myBurbank Talks
myBurbank Talks
Meet the Candidate: Annie Markarian, School Board, Trustee Area 5 Candidate
What if you could ensure a safer and more academically enriching environment for students? Join us as we sit down with Annie Markarian, a candidate for the Burbank Board of Education Trustee, Area 5, in the 2024 election. Annie takes us through her inspiring journey from North Hollywood to Burbank, enriched by her impressive academic credentials from USC and Loyola Law School. With a professional background in labor and employment law, she explains her motivation for running for the school board, driven by a passion for finding win-win solutions for the Burbank Unified School District's numerous challenges.
Our conversation tackles some of the most pressing issues facing the district today, from school safety and budget efficiency to academic performance. Annie emphasizes the need to improve career and college readiness, upgrade school infrastructure, and enhance parental involvement in the educational process. She brings attention to the importance of School Resource Officers and shares insights from a recent financial audit to help prevent future budget errors. Her commitment to serving all of Burbank, regardless of the new district-based voting system, is a central theme, ensuring a balanced and fair representation for all residents.
Looking ahead, we discuss the anticipated population growth in Burbank with the construction of 5,000 new housing units and its impact on local schools. Annie shares her vision for making new housing family-friendly and affordable while also revitalizing academic performance and investing in arts programs for a well-rounded education. On a lighter note, we learn about Annie's personal interests, including her love for family, pets, and community activities like organizing hikes to encourage kids to embrace the outdoors. Tune in for a comprehensive and heartfelt discussion on the future of education in Burbank with Candidate Annie Markarian.
Find out more about Annie Markatian and her campaign:
Website: www.Burbank5for5.com
Email: Burbank5for5@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/796296279345694
Hello Burbank. I'm Annie Markarian and I'm your candidate for the Burbank Board of Education Trustee, area 5. Listen to what I have to say about my background and vision for the future of Burbank education in this edition of Meet the Candidate.
Speaker 2:My Burbank Talks presents another episode of Meet the Candidate, the show where we invite anyone appearing on the Burbank ballot in the 2024 election to join us here and give our listeners a chance to learn about their background and the issues important to them. Now let's join our podcast.
Speaker 3:Hello Burbank, craig Sherwood here with you once again, and guess what? It's election season, with more time, general election season, and we're ready to do our first podcast of the general election season, and today's going to be with school board and it's going to be with Annie Markarian, who is running for, I believe, district 5 in the Board of Education race. They've decided to do districts this year, so you should find out what district you're in, and in three of the districts there's actually a candidate for you to vote on. So let's do District 5. So I also want to let people know that, or the candidates, especially. If you'd like to be on one of our podcasts, send an email to news at myburbankcom and let me know, and we will be glad to set up a podcast for you. Our only rules are you have to appear on a Burbank ballot, that's it. It doesn't care what party you're with or what office it's for your. That's it. It doesn't care what party you're with or what office it's for. His name has to be in a Burbank ballot, though. Anyhow, let's talk about Annie Markarian here, who is running for school board.
Speaker 3:Let me give you a little background on her. She's been a Burbank resident since 1992. She completed her undergraduate degree at USC in 2000. I guess, go Trojans for you Trojan people out there and graduated from Loyola Law School in 2005. A very prestigious law school actually. She's been practicing attorney, specializing in labor and employment law for nearly 20 years, with the past 11 years dedicated to the public sector. She's had roles as senior staff attorney for labor relations, director of labor and Employee Relations and Chief Negotiator. She currently oversees both human resources and risk management and is responsible for collaborating with five bargaining units, 1,000 employees across 18 worksites and numerous stakeholders to advance a shared mission. She says her guiding principle has always been find the win-win solutions Kind of like that, huh. So, annie, welcome to our show today.
Speaker 1:Thank you, nice to be here.
Speaker 3:Let me ask you, let's start off with Annie, the young person here Before you came to Burbank. The young person here Before you came to Burbank, where'd?
Speaker 1:you grow up and what were your experiences back then? So I grew up in the far far city of North Hollywood. The American dream brought my family to Burbank. We came here just as I was entering high school in 1992. And Burbank has been home ever since and I feel very rooted in the city and I like to see the city make wonderful progress and support its, support, its residents.
