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get the recommendation of the State Department of Education and that was easy since George Kibby's father was a key administrator there. We got written approval of our Amended Application and went back to Allocation where they agreed to take the proposition to the Allocation Board at its next meeting. After much wrangling and nit picking we got the funds to buy three new sites and build three new schools. We also drew new attendance boundaries that did away with the grouping of Mexicans in one school. Our new schools would be racially integrated long before the remainder of the country was forced to go through that process.

Here I want to throw in some thoughts about the organization of schools in this country. after thirty years of work in school administration, I have come to the conclusion that local school boards are flat failures in handling school affairs. Those boards are mainly composed of small-time, tin-horn politicians whose primary aims are to build their own egos and to gain personal political power. In thirty years I worked with only three boards whose primary aims were the education of the pupils under their control. All the others were self-serving small-minded people whose interests were mainly personal and not aimed at the educational well being of school pupils. Let me temper those statements just a little. There were some very fine individual board members in my experience but nearly all boards were controlled by a majority who could not have cared less about the students in the schools. I doubt that the situation today is any different than it was when I retired in 1976.

I have related how George Kibby was chosen from five qualified applicants by the Corona Board of Education and noted that he was an experienced administrator. After he was on the job for six months, the Board Members began to criticize George about small things. Those criticisms were voiced to me, not to George. At a Board meeting, when George was absent, the members began a litany of complaints about him. I stopped them abruptly. I told them that they were "chicken" and if they had criticism of George they should make it to him not to me. I also told them that if they did their jobs as well as George did his we would have a wonderful district. That "lecture" was entirely too strong and I bent some noses that never got straight as long as I was in Corona. I knew it was a mistake as soon as I did it. I found out right there that erasers do not work on spoken words. Once they are said they echo for a long time.

On the home front things were looking up. Carol was in school and Guin was pregnant with Kay. We had sold the Norco property and were living in the Ballard house on Grand Blvd. I was still working on my Master's Degree at Claremont when Kay was born on December 3, 1951. She was a real joy and a hand full for all of us as she went through all the childhood illnesses one after the other. Carol was her champion and they were very close even though Carol was ten years older.

My salary at that time was not all that great being around four thousand dollars per year. I did extra jobs where ever possible. I worked during a month of earned vacation for Pacific