As of this moment, Sweetwater Union High School District board member John McCann is the lone voting member of the governing board.
I’ll let that sink in for a moment.
If nothing changes — if neither Jim Cartmill nor Bertha Lopez change their guilty pleas so as to reverse their suspensions — McCann will be a busy, busy man come commencement time.
The annual high school graduation ceremonies throughout South Bay typically include appearances or remarks from members of the governing board. But since most of them have admitted guilt in a long-standing corruption case, four of the five trustees have quit or been suspended.
Their speeches customarily are intended to congratulate and inspire seniors who are finally on their way to the world.
But if McCann is racing from venue to venue to deliver speeches in place of his missing colleagues, this year his words of wisdom may also want to include explanations.
For starters he may want to explain how he is the last man standing. How is the newest addition to the school board the only one to have escaped the prosecutorial hammer that wiped out his fellow board members?
Were conditions and behaviors on the school board so corrupt pre-him that it was just a matter of time before Lady Bonnie Dumanis and her Prosecutorial Knights rid the South Bay of the villainous elected officials, and McCann’s presence during this time just worked out to be happenstance?
Or did McCann have a crusader’s effect and everything he came close to benefitted from his righteous and moral hue?
Did his call for transparency and ethics finally come to fruition and now, now that the board has rid itself of the corrupt lesions blemishing its reputation, good governance for the sake of the children can finally come to pass?
If that’s the case — as some of us earnestly believe — then perhaps McCann’s second explanatory aside can focus on why he’s leaving the kids behind.
Why, when he has an opportunity to lead a new group of trustees and create policy that reflects the values and ethics of a trustworthy board, is he choosing instead to run for Chula Vista City Council? Why is he seemingly abandoning the student population when on the horizon a new, promising beginning beckons?
As a former councilman, McCann had eight years to work his magic at the Chula Vista’s City Hall, yet he has only given four years to Sweetwater and its children; four years filled with turmoil and courthouse drama and one distraction after another.
But with a new board in place, and McCann as senior trustee, dare yourself to imagine all the possibilities, all the good things he can make happen.
Another four years of John McCann on the school board. Imagine!