Speaker 3:I have something about these districts are going to happen is that you're going to have to actually represent an area, I think, and just your, your constituents are going to be. You know, like I say, burbank High maybe. And you know, like I say, what are you going to do for Burbank High? They won't care about boroughs. I mean, that's going to be a slippery slope when it comes to districts and representation, where you know, I think, in your heart, you want to represent all the people in Burbank.
Speaker 1:And that's what I tell people when they ask about that. I say well, you know what you're voting for trustee area five. But the five board members that you have there are there to represent the entirety of Burbank.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:So you became a lawyer? What got you into wanting to become a lawyer? What was that all about? So my undergraduate degree was in psychology and sociology. I very much like the human dynamic, I like to study the psychosocial dynamics of people and communities, and law was actually kind of a natural step with that background. I went to law school about a year after I graduated from USC and my life has just kind of progressed from there. I started off my career at a small law firm, went on to a large national law firm doing labor and employment law, and that has been kind of my trajectory ever since.
Speaker 3:So why labor law? Why did you not think about criminal law or corporate law and all those things I mean? What got your fancy about that?
Speaker 1:I love people, I love being able to support them. I think that with labor law, with employment law, you're really able to do. What I say I like doing is find those win-win solutions. With criminal law, it's a win or lose. With corporate law, you're looking for the upper hand. With labor and employment work, you are looking to find those win-win solutions. You're looking to support hardworking people and furthering a mission and a vision of the agency.
Speaker 3:Okay, I love that. So now you came to Burbank. You've been here since 1992. So you've been here for a while.
Speaker 1:I've been here for 30 plus years.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, which is a while, but you're new to the political front. You've never been involved in politics or anything. What motivated you to decide I need to run the school board? What was that all about?
Speaker 1:I've never been in the political world and I never expected to be in the political world. This is very, very new to me and, despite the learning experience you know, I started going to school board meetings a couple years ago and what I saw in the public meetings that I was going to is that BUSD is facing many, many challenges. Just as I started going to school board meetings, they had the in March 2023, they had a special meeting about safety concerns that were going on in school and I'm sure many residents remember that there were parents and students coming in Very emotional.
Speaker 1:Very, very difficult one. So after that, they put the superintendent on leave and then ultimately paid him out with his contract and multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. They had a massive accounting error. Just a lot of administrative challenges that they're facing within the last year and a half or so and that I think they're going to continue to face because of the financial and fiscal crisis that they're going through Right now. They're using their reserves to meet their budget needs and eventually, if they don't pass a parcel tax in a couple of years, they're not going to have any reserves left. So they're facing a lot of challenges and I would say that I bring a very special skill set with my background in public sector and with my background in labor and employment law to be able to help those. Right now, we have a board full of educators. We don't have a very diverse skill set on that board. So I think that with me running and if I were to get on that board of education, I would be able to bring a different perspective and a different skill set.
Speaker 3:Probably much needed too. I know one of the problems they've had there in the past is a number of principals leaving. You know, and they really wouldn't tell me exactly why, but when you have like 10, 12 principals leaving and usually you don't have more than one or two a year there was something going on there. So I think you know the people need to especially the faculty, need to trust in their leaders. The thing that concerns me they're having this new bond issue coming up and they want to get facilities and everything else and it's really needed. It is really needed.
Speaker 3:But what scares me is they're going to have an oversight committee but they're going to appoint the oversight committee and I'm worried that those members are going to be their friends and not be people who will be fiscally responsible or really look at all the dynamics and what really needs to be their friends and not be, you know, people who will be fiscally responsible or really look at all dynamics and what really needs to be worked on. So is there anything about that whole process, that kind of you know you've thought about?
Speaker 1:Well, I will say I've talked to a lot of people about the bond and I think what I hear over and over again is support for the bond in general but a lot of concern over the leadership that's going to oversee the bond and that has been a theme in many, many conversations. And yes, that bond oversight committee is so important and I think historically, for prior bonds we've had some really strong community leaders who have been on those oversight committees. But I think it's questionable whether or not that's going to be the case this time.
