Why Dr. Margaret-Anne Coppernoll is the best candidate for MPC trustee

By Margaret-Anne Mary Coppernoll

I will continue to bring to this office substantial educational, military, and community-experience qualifications, and will advocate for adequate funding and classes in our new Marina MPC campus.

I feel with my experience of four years as your MPC trustee, other community service, academic credentials, and my past teaching experience as a university professor, I am the best qualified candidate.

Education is a vital component in the success equation for Monterey County. Monterey Peninsula College (MPC) will continue to play an enormously important role in our county because it provides a large range of educational and vocational curriculum, training, and co-op job opportunities for the community, enhances workforce quality and creates job growth, while contributing significantly to economic growth through partnerships with business and industry and cultivating small business assistance programs throughout the community. Furthermore, community college is the best bargain available to low and moderate-income students, especially in light of recent tuition hikes in the state college and university systems. I want to keep it such a bargain, accessible to as many people as possible. Many on the right want to raise tuition, de-fund public education, and limit post-secondary education to the privileged few, while spending to excess on prisons. I will continue to fight that trend with all my being. I will always vote to keep post-secondary education accessible to the diverse Marina community I hope to represent.

I want to advocate for innovative educational/vocational curriculum that meets the needs, interests and dreams of our citizens. As Trustee I will continue to ensure the new Marina MPC facilities are built with green sustainable technology, that its opportunities reflect our diversity, that outreach efforts magnetize people from other cities to participate in our education, culture, and businesses, and ensure that the college maintains its solid fiscal stability. I am confident MPC will be the source of new job growth and creation in our community, thereby contributing substantially to our city's economic well-being and first-class educational opportunities.

Now, let me adddress the issue some have raised, regarding my attendance at MPC board meetings and other matters:

A recent Herald article noted that some disgruntled former MPC trustees oppose my re-election, for reasons of poor attendance and filing a lawsuit against the district. This can be better understood in the context of past MPC board politics.

These former trustees were elected when MPC district board elections were "at large" across the western half of Monterey County. Before 2009, this was said to result in a good-old-boys trustees' club, with members elected primarily from more-affluent Monterey, PG, and Pebble Beach -- who could easily afford the hefty expense of running campaigns in a 100,000-person junior-college district stretching over sixty miles from Gorda to Marina -- but none from less-affluent Seaside or Marina with substantial minority populations.

After years of sustained pressure from progressives, MPC trustees in 2009 reluctantly divided the MPC district into five election "areas," three including Monterey, Carmel, PG, and Pebble Beach, and two closely corresponding to Seaside and Marina boundaries.

Four years ago, I and an African-American man were elected from Marina and Seaside, respectively. Election districts, as in Salinas and Watsonville, brought diversity to the MPC board.

Now, the disgruntled ex-trustees say, "When MPC was forced to vote by districts instead of at-large, the dissenting voices were concerned that some districts may find it difficult to secure candidates." The hidden message here is that diverse communities like Seaside and Marina, with substantial minority populations, can't front qualified candidates. In proper context, the snide arrogance, and indeed, bigotry, inherent in that statement, is astonishing.

These disgruntled ex-trustees attack me for missing meetings and suing the District on account of serious injuries I suffered during a bad fall at an MPC dance class.

MPC's Web site, which posts board meeting minutes, shows my actual meeting attendance. In 2011, I missed two January meetings, and attended meetings in February, March and April. Then, after having I warned Staff weeks earlier that a classroom dance floor was too slippery, I, while taking dance lessons there myself, fell and broke my wrist, and injured my back. I then had to miss five meetings between May and July. (One of the now-former disgruntles ex-trustees, while board president, illegally refused to allow me to attend telephonically.) I then came back to attend every one of six meetings between August and December 2011. Except for the time missed due to the injury, my 2011 attendance was good.

Board minutes of 2012 show I attended every one of eight meetings between January and June, was absent from two July and August meetings, was present at the September and October meetings, and absent at the November meeting. In December, I was allowed to attend by teleconference. I thus attended nine out of fourteen meetings personally, and one by phone -- during another year of convalescence during which I underwent two major back surgeries. I was confined to a wheelchair much of that time.

This year's minutes show me absent from the January and February meetings, but attending the March 2013 meeting, and then attending by teleconference at the April, May and June meetings. More recently, I personally attended the July, August, and September, due to my mproving medical condition.

Marina City Councilman David Brown has written the following:

"Margaret-Anne Coppernoll's treatment by former board members, disgruntled at Seaside and Marina being given a voice in 2009, is reminiscent of ninteenth-century disdain of injured workers' rights, prior to the advent of Workers' Compensation laws. And, that the board has denied Coppernoll the right to appear telephonically during closed session violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Americans With Disabilities Act"

As for Coppernoll's suit against the district, she has every right to seek compensation for her medical expenses and injuries, which were severe. Students complained of that slick dance floor, Coppernoll reported that to Staff, nothing was done. That's called negligence, and Coppernoll suffered greatly as a result. It's no different than if she'd been rear-ended and badly injured by an MPC vehicle while driving. Do her duties as a public official include accepting negligent, serious injury without recourse?"

The "attacks on Coppernoll are wrong and misguided at best, and bigoted at worst."