John Baker Endorsed by Everything South City

South San Francisco, CA   September 17, 2014

Everything South City endorses JOHN BAKER for SSFUSD Board

This November our city has the opportunity to bring three members to our South San Francisco Unified School District Board. Incumbent Phil Weise is campaigning for his seat. One seat belonged to Shirley Hoch who resigned last year due to health issues after serving our community well for years. The other open seat belonged to Liza Normandy who was voted into City Council and Patrick Lucy was appointed to that seat in January. Lucy is running as an incumbent.

We have done a series of Candidate Questions & Answers which can be viewed CLICK HERE.

Each candidate offers something solid to our School Board. We are a very fortunate city to have such quality folks step up willing to serve.  Thank you to each and everyone of our neighbors for going to such great lengths to help our students, our schools, our community.

While there are 3 seats open, **Everything South City will formally endorse one candidate only, JOHN BAKER. After following John Baker the past few years, we have found John to be someone who can think outside of the box and look at alternative ideas. He communicates well. As a parent of a special needs student he knows up close and personal the challenges parents face when working with the District on issues. He will not accept double speak and continues to ask for clarification until issues are resolved. He’s a numbers guy and follows the dollars closely. He has a sense of humor and knows when to use it, which can help break up stalemates in many cases. He’s a doer and collaborates well with others. We believe John Baker will make a great addition to our School Board.

Because all of the candidates are pretty well versed it was difficult to only endorse one. We see the work that Pat Murray has done for the past 2 decades for our students and how well she understands all sides of issues before the community and our School Board and would bring valuable insight to the table.  Patrick Lucy was appointed to our Board last year as he is highly qualified and has proved himself this past year. Rosa Acosta, a community volunteer,  would bring a balance of diversity as she is looking to bring the Latina perspective to the table. Rick Ochsenhirt has served our community for decades in many capacities and would bring a wealth of knowledge, as would Phil Weise who is an incumbent having served on the SSFUSD Board since 1997. Sue Olinger is also on the ballot and had applied for appointment to the vacated seat left by Shirley Hoch.

Our endorsement does not go lightly as Everything South City works hard to maintain a neutral position on most issues. We ask that our neighbors study up on each candidate and make an informed and educated vote. You can vote for up to 3 candidates, or simply 1 or 2 of them.  These candidates have done their job. Now it is time for us to do ours – and VOTE. We owe them, and our community, our vote and support for our School Board.

Update:

Everything South City is proud to have also endorsed Pat Murray for School Board. In our initial run Pat & John were tied with the tie breaker going to John. After much input from the community ESC has moved to add a 2nd endorsement for this November School Board ballot and we were happy to oblige with our initial two endorsements.