Speaker 3:Yes, I have to agree with you. So currently your job you're overseeing staff and over a thousand employees in H&R and all the things you do. You know and legal terms, and I'm sure that there's a reason why people aren't happy, but now you're dealing with you know public, you know people who work in the public sector, you know the teachers and the. You know and their unions and all that. So what is the most challenging part you think is going to be working with them, or compared to what you're doing now, or how do you, how are you going to mix the two together to make it a good situation for them?
Speaker 1:Sure, so my background. For the last 11 years I have been in the public sector, I have worked with five different bargaining units and I actually started in the position of director of labor and employee relations when those relationships were strained and we spent a lot of time building trust, a lot of time listening to each other and a lot of time figuring out what priorities are for various stakeholders that were involved. And as a board member it would not necessarily be my role to be in that room, but I can help in the background with the guidance to be able to provide the administrators and the chief negotiators at BUSD to be able to do that and really a lot of suggestions to be able to kind of drive that type of a change and improvement.
Speaker 3:I think it's something that's very it's critical and it's also, you know, you've got to get on the side of the union, you have to get on the side of the, you know, but on the other hand you can't be on their side so much that you give away the store. But I think in Burbank, you know, we have to really celebrate our teachers and you know, I think even up to our principals. You know, I know that our administrative staff got a lot of raises lately, but you know we need to keep our core teachers.
Speaker 1:You know, have been 20, 30 years in and same with the principals, while we have a lot of new ones we'd like them to stick around, because continuity is very important in the schools, it's true, and you need a lot of support, and a lot of particularly for Burbank, because we are underpaid in comparison to other school districts, compared to Glendale or compared to LAUSD, burbank, teachers are paid less and so what is going to keep them, keep stability within our schools, if they can just go to another district and get paid $8,000, $10,000?
Speaker 3:more. I agree. People who have listened to me in the past and listened to our podcast know I'm very anti-district. And yet the school board went ahead and kind of they were threatened if you don't do districts, we're going to sue you. And they fell for it where the city of Burbank said forget about it. So now we have districts. You know that people vote for. I don't think most people even know that. I think 90% of the population has no idea there's districts. To find a map on the school district website is nearly impossible of the districts. So how do you feel about the districts now that they've been formed and would you try to change it back to a system where everybody votes? You know there's no more districts again. Get back to the way it used to be. Would you be in favor of that or not?
Speaker 1:So lots of questions there. Yes, a lot.
Speaker 3:Happy baggage.
Speaker 1:So first I will say, as I'm going door to door knocking, talking to people you're right, most people do not know that we districted, particularly since the city was more vocal about not going forward with districting.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of our constituents, a lot of our residents don't know that USD took a different approach than the city. I think that also, a lot of Burbank residents don't know that two-thirds, two-fifths of them are not going to be able to vote for school board in this election. Right, so that's going to be a challenge, particularly since those of us who are running are saying we're running to represent all of you. We're not running to represent, you know, just District 5 or just District 1. We're running to represent all of the USD. And so now two-fifths of the city is saying, well, if you're running to represent me, why can't I vote for you? Vote for you. So it's a real, it's a real challenge and I think, um, you know something that that that most, most of the burbank residents that I've spoken to, have not been in support of in terms of what I would do if I'm on the board with regard to that. I think there are so many other priorities to deal with right now that that would you know.
Speaker 3:That's, that's not on my platform okay, well, let's, let's start talking about your platform a little. Okay, sorry. So what do you want to do if elected? Let's talk about your platform, because I saw some things you'd put out which I thought was very interesting. So why don't you talk about your platform and what your immediate goals would be and your long-term goals?
Speaker 1:So my platform I tell people my platform is very basic. My platform is academic achievement, better utilization of the budget for students and teachers, more pathways for parents to get involved, safe schools, wonderful learning environment. These are not novel issues. Right now, our career and college readiness is at 49%. We have had roughly a 2% decline each year for the past several years. Like I mentioned, we had that $11 million budget error. We're utilizing our reserves and risk running out of money. Our roofs are leaking, our AC isn't working in the summer of like 100 plus degree temperatures.
