Letter to the Editor:
On August 11th I addressed the Board of Education regarding the establishment of the Bond Oversight Committee that is required by law as part of the $500,000,000 Facilities Bond that the voters approved last November. I told them that I was aware that the applications for potential committee members are on the BUSD website. I also told them that this sentence is on their website, “After interviewing potential members at a public meeting, the Board shall appoint members of the committee.” I asked them when they were going to conduct these interviews.
Board member Dr. Emily Weisberg responded to my question saying that the date to “discuss the applications and appoint the members” was set for August 21st. She also said, “we will not be interviewing the people who have applied, but we will have a robust conversation.” If this is the case, I wonder why they have that sentence on their website? Are we the voters to accept that Dr. Weisberg can contradict BUSD website?
This question and the many others being brought to the attention of the community are troubling. This Board keeps trying to reassure us that they are doing their due diligence. The facts tell a different story. There is no legal record of the decisions of the Board for all of 2024 and 2025, they voted to accept contracts that were incomplete, they authorized paying for services that were never completed, they can not explain a delay in responding to public records requests which are now being handled by a law firm, they have had to reschedule meetings in order to avoid a Brown Act violation, and overpaid a consultant without legally required board approval to do so. What else have these “leaders” done?
I hope the voters in Burbank will keep following this saga and hold these “leaders” responsible for their actions and decisions.
Linda Walmsley
Burbank
