Tom Arnett, Pamela Torrisi want ‘civility’ back on the board
Published in the April 27 – May 10, 2016 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Robert Airoldi and Marty Cheek
Morgan Hill Life file photo
Rick Badillo, left, and Gino Borgioli listen to fellow trustee David Gerard during a recent meeting. The school board has a vacancy after Amy Porter Jensen resigned.
The two candidates running in the June 7 special election for a vacant MHUSD school board seat both say their primary goal if elected is to bring the board, now locked into two 3-3 factions, back to working as a united team.
Pamela Torrisi, a special education para-educator for more than 30 years with the Morgan Hill Unified School District as well as a local Service Employees International Union president for 10 years, and Tom Arnett, a research fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation in San Mateo since 2013, sat down separately with Morgan Hill Life’s publisher and editor for in-depth interviews April 11 to explain why they are running for the board seat left open after Trustee Amy Porter Jensen suddenly resigned in October.
Torrisi said she wants to bring back civility in governance to the school board because the infighting between the members is interfering with the “real job” of helping students get an education, she said.
Candidate Tom Arnett (right) at the April 19, 2016 MHUSD board meeting.
Photo by Marty Cheek
“I worked for the district for 34 years and have been really involved with the district through the union and at board meetings. And going to the board meetings lately and seeing how bad things are going, I feel I need to be there,” she said. “I am good at putting out a goal and having both sides work toward that goal.”
Arnett said the problem is that the people now on the board have their own “ideologies” about controversial issues that have come up for board votes during the last 12 months.
“All the research I’ve read says well-governed boards have districts where the people of the board trust each other, they work together… and that doesn’t seem to be happening here,” he said. “What has happened is people have been so passionate about their ideologies they don’t want to let them go, so there’s this continued in-fighting that all originated with things like charter schools and the sixth-grade relocation.”
Both candidates told Morgan Hill Life that they believe they have the ability if elected to the board to help the members end their feuding and find common ground.
The issues of sixth-grade reconfiguration and of the MHUSD finding suitable classroom space for Voices College-Bound Language Academy are questions both candidates will most likely address to voters during a forum held May 5 at the Community Playhouse.
Arnett has three children, the oldest just starting kindergarten at Charter School of Morgan Hill. He also has experience working as a summer intern at Amistad Academy which is part of the Achievement First public charter schools in New Haven, Connecticut.
“The reality is when you look at the research, there’s good charter schools and there’s lousy charter schools,” he said. “On average, the research says charter schools are not any better than public schools and on average the research says they may be even worse. That being said, there’s also some really good charter schools out there.”
Arnett said he is not familiar with the details about Voices to offer an opinion of the charter school which opened its Morgan Hill campus Sept. 8 at the Advent Lutheran School.
Candidate Pamela Torrisi at the April 19, 2016 MHUSD board meeting.
Photo by Marty Cheek
Torrisi said she is in favor of Charter School of Morgan Hill because it’s a parent-led school. She draws the line on for-profit charter schools.
“I’m absolutely against for-profit charter schools because they can use our money and send it to another state,” she said. “I don’t have a problem with charter schools so long as they do not negatively impact the public schools, as long as they have qualified people teaching and as long as they follow the education code.”
Torrisi favors the new sixth-grade reconfiguration, saying that it’s used in most districts in the county and students have been successful in the transition to middle school.
Arnett said he doesn’t know how he would vote if he were on the board and had to decide on the reconfiguration issue.
“That’s a hard thing for me to say right now because the reality is that I haven’t been able to have the time to investigate the issues as current board members have,” he said.
A major consideration for voters in deciding on candidates in any election is the people who are major supporters. When it became publicly known that Torrisi was considering running for the school board, members of the activist group Community for Positive Governance, which has a stated goal to bring civility back to the board, met with her and offered their help with her campaign. The group Parents for Positive Change has acknowledged that Arnett is their favored candidate.
On March 10, both candidates filed with the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters, with Torrisi being assisted in the process by Community for Positive Governance member Julie Zintsmaster (a former MHUSD school board member), and Arnett being assisted by Parents for Positive Change spokesperson Armand Benavides (a San Jose-based attorney long active in MHUSD school board politics who ran unsuccessfully for the board in 2014).
Arnett emphasized he is running independent of the parent activist group’s opinions on school issues. Because of the association, he has faced an “unfair categorization” from people who mistakenly believe he belongs to the group.
“I’ve been appreciative in that he’s been willing to help in those ways, but I guess I want to make clear that I’m not running as Armando’s candidate. He’s someone who supports me, I think, because I’m not Pamela,” Arnett said. “I think he and the people he is connected to have some strong issues that they want to see changed in the district. I’ve tried to communicate to them that I’m not running to support their issues, but they definitely see it as ‘Pamela is against these issues, so we have a better bet with you then with Pamela.’”
Benavides’ group is a “strong supporter” of Arnett because they consider him “neutral” and highly intelligent and passionate about education.
“We know the politics, so I’m looking for someone who is a high stakes-holder with a parent perspective,” he said. “I see him maybe even going higher up in the education politics. Once he starts acquiring certain skills, he’ll be able to move higher up. He seems like an aspiring young man.”
Morgan Hill resident Roger Knopf, spokesperson for Community for Positive Governance, said his group is giving support to Torrisi because of her highly regarded reputation among parents, teachers and the community. She’s also been a longtime employee of the district who, as a union leader, demonstrated a talent for civil negotiations where each side respected the other side.
“It was her interest in bringing civility and good governance back to the board,” he said. “We trust her wisdom to make good, rational decisions on behalf of the students and the staff of the district.”
