Save Newport Real News in Newport Beach
I don’t usually get involved in our school board races and I try to stick to Newport Beach alone, but when blatant criminal activity is occurring, it’s time for someone to speak up.
Basically, we have Karen Yelsey, who is currently on the school board. She’s being challenged by newcomer Dr Gina Nick, who says she can do a better job. All the regular arguments are made about why Yelsey is bad– but there’s one that has really stuck out. Apparently, Miss Nick was in the middle of switching schools for her young daughter, and someone wrote in to StuNews proclaiming that she hadn’t registered yet. Not a big deal, plenty of time to do that, right?
Except there’s one small problem with that: The school records for our children are federally protected from release, so someone on Yelsey team broke federal law to access student records and then use them as campaign material.
Now, you say, this could have been anyone! That doesn’t mean that Yelsey was directly involved, right?
Except on last Tuesday’s school board meeting, something very reasonable and predictable happened: An attorney showed up to ask the schoolboard to look into who accessed the records. Not a big deal, this is pretty reasonable, and you would expect Yelsey to support looking into such a horrid breach of our childrens secure information, right?
Except instead of doing that, Yelsey’s co-boardmember Snell lashed out from the dais, speaking over the attorney repeatedly and telling him that he isn’t allowed to speak about the election. However, the attorney wasn’t speaking about the election, he was speaking about a childs records being illegally accessed, and wanted to know who did it.
The entire transcript can be found, here: https://stevesmith714.wordpress.com/2018/09/13/breaking-news-attorney-alleges-district-privacy-breach-of-student-records/
Now here’s the kicker– Karen Yelsey also endorsed Diane Dixon, and birds of a feather illegally use taxdollars and federally protected info together, so this doesn’t necessarily surprise me.
I don’t know much about her opponent, but if Yelsey Sells Student Info, and is accessing student records to launch her political campaign, I definitely know who I am NOT voting for in this upcoming election.
Who would have thought that schoolboard elections would get this dirty?
This is a bit outside my normal realm, so if any of you have more insider information on this than I do, please let me know!
