The race for the Newport-Mesa Unified School Board

Danette Goulet

COSTA MESA -- The way to get a cop’s attention is to ply them with

great food.

That is how David Brooks found one of his favorite spots in

Newport-Mesa: Brandon’s Restaurant in the Windham Gardens Hotel in Costa

Mesa.

When he united the helicopter units of several police forces in Orange

County to save money on fuel, manpower and resources, he found the best

way to ensure attendance at the meetings was to hold them over lunch at

Brandon’s.

Although Brooks retired as a police captain from the Costa Mesa Police

Department, he carries with him many a lesson learned, he said.

Now he splits his time between acting as the marketing director for

Living Logo, a start-up company that he describes as a public/private

partnership to beautify freeways, and trying to improve public education

in Newport-Mesa.

In the more lucrative of the two positions, Brooks spends his time

selling ad space to companies along those ugly, unkempt stretches of

freeways.

Those spaces are then transformed by his company into grassy knolls

where flowers spell out the name of the company as advertising.

For the less impressive school board stipend, Brooks said, his goal is

to improve the quality of public education in Newport-Mesa.

The newest member of the board -- he was appointed in 1998 when Ed

Decker stepped down -- Brooks first ran two years ago in the hopes of

accomplishing three things he said.

“There were three specific motives,” he said. “First there was a

vacancy in the superintendent position. I wanted to be able to choose a

new one because I didn’t care for the last one. Another was the changing

demographics on the West Side.”

With the increasing Latino population in the West Side of Costa Mesa,

Brooks said he was concerned that the needs of those students and their

families were not being met.

“I didn’t see the school district adapting to the population,” he

said.

In the past two years Brooks feels that has changed through the

adoption and creation of many programs, including the new preschool

program at Whittier Elementary School.

The third motivator to run was the dilapidated condition of the

schools.

“I used to be a landlord and I know what happens when you defer

maintenance,” Brooks said.

With one of those three items accomplished and two improved or in the

works, Brooks feels there is still plenty he can do.

“It’s kind of a continuation,” he said. “There’s still a lot left to

do. There’s still a lot left to do with schools even though we passed the

bond and I enjoy it. I enjoy working with students, teachers and the

district itself.”