With two weeks left until voters hit the polls, one local school board candidate is turning up the heat on her only opponent by questioning the main source of his campaign contributions in a press release sent out to multiple media outlets.
Pamela Torrisi pointed to two payments, totaling $7,000, included in Thomas Arnett’s campaign finance disclosure forms from an out-of-state organization.
The two local residents are vying for an abbreviated term on Morgan Hill Unified School District’s Board of Education.
While Torrisi wondered why Washington, D.C.-based Leadership for Educational Equity put so much skin in the game of a small-town school board race, Arnett explained that LEE’s purpose is to support Teach For America alumni, such as himself, to help them make a difference in their local communities.
Arnett said there’s nobody pulling his strings and LEE doesn’t want anything in return for the contributions. In fact, LEE routinely supports other Teach For America members and alumni seeking public office in communities across the country, according to Arnett.
“They don’t have any political or policy agendas,” said Arnett, who joined the Teach For America program in 2009 and has since completed his two-year commitment. “That’s not been the case with my experience at all. They haven’t given me any direction or forced me to make any kind of commitment in terms of policy.”
However, Torrisi, who is being endorsed by the local teachers union, doesn’t see it that way.
“LEE is a lobby group in Washington, D.C. That is a concern to me and I think it should be a concern to people in our community,” said Torrisi, who described the LEE donation as “dark money” in a press release dated May 19. “The bottom line is people have to ask themselves, ‘Why is this group sending $7,000 to our town? What do they want in return?’”
The winner of the June 7 election will fill the spot of former trustee Amy Porter-Jensen, who resigned from her seat in October 2015. However, that at-large seat expires at the end of the year and is one of three seats up for grabs in a first-time, trustee-area election in November. Torrisi currently lives in that trustee area, while Arnett does not.
The current six-member board—which could not reach a consensus late last year on appointing a seventh trustee to avoid the expense of an election—is just as split down the middle on key issues as it is on the two candidates. Trustees Ron Woolf and Donna Ruebusch, both retired MHUSD educators, along with Board President Bob Benevento support Torrisi. The other faction of Trustees Rick Badillo, David Gerard and Gino Borgioli are not in favor of having another former union boss on the board (Ruebush is the other), and lean toward Arnett.
Arnett also noted that LEE—which he contacted knowing they offer support services to Teach For America alumni—helped him set up his website and put together fliers for his campaign along with the monetary contributions.
“They believe that (Teach For America alumni) offer a valuable perspective….so they want to support those people in leadership opportunities,” said Arnett, 31, who works as an an education research fellow for a national, nonprofit think tank called the Clayton Christensen Institute.
Finances show divide in support
Torrisi, 64, a former classified employees union president who spent 34 years as a paraeducator for MHUSD before retiring in 2014, believes there is a little more to LEE’s interest in the June 7 election.
“It makes it easier to run a campaign when you have that kind of money,” said Torrisi, who has received $3,025 in campaign contributions. “We don’t have $7,000 all together; forget about from one group. All of our money has been from local people.”
According to her campaign disclosure statement, Torrisi’s donors are almost all current or former MHUSD teachers, administrators and board of education trustees. Her campaign funding includes $300 from Morgan Hill Federation of Teachers President Gemma Abels, $200 from former MHUSD Trustee Shelle Thomas and $100 from current MHUSD trustee/retired educator Ron Woolf.
“Who do you trust to sit on our School District Board? A retired educator and former Classified Members President? Or do you trust a relative newcomer with zero local teaching experience and dark money funds in his campaign account?” reads the press release emailed to the Times from Torrisi’s campaign.
Arnett’s campaign finances, which total $10,981.58, were not solely from LEE as he received cash contributions from family members and friends in Morgan Hill and elsewhere, as well as colleagues at the Clayton Christensen Institute.
“(LEE) did make a big contribution, but I’ve received a lot of donations from friends and people here in Morgan Hill as well,” Arnett pointed out. “(My campaign) seems to be going really well. We’re just working to do everything we can going into the home stretch.”
Attorney Armando Benavides, a community activist who often challenges district leadership and norms, donated $402.15 to purchase signs for Arnett and place them in the community, according to Arnett’s FPPC forms. Other Morgan Hill donors include Jeff Smith, a physician with Kaiser Permanente; Erik Hansen, a marketing manager with Ebay; and Mark Evans, a technology licensing manager with Apple Inc.
LEE describes itself as “a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering Teach For America corps members and alumni to grow as leaders in their communities and help build the movement for educational equity,” according to educationalequity.org. The group claims it “aims to inspire a diverse, enduring movement of leaders to engage civically within their communities to end the injustice of educational inequity.” It has 30,000 members and supports candidates in local elections across the country who have gone through the Teach For America program.
Teach For America is a nonprofit organization with a mission statement to “enlist, develop, and mobilize as many as possible of our nation’s most promising future leaders to grow and strengthen the movement for educational equity and excellence.” Members commit to teaching for at least two years in a public or public charter school in low-income communities.
Meanwhile, the two local candidates—who share Live Oak High School as their alma mater and little else in common as far as life and career path—participated in a May 5 public forum. They answered a variety of questions covering the full gamut of local education issues from teacher salaries to board politics to career technical education to charter schools.
Stance on charter schools challenged
“We’re both nice people. We both want to do what we think is right,” Torrisi said. “I’m not for corporate charters and he is. That’s the bottom line right there.”
Arnett disagreed with that assertion.
“I’m not in favor of charter schools that are just trying to enroll students to make money,” he said. “There are charter schools out there that are set up by for-profit entities, but I think most of the charter schools people are familiar with and are doing good work, are not that at all.”
Arnett’s employer, San Francisco-based Clayton Christensen Institute, touts itself as “improving the world through disruptive innovation,” which, in the education forum, includes blending learning or “any formal education program that combines online learning and brick-and-mortar schools.”
Its website, christenseninstitute.org, keeps a nationwide database of public schools and public charter schools that use the model, including Morgan Hill’s Silicon Valley Flex, Gilroy’s Navigator Prep and the many Rocketship Education schools throughout the Bay Area.
Campaign disclosures are public records released under the California Fair Political Practices Commission guidelines, and candidates are required to file the disclosures on a periodic basis with the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters.
