City elections rarely disappoint for controversy, whether for mayor, city council, school board and the one taking place today for the Parent Advisory Council at the Education Center, 900 Boston Avenue. Once again forces aligned with Connecticut’s Working Families Party that controls four of nine votes on the Board of Education and the education reform group Excel Bridgeport that supported the defeated ballot question last year for a mayoral-appointed school board are engaged in electoral gamesmanship to choose district-wide officers to represent thousands of city parents. The audio above, presented by Jessica Martinez aligned with Excel Bridgeport, features a conversation between an operative for the WFP and a city parent candidate Aline Lacerda who was dropping off her child at Winthrop School. Lacerda apparently decided to record the conversation when, she claims, she was approached at the school. Lacerda is also aligned with Excel Bridgeport.
In a prepared statement Lacerda says, “The Working Families Party was on school district property yesterday morning illegally distributing election flyers to parents without BOE permission. We even have an audio recording of a Working Families Party member lying to a parent about certain PAC candidates and asking them to not support those candidates. We have to ask ourselves, why is a political party so heavily involved in a nonpartisan local parent election? When it comes to the Working Families Party, it’s clearly politics over kids, yet again!”
Will post a WFP response when received.
If you are talking politics over kids, that would be the group that brought you the illegal state takeover of the Board of Education, the BPSS–oops, make that the renamed Excel, the super-duper superintendent Vallas with his posse of consultants and no-bid contracts, and the rich guys Finch said were going to pay for all of it.
Question: is it legal now to tape conversations without disclosure of the action?
Baffled: That is a mighty fine question indeed. If I know Ms. Lacerda, she did not investigate the legality of taping the encounter and posting the tape to a public blog. I don’t know if this taping without disclosure is legal, but the irony of illegally taping in an effort to expose the opposition’s dastardly tactics does not escape me.
Jessica Martinez is always taping political opponents. In fact I was on one of her YouTube videos without her permission. Ms. Martinez I HAVE THE RIGHT to demonstrate. If you don’t like it … TOO BAD.
Seriously, what is wrong with the Working Families Party? They are paying people to lie to parents now? They are parents for goodness’ sake!!! Every time they come up in the news or this blog it’s always because they are doing something shady or detrimental to children. They hate Vallas. They hate the Democrats. They hate the machine. And now they are spewing hate to parents too? What do they have to offer Bridgeport that’s not more hate and problems?
Did you know Lacerda is a George Cabrera agent/candidate? Not surprised that someone with a name like “Lacerda” is working with and for the biggest pig of them all.
Really this is a taped conversation–not a rehearsed Excel piece of propaganda? The DTC is shaking in their districts because WFP is taking voters from the Dem’s base. The machine (Excel) will stop at nothing to stop them.
*** Don’t see anything wrong with WFP passing out flyers to parents picking up or dropping off their kids at school. I’m sure if Excel would have thought of it sooner, they would have been out there pitching their education politics, no? Also, the woman passing the flyers misquoted some of her info but that’s also no big deal! I myself would like to see and read some positive flyers with ideas from either political party on improving the Bpt schools and academic curricula rather than bad-mouthing each other, etc. so much! *** LET’S GET IT TOGETHER! ***
I voted! I just didn’t get an “I Voted” sticker.
Joel and Mojo, a question or two, por favor? Thank you. I am not a parent of a school child at this time. Back in the day I served as co-President with my wife of a PTA. We dealt with Family Days, making quilts for the Library, raising money for books and school projects and keeping folks informed about the schools. I am glad to have had the experience, frankly.
But election day in Bridgeport has passed me by or perhaps blown away by high schools shut down by phony bomb scares, failure of the BOE to pass a budget for the next school year yet, and continuing comments at B&A hearings about problems with the schools (past, present and future). Help me understand what the big deal is about the parent groups, please? They are not mentioned in the Charter and therefore have no purse power, do they? I am all for parents helping their children to complete their school work and participate in reading, the arts and sports for their personal, physical and emotional development. It’s great to see parents at Council and BOE meetings with children learning about some phases of our civic processes, also. Why so much attention and focus? Can you explain it to me, please? And who are the friends and enemies of these two factions, by which I think I mean Excel and charter school proponents in general and WFP in general? Try to keep it simple for the rest of us to understand. Goals, strategies, tactics and financing, please? Time will tell.
*** VERY SIMPLE, IT’S ALL ABOUT POLITICAL POWERAND THE EDUCATIONAL BENJAMINS; US VS THEM AND SOMEWHERE IN THE MIX MAYBE THE KIDS, NO? ***