Speaker 1:So these are some very basic priorities, and they're, frankly, they're not very different than other candidates. Even my opponent has a very similar platform. Difference between me and him, though, is that he's been there for eight years and the issues have gotten worse, and so I would be kind of that candidate that comes in and says let's really deal with these issues. These are issues that need some attention. How do we get the test scores better? How do we support our teachers to be able to do that? How do we support our students to be able to do that passes? Or, if we decide that, ultimately, a parcel tax is appropriate at the time that it comes up? How do we gain that trust so that we don't have a third failed parcel tax?
Speaker 3:A lot of things to unpack right there but, let me kind of re-ask the question again what is probably, of all those things, the most important that you'd like to focus on day one?
Speaker 1:I think the top two and this is what I'm hearing from the community safe schools and academics. Those are the things that the community wants and, like I said, I'm not a politician. I'm doing this to support the community, so their priorities are my priorities.
Speaker 3:What do you see that you would probably do to make safer schools? What would be your plan? Do you have any plan in place or any thought process on how to make the schools safer?
Speaker 1:I think that right now what I understand is that the SROs I think in the last school year there was one SRO, now there might be two or they're working on getting a second one that SRO that we had last year. She said that all she really had the bandwidth to do was report child abuse cases. She didn't really have the bandwidth to do much more. Historically we've had up to five SROs and that has been dismantled. So I do support SROs and that has been dismantled. So I do support SROs. I support and I do recognize why the board decreased the number of SROs and I certainly am not in support of criminalizing our students. I'm not in support of intimidating our students, but I do support some type of a community safety partnership model where the officers who are on campus are there in a non-intimidating way, are there to develop relationships, to be mentors and to kind of really support the school safety.
Speaker 3:I do agree with you, because when I went to the Burbank school system I was through Jordan and through Burroughs we had SROs at each school and you'd see them at the game, you'd see them walk around the campus, you'd see them at lunch, you'd be able to talk to them and stuff and, like you said, there's one SRO for every— it's basically just putting Band-Aids on everything and not being able to, you know, heal the problems. You know, and I think, especially nowadays, there's a lot of apprehension toward police sometimes, especially in the younger generation. You know, and they look at you know they need to know that these are people too, they're good people and they do care about them. You know good days and bad days. I think having SROs is a key to building that trust up in the community too. Okay, so we got some SROs going, what's next?
Speaker 1:So so the other. I would say that my skillset really is with regard to some of the administrative, some of the administrative support that the school can use. The agency that I work with has a $1.8 billion budget. So we have, you know, kind of a lot of efficiencies internally to to be able to manage that and I think that BUSD. So when they had that $11 million budgeting error, they had this financial team come in and do an audit of their operations and they had 40 areas identified for improvement.
Speaker 1:Since we've gotten that, they call it the FICMAP report. Since they've gotten the FICMAP report, they've made one update. They've kind of come into a board meeting one time and said, well, here are the things that we're working on to be able to address these 40 recommendations. We haven't heard about it since then. So I think that really focusing on those recommendations I mean they were a broad range of recommendations, including improving your business systems, including improving your staffing, you know, improving kind of the training and the expertise within your different departments they were reachable goals. I think that you know that's one area where I would be able to say, all right, well, you know we have these 40 recommendations. Where are we? Are we in progress or have we met these goals? Are we working on meeting them? How are we doing on the staffing issues going on here, but I think that that area needs more conversation.
Speaker 3:I agree 100%, because I learned a rule years and years ago that when something goes wrong, you know go ahead and you know make the decision and then let everybody complain for two or three months and they'll forget about it. And I think you're right, I think they've okay. Well, we did this, we did our, our, our brought in the accountants and everybody looked it over, you know, did an intense look at the budget and the whole thing, and there's our report and we'll just kind of, you know, and every three, four, five months from now, we don't think about it anymore. So I think that's a very important thing, because we went through that once. We don't want to do that again. So I think it's you know, there are recommendations there. Some are easier, probably, than others to accomplish, but maybe you know they need that as a task force of a couple of people that focus only on those, those things.
