Re: 'Singh settlement amount nearly $400,000' [Village News, 11/10/22]

Let me be clear about one thing – What happened with Dr. Candace Singh is not a good thing for FUESD, but it is of her making and has been in the making for years, with the support of the former board, of which Caron Lieber was also a member albeit in the minority.

And it should be known that Dr. Singh’s negotiated exit package is a complete lack of respect and regard for the children and their families she claimed to be so “passionate” about serving and a super middle-finger to the community of Fallbrook, not to mention the teachers and staff.

I personally and publicly addressed the board on the issue of her “perpetual” contract that called for automatic raises, and extensions of her contract if she so chose, and asked for Dr. Singh to forego the annual raises.

If Dr. Singh were truly an exemplary administrator (“representing the best of its kind”), she would have refused her raise for the next year or two and renegotiated her contract at the appropriate time if she wished to stay and if the board would have wanted her to stay. Now that would have been setting an example of the “best in her class.”

Instead, her reputation for bullying and her history for fleecing the district won out once again and she leaves laughing all the way to the bank. I call that greed. It’s a good thing she won’t be asking me to give her a reference for future employment.

Former board member Lisa Masten took the podium at the last board meeting and praised Candace Singh’s golden performance over the years and it came across as a way to validate the horrendous contract that she and her fellow board members gifted Dr. Singh with, rice still in their hair, so to speak.

There really is only one measure of a superintendent’s performance that counts – students’ achievements unquestionably growing and the stakeholders being relatively happy. Her own personal awards and recognitions, which were really public relations campaigns, periphery programs and grants and such, do not serve as a substitute for real student achievement. Neither does what every other public school superintendent was accomplishing and expected to do throughout the country – opening schools after COVID, working to keep kids and staff safe and healthy, etc.

We, the public, may never know what happened behind closed doors and we may praise Caron Lieber or we may vilify her, or the other members of the board for that matter, but the only person that could have made all of this mess more palatable was Candace Singh and she chose not to.

Make no mistake about that. My guess is that she was strategizing this for quite some time and playing Mrs. Lieber and manipulating others to her own advantage. What we as a community will not be able to do for our students because resources are being diverted into this “best possible outcome” package that she is dancing away from this district with must never be forgotten. There is plenty of blame to go around but the bulk of it lies at the feet of Dr. Candace Singh – period.

Now we have some new board members. They will select a new superintendent. Their success must be measured by the growth and success of all of our students while they attend FUESD and their continued growth and success through high school. Let’s see how these new board members do and more importantly, let’s see how this community supports them and holds them accountable in accomplishing that mission.

Leticia Maldonado/Stamos