Answers to Guffanti's email

Vistaschools.blogspot EDITOR'S NOTE:
I was forwarded the following email and thought I would post it so others could read it as well. The blue answers to Guffanti accusations were put together by Elizabeth Jaka--one of our PRO-public education candidates. Again Elizabeth Jaka's responses are in blue. Guffanti's accusations and ramblings in brown. My comments are in black.

I mentioned in a previous e-mail, that DocG was putting out e-mails fast and furious, and that I haven't been able to keep up with all of them. I'm trying to work my way backwards through them during quiet times (I'm up with my daughter, who's working on a project for school).

;-D EJ

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: sguffanti@cox.net
To: sguffanti@cox.net
Subject: Pickets near Lake Elementary
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2008

Hi,

The traditional way for the union bosses to do a campaign is to promote various rumors to cast doubt in voters' minds. This approach continues in this campaign:

[As a rule, the teachers run a campaign that includes mailers and signs, and (depending on the manpower available) precinct walking and phonebanking in support of their candidates. The information they put out is positive, along the lines of: "this is what our candidates will do for the district." Near the end of the campaign, there is one final mailer that responds to the negative campaigning from DocG's camp. This election is no exception.]

The head of the CSEA, Henrietta Black, protested loudly at the last board meeting that there had been no "Bail out on Bales" campaign. She said that I just made it up. Well, let's look back at what happened.

[Most of the people who were at the last board meeting agreed that Henrietta was very professional in her presentation. She was very adamant about the fact that there is not now, nor has there ever been, a "Bail out on Bales" campaign.]

In late November/early December of 2007, Steve Hargrave, then assistant principal at RBVHS, started selecting 10th graders for a Lindamood Bell study to be conducted the next semester. The union bosses didn't want Lindamood Bell anywhere near RBVHS. In particular, Randy Weins, a previous teachers' union president who calls himself an "ex-officio member of the executive committee," has opposed Lindamood Bell since October 2006. He doesn't want any teachers taught this new method of teaching.

[I'm not sure how any of this "proves" anything, but as usual, a lot of it's wrong. LmB had already been used at the school for at least a semester. I have the test scores of the students who were in it in the spring of 2007. I'll attach the scores for Rancho and Vista.
In the fall of 2007, the district commandeered the teachers' lounge at Rancho, for the LmB program. This was public knowledge, and I don't think ANY of the teachers were happy about it. That doesn't seem like a union thing.
I've never heard Randy say that he opposes LmB, nor have I heard him say that he doesn't want any teachers "taught this new method of teaching." Of course, it's not REALLY a new method of teaching. ]

On December 6, 2007, Raylene Veloz, the superintendent's secretary, received a phone call from VUSD parent, Alejandro Sanchez, about the high school students protesting Lindamood Bell at Lake elementary. On the same day I received this email from another district parent, Jackie Piro:

From: Jackie Piro [mailto:]
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 3:37 PM
To: Stephen Guffanti, MD (Stephen Guffanti, MD)
Cc: Dan Piro (armando@cox.net)
Subject: Pickets near Lake Elementary



Stephen - I was driving Thelma to the bus stop around 3pm today on Lake Blvd and on the way we saw a group of what looked like mostly children (a small group, at most about 7-8 kids in all) holding colorful signs right where the parents turn into Lake Elementary to pick up their kids. I only remember a couple of the signs, one that said "Bail on Bales" and another said "Stop Cronyism" or something like that. On the way back a few minutes later I tried to look more carefully because I thought there was one adult in the crowd but either she had left or it was actually a tall teenage boy with longish hair. None of the cars that passed by the group when I was there honked or anything.



Jackie

Vistaschools.blogspot EDITOR'S NOTE--The Piros are long time supporters of the ANTI-public education group in VUSD. Any advanced search for 'Piro" of the NCTimes archives will turn up dozens of anti-public education letters to the editor written by the Piros.