Speaker 1:I think that's. I think that's absolutely right. I think that, particularly if you're able to establish a subcommittee on the board that says you know what, we're not going to rubber stamp these budgets anymore. We're going to go ahead and actually kind of look at them and, as part of that budget approval process, look at where we are on some of the recommendations in the FICMAP report, I think that that will go a long way in rebuilding that public trust.
Speaker 3:Let's talk about the principles. Are you going to do to convince our principals that you're on board and that they have somebody that they can talk to and somebody to support them and to keep them around? Do you have any thoughts on that?
Speaker 1:Sure, you know, again, like I said as I went into my role, there was a lot of distrust with our bargaining units and one of the ways that I addressed that and that mistrust was to listen. It was just to kind of sit with them and listen to them and listen to their concerns and really listen to their suggestions as well, because they're the boots on the ground, they're the ones that know what's happening on their campuses, they're the ones that know what their needs are, so you know. So I think that kind of one of the best ways to provide support is to really just listen and value their recommendations.
Speaker 3:I know one of the big problems right now in Burbank is enrollment, that they're really struggling for enrollment and you know they're letting people from other districts come in. You know, have their parent works here and things like that, you know, because butts in the seat equals money from the state. So what are your thoughts on enrollment and trying to keep? You know because we have kids who leave Burbank to go to private schools outside of Burbank. So would you have any kind of thoughts on how to keep those kids in Burbank and how to attract? You know, making sure we have the attendance that we need to have. You know, the student attendance over here.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, I will say my understanding is that student attendance is actually quite high. So the students that we have are coming to school. From what I can tell, I think it's over 90% of students are coming to school.
Speaker 1:I think that you know it's over 90% of students are coming to school. I think that it's just the student body is shrinking year after year, and that's where we're kind of in a challenge, because our funding is based on, like you said, butts in seats. So I've heard that there are multiple reasons why the student body is shrinking. One of them, as you said, is that some parents are choosing to send their children to private schools. I think the other issue is that you know just, the population in California is shrinking as well, as the birth rate is shrinking right. So those are all kind of bigger challenges that are going on right now. With regard to the kind of the one that you bring up in terms of the private schools, you know, one of my, one of my priorities is to create better, better pathways for parents to get involved, better build those pathways and those relationships. We can encourage those parents who are taking their students out to go to private schools or even homeschooling, to be able to bring them back to BUSD.
Speaker 3:I know that right now the city is in the process of trying to build another 5,000 housing units. They have to because of state mandates. That's right Within the next four or five years. There's also big projects that are going on on Front Street, on First Street. The Old Fries has become a huge housing complex. There's a new housing complex at Empire Plus. We've got to build 5,000 more so we have a possible population boom coming up. Do you think the schools can handle? Do you think we have enough schools in those areas that can handle? You know the population increase, because right now we're at 100,000. I can see us going up to about 110,000, 115,000 in the next, you know, three, four years maybe.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's a wonderful problem to have is to have, you know, more students. It means more funding. It means that we can better utilize our learning environments and our schools to be able to have spaces for our students. I think one of the challenges with the housing that's happening in Burbank is that, you know, are they going to be housing units that are going to be able to house families? Are they going to be affordable enough to be able to house families? Are going to be able to house families? Are they going to be affordable enough to be able to house families? Are they going to be? Are there going to be, you know, enough bedrooms for families that are going to have, you know, two, three, four kids to be able to come and move into them? Because a lot of the, a lot of the buildings that we're seeing come up have what? A 10% or so affordable housing rate and the rest of them are market rate and those rents are what? Four or five $6,000.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right now Burbank is studying, rent control and everything else going on and that's a slippery slope because there's two sides to that story and both work. You know, we've noticed that we don't have distinguished schools in Burbank anymore and we don't have blue ribbon schools anymore. It's kind of stopped in the last three, four, five years now, which we used to have them every year. You'd drive by schools and they're painted on the side of the wall. You know blue ribbon school or California distinguished school, but that's not happening anymore. How would you try to change that narrative and bring that back? You know because, let's face it, people come to Burbank for good schools and when they see distinguished school, that brings people to Burbank. So what would you do to try to change that pattern?
