards of supervisors, boards
(04:46):
of trustees for school districts, city councils. And basically what
it says is you cannot have a majority of a
board of directors meeting at the same time to discuss city, county,
school district, whatever affairs privately. It basically the idea is,
(05:15):
we want the actual business of the city, of the county,
of the school district to take place in a public,
publicly accountable, transparent forum. We don't want backroom deals. That's
what we don't want. So there are certain exceptions to
(05:40):
the Brown Act. For example, if you're most of the
time with like there are certain things with like city
litigation issues where a city board of supervisor, you know,
a city council or a county board of supervisors might
have to meet in closed session to discuss maybe certain
kinds of personnel things, But the decision of whom to hire,
(06:03):
the vote on hiring, say a school superintendent, that's not
necessarily supposed to be that kind of a thing. The
board wasn't supposed to have like already kind of known
whom they were. I mean, maybe people could have guessed.
Individual board members maybe could guess, maybe they could count heads,
But it just strikes me as really bizarre to have
(06:28):
this kind of coron like a pre understood coronation happening
in a school board of trustees meeting. Hadad continues the
great President Unified production. Watching the president Unified Board meeting
on Wednesday was like watching a high school play where
(06:50):
the ending is whispered from the wings before the curtain
even rises. There was joy, there was hope, there was fear,
there was anger, and somewhere in all of that there
was the glaring realization and this was already sewn up.
And just to really drive it home, the district released
what can only be described as a que sheet on
Wednesday morning, a near itemized rundown of who needed to
(07:12):
be where and when once the announcement was made. The
kind of detailed coordination you'd expect from a dress rehearsal,
not a public process that's supposed to be unfolding in
real time. That's not transparency, that's choreography, and the public
can tell the difference. The President Unified Board is known
for its share of political maneuvering. Some trustees eye these
(07:36):
seats like stepping stones, not public service. That this is true.
We have two members of the President County Board of
Trustees who one of them just ran for a city
council seat and another one is running for a city
council seat at the next election. And if this week
proved anything it's that secrecy is not their strong suit.
(07:59):
If you're going to orchestrate a grand reveal, at least
try not to leak the whole script before opening night.
Gv wires seemed to know the outcome before the meeting.
Maybe that's fresnew Unified's cover story that the front row
wasn't reserved, just occupied by diehard news junkies that got
their insights from some tabloid. It's a cute theory but
(08:20):
it falls apart the moment you hear clapping before the
vote is even called. Nicki Henry, spokesperson for PRESNE Unified,
said the reason people showed up in droves was because
they were simply anticipating what was going to happen. Anticipation
might explain interest, but it doesn't quite explain front row
seating and coordinated family attendants before the vote was official.
(08:43):
That level of preparation suggests more than just a hunch.
Stop treating us like we are dumb. The next section
of the piece goes, let's talk about what this does
to public trust when people show up to a school
board meeting hoping to witness a fair process and instead
find themselves at a coronation. What are we supposed to
believe that it was all just a lucky coincidence. We're
(09:06):
not that naive. Presno doesn't deserve to be treated like
it is. If the board had already made up its mind,
and let's be real, it clearly had, then the vote
was a formality, a show, a box to check, and
the public process or lack thereof, that was just window dressing.
That's the part that stings, because this city is tired
of decisions being made behind closed doors while the rest
(09:26):
of us are handed carefully crafted statements and told to
clap on cue. And that's sort of the again, for
those who don't remember the timeline of this whole thing.
Bob Nelson leaves, He goes off to some sinecureate presno state,
(09:49):
great job at improving not one aspect of Fresne unified Bob,
And the board starts doing its search for new superintendent,
and all of a sudden, Susan Wittrop, one of the
board members, makes a very public stink, very justified public stink,
(10:10):
saying we're only interviewing internal candidates. This is the third
biggest school district in California. This is a huge school district,
and it's one of the worst school districts certainly in
the region. But comparing it against other school districts of
a similar socioeconomic background, this school district is wildly underperforming.
