DEAR EDITOR:

Many of you may have enthusiastically voted for Dr. John Abraham for Cobb school board last time, only to be disappointed by his violation of campaign promises. The main violation was his promise to give our kids longer summers and an earlier school start date.

I have been following the antics of the school board closely for the last four or vie years and I am constantly shocked at the board's total failure to listen to parents and to follow the law.

The parents in Cobb County have made it very clear that they want a later school start date, but the school board doesn't listen.

The Marietta Daily Journal repeatedly reports on the illegal "executive session" voting done by the school board, with the advice and consent of its long time attorney, Glenn Brock.

Yet, the school board has continued to conduct such votes. The school board attorney (whose firm earns a TON of money from this contract) should have been fired, on the spot, as soon as the newspaper revealed the umpteen illegal votes cast. Instead, he wasn't, and the attorney says he is sorry that "mistakes were made."

Even lay people can easily understand that you cannot take votes in secret during executive session. Why didn't the school board attorney know that? He should be fired, now! Instead, the board renewed his contract, and apparently has no plans to find a new attorney, despite giving lip service to re-bidding the attorney contract. If I gave such bad advice to my clients, I would have been (and should have been) fired!

Now, we have a choice between two candidates. Candidate No. 1, Bill Borden, is by all available information a political hack who is the candidate of choice of the political "establishment."

His campaign is even chaired by two mayors. Have you ever heard of a sitting mayor getting so involved in a race that he chairs the campaign? What is up with that? I have never heard of any such thing, and you have to ask yourself why two mayors would do that, unless this was "their boy" to do their bidding on the school board (i.e., think bond issues).

If you have been reading the newspaper, you have seen that Borden has been nothing but smart-alecky and extremely evasive in answering questions about his background, such as property transferred to the government, about why his family has Alaska tags on their cars contrary to his claiming a Georgia homestead exemption, about the affairs of the numerous corporate entities of he and his wife, etc. In his interviews in the newspaper, Borden has displayed an extremely selective memory, remembering very minute details of things when it seems to be in his favor, but answering "I don't remember" on things that he should clearly know about. He also flat-out gives answers that seem to defy the truth.

On the other-hand, his opponent (Candidate No. 2), Kathy Angelucci, who I do not know personally and have never spoken with, has been a constant and even-tempered observer of the school board and has alerted us over the years to its dalliances. Her critiques have been published in the newspaper, and I have agreed with practically everything she has said about the school board.

From all the information I have, Ms. Angelucci is simply a concerned taxpayer and parent, and she our best interests at heart. I am sure that the school board has taken her opinions into account when it has back-tracked on some of the unwise decision it has made.

If my reading of the reports on fundraising have been correct, Borden has raised more money than has Ms. Angelucci. Maybe he will win this race as a result. I hope this race will not come down to who has the most money or who has the backing of our city council. Instead, it should be, who wants to uphold the law; who is open with the public as far as their background; who wants the best for our kids; who is not just a political hack?"

I urge you to look into what I have said - don't just take my word for it.

Daryl Kidd
North Cobb