Speaker 1:I mean, it's been several years since Burbank has had a distinguished school status. Again, I think the focus is to be on academics Right now. In the last several years, academics has declined a couple percent per year. The school has actually a dashboard and each year their goal is to improve academics, career and college readiness, math, reading comprehension by two percent and in fact it's going in the opposite trajectory. So we really do need to focus on education, improving education, providing our teachers and principals the support they need to be able to do that let's lighten it up a little bit.
Speaker 3:What do you like to do to have fun? What is it? You know it's the weekend. What is it you do? What are your interests? Do you have hobbies? Do you have any interests? You know? Let people get to know who you are, not just a. You know somebody who works all day in their job and probably does pretty well at it. But what do you do to have fun? How do you enjoy your free time?
Speaker 1:So, I am very much, you know. I spend a lot of time with my family and they take up a majority amount of my time. And that family includes my very furry little golden doodle. He's not very little, he's about 70 pounds, his name is Monty and he is the gentlest soul, but he is quite stubborn and so, you know, we go on our walks twice a day, every morning, every afternoon. He has his schedule and he has his routine and he is my joy. So, yes, he takes up a lot of my time, as does my entire family. So that's where I focus my time and my weekends. I love nature, I love to go hiking, I love to go swimming lakes, kind of day trips outside, you know, day trips outside of Los Angeles. Before I decided to run for school board, those were the ways I spent my free time. Now it is all focused on education and campaigning.
Speaker 3:Well, you say you like to take hikes and stuff. I have an idea for you. Sure, if you get elected, why not set up maybe a uh, maybe a monthly hike and get kids from your district or, I guess, all Burbank, to take, because our kids let's face it, their kids are buried in video games nowadays. You know they're more worried about, you know, playing Call of Duty or whatever they I got to show my age. I have no idea what they play nowadays, but um, but they don't get out, they don't socialize, they don't talk to each other, they text each other. You have any thoughts on what we should do to get our kids out of the technology and into living life again, like you said, taking hikes, going out and doing things, getting away for a little bit. Any thoughts on that?
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's a wonderful idea. I think we should absolutely have some type of a regular monthly hike with our community, both Stoke Canyon and Wildwood, our amazing hikes in Burbank.
Speaker 3:Look what I got you into now, huh.
Speaker 1:So I think that's great. I think that you know to get our youth outside of their phones and outside of their video games. I think that you, though their focus is academics and their focus is school safety. I will say that a lot of conversations have been happening about the arts and investing in the arts and arts programs within and across BUSD.
Speaker 3:Well, you got me thinking here, and this is a question I didn't think about and I'm now probably going to bring up to everybody who comes in for a podcast. I think it's so important to have extracurricular activities, whether it's the arts, whether it's drama programs, bands, but sports. I've been a high school coach for 40 years and I know, when I look back at my kids, you know, especially over the years, they have gotten lifelong friendships that the team they play on they remain friends with for the rest of their lives. That's how important it is and there's so many life lessons in sports. But I know in Burbank, basically the school district pays for nothing, including the bus.
Speaker 3:I mean, you want to take a bus to a game? The team has to raise the money to do it. There is nothing except the school pays for the coaches. The school gives them a field and that's it. They don't supply uniforms, they don't supply equipment, they don't supply anything, and that's for really all the extracurricular programs and that's so needed. So what now? So, mike, I'm going to throw you a little under the bus here because, like I said, we haven't, you know, I just kind of thought of this. But what would you do to support the extracurricular activities. You know we have Burbank Arts for All and especially the athletics, because there's nobody who really speaks to athletics and how to take care of our athletic program. So any thoughts on that?