(10:33):
As Bill McEwan noted in his editorial last week in
GV Wire, what the school district needs is a superintendent
who can bring about tens of thousands of students more
tens of thousands more students scoring significantly better in math
(11:00):
and reading, that's what it's going to take. Not a
couple hundred students, tens of thousands of students are below
the state standards. Enormous percentages of the of the students
in President Unified are not college ready, which is, by
the way, the whole theoretical end goal towards which public
(11:23):
education in California is oriented is are we getting this
child prepared to go to college? That's the actual like
the sort of which you can agree with or disagree with.
I happen to disagree with that as sort of the
education model and the education goal, but that's the goal.
The idea is is this person prepared to go to college?
(11:47):
And President Unified is tens of thousands of students behind
its peer districts. And I think the point that Wittrup
made before her vote, after a vote in a variety
of capacities was not misty her is a terrible person,
(12:09):
or even misty her is necessarily a bad pick, or
that she's not going to do a good job. She
actually seems to me, from what I've read, like a
pretty sharp lady and seems to have some good ideas.
And I think people have been for the most part
fairly positive towards her interim stint over this year. But
(12:33):
you've got this massively underperforming school district, why would you
only hire internally? It's this district has been producing all
these bad outcomes. Why not bring in someone else from
the outside who maybe doesn't have the sentimental attachments, doesn't
(12:57):
have a fresh, you know, a new broom that sweeps cleaner.
Because clearly there needs to be some ruthless, severe change
that happens within President Unified, and I think limiting your
search to people within the district may not be the
(13:22):
best idea. So the board did increase its search, it
did expand it. GV Wire reported on some of the candidates,
Some of the candidates that got passed over. One guy
who apparently had been nominated as like a school district
superintendent of the year, like got some kind of national
award for being this amazing superintendent in Oregon and he's
(13:46):
now at a school district in California. You know, I
don't know, seems like a crazy idea to me. It
doesn't seem like a crazy idea to me. And that's
another thing about mister hur Again, It's not a knock
on her. She might be great. I don't know. I
guess it's possible. She's never been a superintendent before. She's
(14:07):
been a deputy superintendent, but she hasn't been in the
big seat. And why would you know? This isn't President Unified.
Is not some RinkyDink tiny little school district. It's a
humongous school district. It's the third largest district in California.
(14:29):
It's got gazillions of dollars worth of property and schools
and budget and tax revenue flowing in. It's got gazillions
of employees. It's got a massively antagonistic relationship with a
with a very active labor union. These are all enormous
(14:49):
challenges that I don't know if you want this to
be someone's first time as a superintendent being this district,
someone with no demonstrated track record of having previously led
a school district. So she might be great. I don't know.
(15:11):
I hope she does. I mean, I guess I hope
she does a good job. Like, like, you know, I'm
not not rooting for her to fail or anything, But
it just seems like such a bizarre process that they
were all dead set on electing her, on selecting her.
They get kind of publicly shamed about only doing an
internal search. They do a nationwide search and they just
(15:34):
pick her anyway, So they wasted all that time, all
that money just to land in the same place they
were gonna land at before. Why not just if that's
what they were gonna do the whole time, why not
just tell Susan witchrop back at the time, go pound sand. Instead,
they spent a whole bunch of taxpayer money on a
nationwide search that they didn't I mean clearly didn't change
the outcome. Now were they open and changing the outcome?
(15:55):
And they genuinely thought she was the best pick. Okay,
that's what they all say. That what they're all saying,
all the quotes from all these different trustees, it's that, oh,
she was the best candidate of the bunch. Okay, I
guess I'll take your word for it.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
This is the tremortary show, Condom Valleys, power Talk.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
The state of California assesses basically academic performance for public
schools with various sort of standardized testing metrics, and it
does so kind of on a district by district basis.
So you can see like this isn't hidden knowledge here.
