Jim Trageser editorial NCTimes, a reply.

Jim Trageser editorial NCTimes, a reply.
Jim Trageser of the North County Times published an attack piece against the Vista Teachers Association and the California Teachers Association. On line he followed up his inaccurate and despicable editorial with even greater fantasy and paranoia. You can read his article and the online here: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/08/10/opinion/trageser/z354f6144e8d0282d8825749f0060debd.txt
Jim's online fantastic delusions posted in the blog following the article accuse the VTA of chanting and disrupting school board meetings to such an extent that the New York Times made the disruption of an obscure school district's board meetings a front page article.

Such a charge does not pass the smell test. Really? The New Times made our school board meetings front page news because of loud unhappy teachers. Poor Jim.Jim has a bias and he is willing to fit his "facts" around that bias.How can he write about what happened at the VTA meetings that he did not attend?

The VTA has Executive Board and Representative Assembly minutes for that whole time period on file at the VTA office. There was NO ACTION concerning recall or even discussion of recall until MONTHS after the new board majority took office in December 2002. Never was salary given as a reason for VTA to consider joining the community effort to recall the Extremist VUSD School Board members.

At the VERY FIRST meeting of the new Extremist VUSD School Board Majority in December creationism WAS the major topic. I was there. I saw the scientist hold up the fossil and ask the extremist if they thought it was only 6 thousand years old. They took the bait.

I attended virtually every board meeting after that while the Extremist held the majority. I NEVER once heard any chanting or disruption of the school board meetings by teachers. All the Vista School Board meetings are ON TAPE. Anyone listening to those tapes can verify that the teachers NEVER organized a disruption of those meetings.

I defy Trageser and his editor who allowed his nonsense to be published to find even one incident where teachers are heard chanting or disrupting the meetings.

The teachers were extremely respectful at all the meetings I attended.

The craziness and boos came from the other side during public comment by teachers and parents asking questions about the new board’s policies.

Trageser says there was a meeting the same night as the Board election to discuss recall. If so, document it, Jim. Aren't newspapers supposed to have TWO INDEPENDENT SOURCES? Can you tell us "Who came to the meeting?" or "Where it was held?" No, I did not think so. I believe your meeting is a made up fantasy concocted out of whole cloth to make the recalled board members feel better.If your only source is from that group of sour grape recalled board members, then it is a BIASED source and should be suspect until independently confirmed. It should only be reported at that point. That is basic reporting protocol, right Jim?

The recall had nothing to do with being “part of a national campaign against Christian conservatives on school boards.” That statement by Jim gives us a bit of a view into the fantasy paranoia that informs his thinking and writing.

The truth is that virtually every Vista School Board member has been and continues to be a Christian. The board majority has always been Christian since the formation of the district over eighty years ago. I defy Trageser to find one atheist, agnostic Muslim, Buddhist or other non Christian Board member in the history of the Vista School Board.

I bet he cannot find one. He has not lived in our community. He would not know. I have and I actually do know of two and only two who were not a Christian. They were Jewish. Were they the people with the anti-Christian bias Jim is writing about? Did they start the “national campaign”? Who or what is Jim writing about? It needs documentation.

Having religious school board members was never the issue. It was attempts by the Extremist VUSD School Board Majority to insert non-science non-educational nonsense into the VUSD curriculum. Creationism was added to the public school curriculum by them--see VUSD Board Policy 6019. This pro-creation science policy was added to the social studies middle school curriculum by the Extremists after their attempts to insert it into the science classroom failed.

The second issue was the destruction of VUSD’s comprehensive sex education program and replacement by a little or no information program called Sex Respect which among other things encouraged teenagers to "pet their dogs and not their dates and had racially questionable cartoons.

The third issue involved rejecting MILLIONS of DOLLARS of APPROVED grant money which would have helped VUSD students. The extremists did not believe that the federal government should give money to local schools. This is the reason they turned away MILLIONS of DOLLARS of help for our district. NO OTHER SCHOOL BOARD IN SAN DIEGO COUNTY HAS EVER TURNED DOWN FEDERAL GRANTS!

The fourth issue was the chaos at the board meetings where needed school business did not get done because the new majority was so concerned with their personal agenda driven fringe issues.

Fifth it had to do with the three member extremist board majority putting their personal political and religious agendas ahead of educating our children. No other VUSD Christian Board majority in our eighty year history had ever done that before.

The Extremist VUSD School Board Majority that was recalled was from a splinter Christian group called Young Earthers. They believe contrary to all geologic, radiographic, and astronomical evidence that the ENTIRE universe is only 6 to ten thousand years old based on a single priest’s interpretation of Biblical genealogical records (see the begats) in the Bible.

The early Christians closest to the time of Jesus did not have that view. It came 1500 years after the books of the New Testament were first written. Most Christians today do not share the young earth view either.

Had the Extremists stuck to School Board business and kept their religious minority extremist views out of the school board meetings and school board decisions, there would have been no recall. They caused their own recall with their outrageous actions and behaviors. It had NOTHING to do with some agenda against Christians. Every board majority in the history of VUSD has been a Christian Board majority including the board majority today.

The Recall certainly had nothing to do with teacher salaries. Again I repeat, there are Executive Board and Representative Assembly minutes for the Vista Teacher’s Association going back decades. There is NO MENTION of salaries as a reason for recall in those minutes. There was NEVER even a discussion of salary issues as a reason for the VTA to join the recall.

The decision of the VTA to join the recall did not happen UNTIL MONTHS after the extremists board majority was seated in December. The VTA did not instigate the recall. Community members started the process and asked the VTA to join. There were very large misgivings on the part of many Executive Board and Representative Assembly members. It took several meetings of those two boards and some really outrageous behavior of the Extremist VUSD School Board majority members before the VTA joined with the community to attempt to recall those two board members and unseat the third (Deidre Holliday) if she decided to run for an additional term which she decided not to do.

Those community members and teachers who recalled the extremists did a great and valuable service for the students of VUSD. Educational issues come first in our district again. The brave Recallers also helped the businessmen and homeowners in the community as well. The chaos and craziness caused by the extremist board majority and its supporters was giving the City of Vista a terrible reputation and a terrible business climate.

In fact didn’t the Business Roundtable support the recall as well? I am a bit hazy here but I do remember there were many, many local businessmen who helped with the recall because of the effect that the national, regional, and local headlines were having on their businesses.

On the plus side it is the only time in my senior citizen life that I ever saw Vista on the front page of the New York Times. I guess we can be grateful to the Extremists for giving our community its fifteen minutes of fame or was it infamy?

Thankfully the extremists have been defeated every two years since then. They have not been successful at getting a majority in the last decade and hopefully will not succeed this November. They do have two on our board currently. Hopefully they will not get that third one for a majority allowing them to again bring our district to the brink of chaos.

Extremist revisionist history as published by today by Jim Trageser is a stain on the fine reputation of the North County Times and if his fictions are accepted as accurate by the voters in VUSD, it would do a great disservice to the children who are counting on VUSD to give them a well rounded education sheltered from extreme political and religious agendas.