New CVE president Jennefer Porch is as secretive as Peg Myers

The annual CTA Presidents' Conference is taking place at Asilomar State Beach (see photo) near Monterey.

New Chula Vista Educators president Jennefer Porch is up at Asilomar this week at the annual CTA Presidents' Conference, but she left instructions with her staff not to release the names of new CVE officers.

Perhaps CTA President Dean Vogel can give Jennefer some tips about how to run CVE. I myself had a nice chat with Mr. Vogel at the conference a few years ago. (I was a lowly CTA member, not a chapter president, but Mr. Vogel was very nice.)

Jennefer may have replaced Peg Myers as president of CVE, but she doesn't seem to have replaced Peg's policies regarding secrecy. Furtiveness has been in force since 2001 when former presidents Gina Boyd and Jim Groth and executive director Tim O'Neill decided to cover up crimes by Gina's friend Robin Donlan at Castle Park Elementary.

Jennefer held her first meeting as president on July 10, 2012. It was advertised as the meeting when a decision would be made as to who the new vice-president would be. Elections don't seem to be the method of choice for choosing either CVESD board members of CVE officers. Three years ago vice president-elect Barbara Dunwoodie chose to resign right after winning election. What kind of politics is going on behind closed doors on Landis Avenue in Chula Vista?

CTA advertises itself as a democratic institution, but it is actually hierarchical, and the power structure is decided through back room politics, not elections.

Jim Groth and Peg Myers avoid Castle Park Elementary when they welcome CTA vice president Dean Vogel to Chula Vista

Dean Vogel

Former Chula Vista Educators president Jim Groth (now on CTA board of directors), and current CVE president Peggy Myers avoided Castle Park Elementary, where they had been involved in illegal actions that cost CTA a lot of money to cover up, when they took CTA vice president Dean Vogel on a guided tour of CVESD schools.

I met Dean Vogel a few years ago at Asilomar. He seems like a nice guy, but then Jim Groth also is a nice guy. In CTA, unfortunately, nice guys have to do what head counsel Beverly Tucker wants them to do, and that sometimes involves some pretty nasty stuff.

Who's in charge at CTA? Not the elected officials. I had to laugh a few years ago when Barbara Kerr, president of CTA, was named as the third most powerful person in California. Barbara ran herself ragged doing what she was told. She even changed her political party registration. It should have been Beverly Tucker who got the title. By contrast, the California Federation of Teachers actually has democratic elections for top officials.

At the October 20, 2009 board meeting Superintendent Lowell Billings thanked Peg Myers for conducting the limited-purpose tour.