You can see very clearly how President Unified compares to
(16:43):
other school districts with similar socioeconomic backgrounds, How students of
a certain socioeconomic background compare with other students of similar
socioeconomic backgrounds within say Clovis Unified or Central Unified, whatever.
By every metric, Presney Unified is a disaster. It's got
(17:06):
problems with its relationship with the union. It's got problems
with the left wing politicians in waiting that populate its
board of trustees, who maybe aren't as motivated to fight
the union in ways that they need to. It has
(17:27):
these ridiculous little episodes like when first I remember this
story from about what's been like December of twenty twenty three,
did these complaints? These media stories got written about Preside
Unified teachers being mad that administration wasn't backing them up
for enforcing no cell phone in classroom policies, And the
(17:49):
story noted that President Unified hadn't updated its technology in
classroom policy for like twenty years. So, you know, a
lot of tech war has gone under the bridge from
you know, two thousand and four to now. This little
thing called the iPhone has been invented. Not sure if
you all have heard of it, and President Unified hadn't
(18:12):
update their policy at all. Now the thing was their
two thousand and four policy, though still all the books,
was actually pretty good. It said no use of electronic devices.
It just wasn't being enforced. So you had Manuel Bania,
the head of the teachers' union for President Unified. He's
quoted in this story moaning and complaining about it. Oh,
(18:34):
teachers aren't feeling supported. Brebere're where we're brre And it's like, well,
you just signed that. This was in December of twenty
twenty three. Let's remember, in November of twenty twenty three,
the union had signed its big collectively bargained agreement with
the district, governing pay and all kinds of stuff. You
guys realize, with a collectively bargained agreement, you can put
(18:55):
anything you want in there. Regulator. This this happens in
like sports leagues. Okay, the NFL players sign a collectively
bargain agreement with the owners. It includes stuff other than compensation.
Players included stuff about, hey, we want to limit practice
time in order to reduce risks of head injuries. We
(19:16):
want to limit full contact practices and do this. But
but but DA. You can negotiate for whatever you want
in a CBA. You can throw that in there. Why
are you complaining about this when you just went through
a CBA you could have included in their requirement, Hey,
we demand that you know an updated cell phone policy.
(19:37):
We demand uh, you know, a commitment to enforcement in this.
That's this tangible way of the existing technology policy. But
but why well, they don't really care about that. They
don't really care about that because they're a union. The
point of a union is not actually to teach kids.
That's not the point of the teachers union. The point
of the teachers union is not to teach kids. The
(20:00):
point of a teacher is to teach kids. The role
of the union is to get more money, more jobs,
better hours, better benefits. That's the job of a union.
It's not actually designed to help kids to learn. So
(20:20):
you need someone willing to deal with an entity like that.
And again, someone who's a first time superintendent, never been
a superintendent anywhere else. Was the deputy superintendent in a
failing administration under Bob Nelson. You have to characterize as
(20:42):
a failure if you care about outcomes. It just seems
like very very short sighted.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
The assistent Trevor Cherry show on The Valley's Power Talk.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Don't know that I've talked about this much on John
Girardi's show. Definitely haven't talked about it here. And this
is a dynamic I have between myself and my good
buddies Jonathan Keller, who co hosts Rights to Life Radio
with me every Saturday, and producer Colton who produces Right
to Life Radio. They are very much tech geeky guys.
(21:22):
No shame in that, and I am something of a luddite.
I don't really like new fangled whiz bang technology. I
live in a kind of state of mutual enmity with technology,
and in particular, the thing I hate is AI. I
(21:44):
despise almost all manifestations of AI. I hate the various
ways that it seems like it's going to be replacing
human interaction. Jonathan Will. I also feel like there are
a lot of people who are techi enthusiastic who want
(22:06):
to integrate AI into various kinds of things that absolutely
don't need it, Like I don't know, you know, like
like social media. Oh use AI in face empowered by
a QuickBooks powered by AI? What do I need AI
to power QuickBooks for you. Put in the numbers and
(22:27):
you track what. No, I don't want it to be
powered by AI. Use AI to write a post on LinkedIn.
