Joyce Murphy’s Oct. 9 letter calls school board trustee Malachy Sandie “way too partisan.”
Readers deserve full disclosure, so let me start with mine: I am a member of the Coronado Democratic Club and serve on its executive board. These views are my own, not the club’s. Ms. Murphy signed her letter as “a Coronado resident,” but the Eagle & Journal profiled her in 2024 as active in the Coronado Women’s Republican Club. There is nothing wrong with that. But faulting a candidate for partisanship without disclosing her own affiliation is complaining about the referee while wearing the other team’s jersey.
Now to the substance:
Ms. Murphy faults Mr. Sandie for opposing Executive Order 14191 and says no cuts to district funding have been shown. That misses the point: A trustee shouldn’t wait for the damage before raising concerns about a policy that could affect our students. The order, signed Jan. 29, 2025, directs the Secretary of Defense to find ways military-connected families can use Defense Department funds to attend “private, faith-based, or public charter schools.” In a Navy town, a trustee who watches those dollars is doing his job, not playing politics.
She calls “climate change” a partisan answer. But Mr. Sandie wrote that heat is threatening students and staff, and he proposed solar-powered air conditioning. Peggy Duncan, whom Ms. Murphy praises, named the same problem: cooling classrooms to avoid half-day schedules. When one candidate says “cooling,” it’s sound policy, but when another says “climate,” it’s ideology?
She also lists “gun violence” among his “partisan concerns.” On Oct. 15, three children and a teacher were killed in a shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, and a child and another teacher were injured. Keeping students safe from gun violence is not a Democratic talking point. It is every school board’s responsibility.
Ms. Murphy skips the rest of his answers entirely: rebuilding reserves, managing roughly $6 million a year in deficit spending during the transition to Basic Aid, paying teachers and staff, updating facilities, and pushing for four years to limit phones in class, with real progress at the middle school. That is the record of a trustee focused squarely on Coronado’s schools.
Consider who Mr. Sandie is: a U.S. Naval Academy graduate; a Navy helicopter pilot who served 30 years and retired as a captain; the father of four sons educated in Coronado schools; a Little League manager and coach; and the husband of Colleen, a nurse anesthetist at Naval Hospital Coronado. A man who spent three decades in uniform serving presidents of both parties hardly needs a lecture on putting country over party.
Voters can weigh his answers for themselves. They should also weigh who is calling whom “partisan.”
