Awhile back, I posted a lengthy, fact-filled essay on why voters need to part ways with Trustee Vicki Snell this fall. All of the waste and poor academic performance should be enough, but there is one most important reason…

Early Sunday evening, right around the 6 p.m. deadline for removing campaign signage in Costa Mesa, I noticed a couple filming me yank the Leah Ersoylu signs out of the ground.

One of them asked me if I was with the campaign, I said “yes,” and explained what I was doing.

Then I introduced myself and asked their names. They told me, then admitted that they knew nothing about the school board race.

I gave them the elevator speech on Trustee Vicki Snell’s failed tenure, mentioned that Ersoylu is well-educated, an entrepreneur, and the mother of a child in the district. Then I added something new…

I told this couple – 50ish??? – that I am 65 years old and that Snell is about my age. I explained that just after Ersoylu hosted a Facebook chat with Amy Peters, another candidate in another trustee Area, I had a crystal clear moment of clarity.

My generation does not have the technology awareness required to be a decision-maker in today’s school system. Oh, I can work my way through most stuff and I was even an early-adopter at one point because I had a cell phone in 1993.

But I did not grow up with this technology and I do not have any kids at home who are growing up with it. In the years to come, that knowledge – the second nature element of embracing technology and realizing it potential and limitations – is essential in our trustees.

I told the couple that it is time to pass the torch.

At the beginning of 2020, I was asked many times whether I planned to run. My reply was usually something like, “Vicki Snell will not run unopposed. If no one runs, I will.”

Frankly, though, had I been elected I believe I would have made an impact in areas such as fiscal responsibility, but this one area – the technology awareness – is critical and it is there that I believe I would have failed miserably.

The generation just below mine – Ersoylu’s generation – deserves a chance. This is their time.

Steve Smith