STOCKTON- Last night’s Stockton Unified Board meeting ended with the “reinvent Stockton” operatives on the board of trustees losing their attempt to give controversial superintendent John Deasy increased power. The pretext for such a move was the “public emergency” of pandemic COVID-19 despite the school district already being on break due to the San Joaquin County Board of Education’s recommendation to do so and Governor Newsom’s statewide Shelter In Place order to combat the spread of the coronavirus.
Last month the “reinvent” coalition of board members led by Lange Luntao who is also the executive director of mayor Michael Tubbs’ Reinvent Stockton Foundation, lost a bid to give the superintendent the authority to waive up to $2,000,000 a year in real estate developer fees using the guise of “fighting homelessness”.
The most concerning language in the resolution brought before the board were giving Deasy “emergency powers” to do things like award non bid contracts and cancel and implement programs as he saw fit. His history serving as superintendent both in Stockton and Los Angeles where he resigned amidst an FBI investigation have served as major red flags to giving him even more power. The resolution was presented along with a move to extend the school break to April 17th, which also failed due to the strong opposition to the resolution in question, but will be revisited next week.
The resolution in full:
Lange Luntao would take to Facebook to cry foul, once again using coronavirus as a pretext, to bash his fellow trustees who aren’t a part of the “Reinvent” cabal. He made no mention of the resolution that failed and its relation to the second one.
