NEW FACES SET FOR CORONADO SCHOOL BOARD

Five non-incumbent candidates running to fill two seats

In Coronado, five candidates are competing to fill two empty seats on the school board.

None of the candidates is an incumbent, so this election guarantees that there will be new blood on a board faced with guiding the small school district through the COVID-19 pandemic, a structural budget deficit, and calls from students and alumni to address the lack of racial diversity in the district.

Over the summer, more than 4,600 people signed a petition asking the school district to make a public statement condemning racism and, among other things, commit to having a more diverse curriculum that teaches history of minority groups from their perspective and requires English classes to read books written by minority authors.

Superintendent Karl Mueller responded to the petition by saying, “I strongly believe that the Black Lives Matter issue is one that our community has embraced,” as reported by the Voice of San Diego.

“I am so proud of our students that I have seen throughout town demonstrating their voice, their agency and their commitment to a better tomorrow,” he went on. “I want Coronado Unified School District to be on the front lines of systematic change.”

That petition and Mueller’s comments prompted a counter-petition demanding the school district reject solidarity with Black Lives Matter because, “BLM is a Marxist organization, not an educational institution.”

More than 260 people have signed that petition, including two of the candidates running for the local school board: Stacy Keszei and Kenneth Canada.

Keszei is an adjunct college professor and sales executive for a medical device company. She believes her more than 20 years of experience “leading sales teams for some of the largest medical device companies in the world” has given her the negotiating and strategic planning skills required to serve on the board.

“My promise is to listen to parents, students, teachers, administrators, and stakeholders with compassion, empathy, and a desire to understand and address problems with communitycentric solutions as a leader should,” she wrote in her candidate statement.

Keszei has two children in Coronado Unified schools.

Canada is a Navy veteran who has resided in Coronado since 1999 and been teaching aviation and law in a university at Chicago for the last five years.

He opposes the district’s support of Black Lives Matter.

“I’m opposed to outside forced infiltrating and disrupting our classrooms,” he wrote in a statement. “Please stand with me to support education, not indoctrination!”

He is also opposed to bullying, which he said his children have experienced firsthand. Canada said he had to pull his son from Coronado public schools because of constant bullying.

Two of the candidates, Whitney Antrim and Alexia Palacios-peters, are lawyers.

Antrim is the only candidate who was born and raised in Coronado.

She is a third-generation resident, graduated from Coronado High School and has children who attend the district. She has also coached the Mock Trail event at the local high school for years.

Antrim wants to push for increased COVID-19 testing and safety equipment so that teachers and students can safely return to campus. In the meantime, she wants to improve the distancelearning experience.

Antrim said she wants to improve transparency by upgrading the school district’s email system, which she said parents often complain about.

Before becoming a lawyer, Palacios-peters was an elementary school teacher. She had three children enrolled in the district and has extensive volunteer experience with the Coronado Band and Choir Boosters, Coronado Junior Women’s Club, Sacred Heart Catholic Church and the Naval Officer’s Spouses Club San Diego.

“I believe in serving the students and the taxpayers,” she wrote on her candidate statement. “With my experience, I believe our district can provide robust educational programs while maintaining fiscal responsibility.”

The fifth candidate is Nick Kato, an accountant who was a senior partner at a global firm before starting his own. Kato and his family moved to Coronado about a year ago. Both of his children attend the district.

He believes his accounting background makes him uniquely qualified to tackle the district’s budget woes and COVID-19 recovery.

“My ability to think outside the box to find creative and effective solutions will be particularly helpful during this critical time,” he wrote in his candidate statement.

All five candidates participated in a virtual forum on Wednesday. However, the forum descended into chaos when a group of young men entered the Zoom meeting, broadcast pornographic videos of men masturbating while yelling pro-trump messages as moderators frantically tried to mute them.

Organizers from the Coronado Democratic Club eventually closed the Zoom session and reopened it a short time later to complete the forum. An edited version of the forum will be posted sometime next week.

“If you tried to join the meeting and were denied access we apologize, but when we restarted, we did not admit anyone using either an anonymized device or a fake screen name,” moderator Brian T wrote in a statement on social media Thursday morning.