I don't want to write any posts on LinkedIn. Frankly,
let alone have AI write one for me. Here's someone saying, oh,
it really helps with the you know, writing a simple
(22:47):
work email. If it's a simple work email, I'll just
write the damn thing. And maybe I'm a little sensitive
because actually the fact that I'm a decent writer has
been actually very helpful to me in a number of
different respects throughout my career. I just find AI to
be hugely obnoxious on a number of fronts as well
(23:10):
as there's a little bit of like, you know, I mean,
I'm really hoping that they don't make generic talk radio
opinion have dot ai because if they do that, then
I am in trouble. But anyway, my wife shared with
(23:31):
me something that is actually a pretty seems like it's
going to be a pretty big scandal because this is
the thing with AI. It's not that good yet. It's
pretty good for certain things. It's really good, but.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Not that good.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Like I'll guarantee you any of you who've Google searched
for anything now sees that Google has that stupid AI summary.
And the thing with AI is that it's you know,
garbage in, garbage out. If you give whatever AI system
you have bad info on the front end, it's just
(24:10):
gonna spit out a bad result. I remember about a
year or two ago when people first started using different
AI platforms for generating images, and I think it was
I forget if it was Google or Microsoft's A. I
think it might have been Microsoft's AI. And people kept
asking them. They kept asking the AI show us a
(24:32):
picture of, you know, a typical a group of Roman soldiers,
and they kept insisting on presenting or no, this was it,
show a typical couple from ancient Rome. And then he
kept insisting on having couples or families or groups of
people with sub Saharan Africans. And it's like, well, Rome
(24:59):
had conquered sub Saharan Africa. You're I'm asking you to
provide me a picture of a Roman family. Like there
wasn't a lot of like, you know, Romans marrying sub
Saharan Africans and they they had equal rights as you know,
Roman citizens. That that that just wasn't happening. This is
totally anachronistic. This is just importing like and people kept
(25:24):
like pointing it out, like this makes no sense, and
the AI kept saying, I'm sorry, you're right, let me
try again, and it would try again, it would still
keep doing it. So I am highly skeptical of AI.
It's it's almost like these people they watch dystopian science
fiction movies like The Matrix or Terminator or whatever, and
(25:49):
they're like, you know, what would be really great is
if we created something like the thing that was the
main villain enslaving and killing all of humanity from the
Matrix or Terminator or whatever. It boggles my mind. Had
(26:09):
just the enthusiasm with which people will like say, yes, absolutely,
let's do it. Let's turn to more AI. All right now,
this is the story that is hugely, hugely problematic for
the legal community. So the Bar Exam, the California State
(26:34):
Bar Exam, the bar Exam is a test that is
administered twice a year, only two times a year, once
in the summer, once in February, and anyone who's graduated
from a law school goes they have to take the
(26:54):
bar Exam, and if they pass the bar Exam, they
become a licensed California lawyer. Bar exam is a really
stinking hard exam, and in California. California has one of
the most difficult bar exams, at least at the level
of percentage of people who pass. Now there's some people argue, well, actually,
(27:16):
the California bar exam is not necessarily that much harder
than other states. It's just that California has a lot
of people taking the bar exam for whom English is
not their first language. A lot more immigrants try to
take the bar exam in California than in you know,
it's say, you know, Oklahoma or something. But I know
(27:36):
when I took it. When I took the bar exam,
I think the passage rate was like under fifty percent.
And you had people from really good law schools who
were like failing the bar exam at least, you know,
failing it the first time they took it. And it
is it actually contributed the California bar exam was getting
(27:59):
so difficult, or at the very least the passage rate
was so low that it led to the state legislature saying, ugh,
maybe we need to kind of reform this or whatever. Well,
(28:19):
here's a real problem the state Bar. The California State Bar,
which rights and administers the Bar Exam, has admitted that
they employed a company to have a non lawyer use
(28:39):
AI to draft questions that were given on the actual
bar exam. They then paid that same company to assess
and ultimately approve of the questions on the exam, including
the questions that the company themselves authored. This is a
(29:06):
big flippin' deal, okay, because let me let me describe
to you what the questions on the bar exam are like.
