EDITORIAL - If you or I as parents want to visit our children's school at Madera Unified we would have to go to the office and sign in. Then maybe we might be allowed to go to our child's classroom or more than likely our child will be brought up to the front and we wouldn't be allowed passed the main office.

But now at Madera Unified, thanks to Superintendent Ed Gonzales, a convicted violent felon has access to any campus he wants to visit and any child he wants to interview and there is nothing parents can do about it.

In June, at the recommendation of Gonzales, the Madera Unified Board of Trustees hired Daniel Longoria, a product of the California Department of Corrections as a 'Gang Intervention Specialist'. Longoria was an inmate in the California prisons at Corcoran and Pelican Bay. In fact Longoria was first locked up at age twelve by the California Youth Authority and spent most of his next eighteen years in and out of prison.

According to board president Michael Salvador, Gonzales told the board Longoria was a former gang member imprisoned on property crimes. What Gonzales must have forgotten to share was that while on the outside Longoria was first arrested for an assault on a police officer and was sent back to prison for a second time on weapons charges.

What must have also slipped Gonzales' mind was that while in prison, Longoria stabbed a fellow inmate in the face four times and was locked up in solitary confinement (the hole) and was eventually sent to Pelican Bay because of his violent nature.

Now he is an employee of Madera Unified and works with your kids.

According to a confidential source of ours within the MUSD administration, Superintendent Gonzales passed over two California Superior Court certified gang experts so that Longoria would get the job. "These were qualifed experts in gang intervention without felony records that were passed over so Ed could hire his boy".

Superintendent Gonzales refuses to answer any questions as to this man's violent history. The Madera Unified Superintendent's only comment regarding Longoria's employment was this, "The district does not release confidential employee information. All employees are subject to vetting and approval by the Department of Justice before employment. There are no exceptions."

In a series of 'You Tube' videos Longoria, who also goes by the last name Macias, comments on his time in prison stating that he was housed in Pelican Bay because he was one of the most violent prisoners in the system. He shared a story about how he made a weapon in his prison cell and how he stabbed a fellow inmate in the face four times. He told a local newspaper that after he stabbed him once, he decided to stab him three more times, because he would get the same amount of years added on to his sentence. The inmate was hospitalized.

While on the streets Longoria and a friend attacked a police officer. He also tells in the video how when he was arrested for being a felon-in-position of firearms, to avoid arrest he considered killing the California Highway Patrol Officer that discovered the guns.  Thank God he decided not to. But what happens if a student, teacher or worse a journalist pushes Longoria's buttons and he reverts back to his old ways?

Why would Madera Unified hire a person like this? Why not just bring this guy in as a speaker to tell his story to at-risk kids? Does the district really need to take on the liability of putting 'the fox' in charge of the hen house?

It reminds me of the story of the Scorpion and the Frog.

Did this leopord really change his spots? Do you really want to risk your children to find out?