Speaker 1:yeah, I mean, the challenge is the budget right. The challenge is making those two ends of the budget meet, meet and being able to, you know, provide education and provide kind of the core curriculum and what's left over for the arts, what's left over for music, what's left over for sports. And, you know, if we can, if we can fix the budget, if we can right size the budget, then we would be able to focus on some of those other areas. Now I've heard a lot of people say well, what about community partnerships? That's fine, that's great. Let's let's get those community partnerships in, absolutely create pathways for those community and business programs. That's not going to balance our budget. That's not necessarily going to cover all the costs for sports and arts and choir. So we really need to be able to right-size our budget. And that's something a lot of the parents are talking about. They're saying we're out there, we're fundraising, we're fundraising for all of the programs that our kids are in and they would really love to see BUSD be able to absorb some of those costs.
Speaker 3:You look at sports, there's 12, maybe 12, 15 sports in the school, boys and girls. There's the like I said, the drama and all the other clubs, and there's only so many people who can give money. You know, when it comes to fundraising, you keep hitting the same people over and over again. You keep going to the restaurant for a fundraiser for 20%, and I mean, all of a sudden now the family has to go ahead and spend money on entire food, you know, and for 20% I'd rather just give the program $20 instead of spending $100 until they get $20, you know. So I think there has to be ways to work that out, but absolutely there has to be, because every year athletics have been cut, they've been cut to all the extracurricular programs, and I think that's, I think we're missing the program, the whole thing there. So, anyhow, that's enough. Let me get off my bandwagon here a little bit. But I care and I'm around it. You know, I've been around it my whole life. So I see the benefits of sports and programs and what it does for development of a kid.
Speaker 3:Let's, before we end up here, I'd like to turn it over to you, the candidates, so you can talk to the people. Tell them why they should vote for you. Tell them why you should be elected. Tell them why this is important. I think you conveyed a lot of that already, but I'm giving you a chance now, in your own words. Take as much time as you want, talk to the people and let them know why they need to put Annie Markarian on their little check mark, or make sure there's no hanging chat, or whatever it's going to be, for make sure you get elected. So go ahead. This is your time.
Speaker 1:Sure, I'm Annie Markarian. I'm a candidate for the Burbank Board of Education, trustee Area 5. My platform is called Burbank 5 for 5. These are the five priorities for Trustee Area 5. They include academic achievement, better budget utilization, safe schools, more pathways for parents and the community to get involved and an all-around excellent learning environment. I have a skill set that is very unique and that is currently lacking on the board. It includes collaboration with bargaining units, lacking on the sport. It includes collaboration with bargaining units. It includes management of a budget of over $1.8 billion. It includes administrative streamlining and efficiencies, and I'm able to leverage those skills for the betterment of Burbank, because our schools are a reflection of our community. I am not a politician. I am not seeking any endorsements from politicians. I'm doing this because I care, I love Burbank. I've been here for 30 years. I hope to be here for 30 more and I would love to see Burbank schools thrive and meet the expectation and the reputation that they've had historically. A vote for me is a vote against the status quo.
Speaker 3:Hey, Marquette, you're a pretty impressive person. Thank you. I think you're on some good tracks here. It's good to see some new blood come in too, some well-educated new blood too, so I think it's a good mix. So that's kind of it. Anything you want to say, as we end this thing up.
Speaker 1:This is a pleasure. Thank you very much.
Speaker 3:No, no, it's our, it's our pleasure. I think it's important that people get to know who you are and hear from you directly. You know, instead of a flyer or a mailing or whatever it is, that you actually get to hear the person. So that's about it. Once again, this is Craig Sherwood. If you are a candidate and you want to come on a broadcast, just send an email to news at my Burbank. If you're on the Burbank ballot, we'd love to hear from you and I'm sure all Burbank would. So until next time. Thank you very much for listening and we will talk to you next time.
Speaker 2:My Burbank Talks would like to thank all of my Burbank's advertisers for their continued support Burbank Water Power, cusimano Real Estate Group, umi Credit Union, burbank Chamber of Commerce, gain Credit Union, providence, st Joseph Medical Center, community. Chevrolet, media City Credit Union, ucla Health, tequila's Burbank Logix Credit Union, ucla Health, tequila's Burbank Logix Credit Union, hill Street Cafe, pertain Escobar Wealth Management and the UPS Store on Third Street.