by Mark McDermott
Mike Welsh was perfectly satisfied with his life. He’d run a successful real estate, finance, and development business, his two kids were grown, and he was enjoying his adopted hometown of Manhattan Beach.
“I retired, and I was living the life,” he said. “I traveled around the world, and I can’t imagine a place I’d rather live than right here. I rollerbladed down The Strand this morning. I am 64 years old, and I live on vacation. I have friends I hang out with, and a lot of interests. I basically put everything on hold for this.”
The “this” Welsh refers to is his candidacy for the Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Education, which is one of the more unexpected developments that has occurred to him in his four decades as a local resident.
Last January, he caught word of something that got his attention. Welsh has a keen interest in free speech, and he discovered that three Manhattan Beach residents who had been critical of MBUSD had received cease and desist letters from district lawyers.
“I just thought, ‘This is not right,’” Welsh said. “I’m very big on free speech issues. I follow them very closely, especially when it involves public education, where the rules are quite different than anywhere else. I said, ‘They can’t do that. Why would they be doing that? And why is nobody saying anything?’”
Welsh began to pay more attention to school district matters and to meet and talk with others who shared his concerns. Instagram posts from board trustee Jason Boxer that were political in nature — supporting Palestine, and criticizing Israel — were brought to his attention. Boxer’s Instagram handle (which has since changed, at the request of fellow board members] was Jason_MBUSD.
“I’m a big supporter of political activists,” Welsh said. “Even those political activists I disagree with, I respect, because these are people who are walking the walk. They’re not just talking the talk. And Jason is one of those. He embraces what he believes in, and God bless him for that. But you have to know, as a school board trustee, that you cannot do this under your job title. Jason is a young guy, but certainly, the other four members on the board as well as the superintendent, had to know better.”
“Because once he puts Jason_MBUSD on his posts, if the board doesn’t say anything, they are giving tacit approval to the things he’s talking about. It isn’t that what he was putting out there was terrible. No, what he was putting out there was political in nature, and you don’t bring your politics into public schools if you are a teacher, representative of the board, or whatever.”
Welsh said he talked to a board member who told him they’d asked Boxer to not associate MBUSD with his political activism.
“I thought to myself, ‘You can’t do that,” he said. “We’ve got attorneys silencing people who are exercising their constitutional right with cease and desist letters, and then you turn around and allow something like this?’”
By this time a movement was forming among people who were likewise concerned. They would regularly meet for coffee, Welsh said, and the idea of running a slate of candidates emerged. Welsh, along with Christy Barnes and John Uriostegui, agreed to run.
“This is not anything that I had ever thought I would ever want to do, and the same goes for my two compatriots, Johnny and Christy,” Welsh said. “None of us had any political aspirations at all. We all just saw things happening in the district that we didn’t like.”
Welsh said he has talked to a lot of MBUSD parents, as well as parents who have taken their kids out of the district, and heard many complaints about unresponsiveness. He believes this is the biggest issue behind declining enrollment.
“People who have an issue, they go to the teacher, and it doesn’t get resolved,” he said. “Then they go to the principal, and it doesn’t get resolved. Then it goes to the superintendent, and it doesn’t get resolved. And then they go to the school board, they speak, and there is no follow up. I can’t tell you the number of people I spoke with who had legitimate concerns and had they been addressed at all, they would not have left the district.”
Welsh said this communication problem has been confirmed by a survey conducted as part of the district’s Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP), which this year found only 28 percent of parents believe they are seen as “educational partners and engaged in developing goals to help improve schools” and “feel welcomed, valued, and connected” at schools. Only 27 percent of parents said they’d been provided opportunities to engage in “two-way communication” with schools and the district.
Welsh said his business background will help in this area, as well as the budget.
“Anybody who reached out to me will get a response the same day,” Welsh said. “Anyone who wants to can call me. That’s just how I am. I like the connection….I’ll talk to anybody about anything because I like to learn, and I want to hear their point of view.” ER