Imagine like the longest essay question you've ever gotten. Okay,
It's a huge, big, long paragraph of some elaborate situation. Okay,
(29:34):
let's you know, Uh, Mike drove his car and smashed
it into Brian's house. Uh. But Mike, you know, was
being distracted in the car by Joe, who was smoking marijuana.
And after they crashed, the police officer went into the
(29:56):
car without getting permission first and grabbed the marijuana. And
this happened in the end of the identify all of
the legal issues and all the causes of action from
this elaborate, long situation, and you might have The individual
questions are written usually to test your knowledge and your
(30:17):
grasp of maybe one specific area blaw. So this essay
question is a torts question. This essay question is a
contract question. This question might be a criminal law slash
criminal procedure question. This might be a property law question. Okay,
and it's not very many essay questions. But it takes
(30:40):
a really long time to read through it a really
long time. Don't know why I'm talking, like President Trump,
a really long time. It takes a really long time
to read through it, a really long time to analyze
what's going on. Some people like wind up writing an
outline for the essay answer they're going to give. You
have about three hours to answer. I forget how many
(31:03):
it is. I think it's like five questions. It's a
really intensive and difficult process. So that's like the essay
portions of the Bar exam. There's also a multiple choice
section where you have to answer certain number of questions
that have sort of neatly timed out things. To have
(31:26):
this be done by AI rather than human beings is
a disgrace. It is a real assault on the integrity
of the legal profession that we might be approving or
flunking people from the Bar exam. On the basis of
a test not written by a lawyer, not written by
(31:47):
even a human being. I'm gonna keep talking here about
this utter disaster that's happening in the California legal community.
As I mentioned last segment, basically the state California State
Bar Exam. This is the exam that's used to qualify
(32:07):
new lawyers. You take the Bar Exam after you're done
with law school and you're officially a licensed California lawyer,
your legal career begins. Apparently, some of the questions on
the bar exam, and it seems like these are the
shorter multiple choice questions. I was sort of thinking before
it was the longer essay questions, but apparently and these
(32:28):
shorter multiple choice questions, though it's very jam packed with
little details of Mike is in a contract with so
and so, he delivers some of the products but not
all of the product, does he need to demand and
can he pay back with you know, and here's for
multiple choice answers. So they're very difficult, these multiple choice
questions on the bar exam. Apparently some of them were
(32:48):
written by non lawyers utilizing AI some company that was
farmed in We are now learning that the California State
Supreme Court did not know that this was happening, and
apparently the State Bar associated the State Bar Association's Committee
(33:17):
of Bar Examiners say they didn't even know. So it's
it's a complete disaster that you've got a non lawyer
utilizing a non human to write questions that are gonna
make or break that are you know, could make or
(33:38):
break somebody's career or certainly in the next six months,
that's for darn sure. Like, you know, you fail bar exam,
you might not be able to get that job. You
fail bar exam, the job that you thought you had
maybe now you don't have out of law school. Like
it's a huge flipping deal, and you got to eat
(34:01):
up another six months of your life waiting for the
next sitting, then another two months of your life waiting
for your exam results. And maybe it's on the basis
of these dingleberries from California deciding to farm out writing
bar exam questions to AI. And that's the thing that
just blows my mind. Probably to get this company, whatever
(34:24):
company they got, to use their AI to utilize it
for the sake of the bar exam, they probably had
to shill out more money than they would have had
to shill out if they just got some law professor
to do it like There are law professors who do
stuff like this on a pro bono basis.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
I'm sure they assist at Trevor carry Show on the
Valley's Power Talk
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