A Family Affair

This sidebar article appeared next to a more substantive article in the Claremont Courier on Saturday, September 18:

From the Claremont Courier

We posted twice on the advertising for a paid staff member, here, and here with the job description.

We're glad to see the support committee has filled those billets, but it's a little unnerving that the Committee a) has to hire someone to be for the School Bond and b) has the money to do so.

The article makes plain that Aly Stark is the daughter of CUSD Board member Jeff Stark. We've already noted there is nothing new under the Sun in Jeff Stark exploiting family ties in support of a Claremont school bond. What is interesting is that he not only did it upward, to his father, Jack (retired/emeritus CMC President in Measure Y, but now is doing it down the family tree through his daughter.

(By the way, was that Jeff Stark a friend of ours saw at Democratic congressional candidate Russ Warner's kickoff party last week? The phantom in the picture certainly looks like CUSD Board president Hilary LaConte. We heard Mary Caenepeel may have been there, too, for a non-Brown Act social occasion.)


What is not so clear at first glance is the family connection of Lisa Germano. From what we can tell, Lisa Germano is a mid-90s graduate of Claremont High, sometime substitute teacher, and the current Dance Team adviser. Who is on the Dance Team? Among others, the daughter of Measure CL Triumvirate Member Bill Fox.

Here is a copy of a photo from Bill Fox's daughter's Facebook page, showing the dance team and adviser Lisa Germano at lower left (we know the image looks like a badly-doctored Photoshop job, but we didn't think it fair to associate recognizable images of the team members, or even Fox's daughter, with this whole deal. So we blurred everyone but Germano).


This is more or less in keeping with the whole ethos of Measure CL: It's not what you know, it's who you know.

click to enlarge