Dan Piro was also instrumental in the firing of Leo Fletes, RBVHS varsity baseball coach. Piro allowed his home to be used by a few disgruntled parents who wanted Fletes fired because Fletes did not play their precious children enough. Read here:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/11/16/sports/highschool/21_42_9411_15_07.txt

Here is one sentence from the article above showing the Piro/Guffanti/Bales connection:
"...a July meeting that school board member Stephen Guffanti organized at the home of friend Dan Piro for parents to voice their displeasure. Superintendent Dr. Joyce Bales also attended."


[There's really not enough information here to get a fix on what's going on. About the only thing that seems clear is that someone was protesting outside of Lake. She says children, but doesn't say how old she thinks those children are. And why hasn't he mentioned the sign about cronyism? This occurred right after Dr. Gecewicz and Mr. Sinn were brought to the district from Pueblo. She thought there might have been one adult, but it could have been a teenage boy with longish hair? It's all pretty ambiguous.

I also heard from a parent that afternoon, asking me if I knew about the pickets. I didn't know anything, and called a couple of parents in that area to find out what they knew. They didn't know anything either.]

__________________________________________________________________________________________



Note that no matter how you skew the facts the signs said it clearly: "Bail out on Bales."

[The way I read it, ONE of the signs said "Bail on Bales." I didn't see anything about teachers being there, about multiple signs, or even any indicator that there was an adult there (except for the one maybe).]


However, given these facts, let's go further and ask three questions:

1. How would high school kids know about Lindamood Bell when it was not yet on their campus?

[LmB WAS on the campus, and a group went through the program in 2007. I'll attach their test scores. In addition, the district had just commandeered the teachers' lounge to turn it into a LmB center.]

2. Neither Lake nor Madison were Lindamood Bell schools. Why would they protest at Lake?

[IF they were Rancho students, they would protest at the closest school that would allow them to be seen. Lake and Madison both got out after the high school students.]

3. What would motivate their attack on the superintendent?

[The teachers lost their lounge, AND the district was getting ready to ban refrigerators, and other similar appliances, from the classroom. Word was also getting around about other changes, such as field trips being canceled. These things were all common knowledge.

When I sent people the unedited version of this, a parent e-mailed me back to tell me that her daughter was part of that protest. She told me, " In no way was she pressured by the Union boss or her lackeys. K just has a healthy understanding of what's right and wrong." Students do care. We've had involved students for a long time. Not only do we have student reps on the board, but students attend board meetings AND Candidate Forums and they get excited about elections. This is a GOOD thing.]

The union officials who come to the board meetings knew about the study. Randy teaches at RBV and could motivate some of his high school students to protest. In fact, one RBV student, a friend of the Chunka family, has entered the Lilly-Chunka-Jaka campaign with a YouTube video against Lindamood Bell.

[His "proof" uses neither inductive, nor deductive reasoning. Instead, he makes a couple of wild leaps based on unfounded assumptions. The last sentence is even more off the mark. A Rancho student has made a video supporting Jaka, Lilly and Chunka (two in fact). As part of that video, he questions LmB - the expense and application. It has no connection to the rest of this. If you missed the video, here are the links to both of them: 1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWVKleR22LY and 2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXhU-cm3BuE.]

Madison and Lake are also highly union-influenced schools that would be sympathetic to this message, and they are closest to RBV. It seemed to me the simplest explanation is this was a union-organized protest to test the waters. When it failed -- no honks, no sign of support -- the union went to Plan B. (Plan B was to take away funding for Lindamood Bell via the school site council. It failed when the state denied the Casita School Site Council's protest on all 6 counts.)

[What are "highly union-influenced schools"? Again, wild leaps, unfounded assumptions, and fantastic conclusions. A convoluted conspiracy theory is hardly the "simplest explanation." We have only Ms. Piro's e-mail to indicate that there was "no sign of support." And, according to Guffanti and the district office, LmB isn't funded through School Site Council - it's a federally funded program that can't be taken away.]

Only the union leadership had access to the information, the motivation and the students. Usually, the response I get from the union is "Yeah, it happened, but you can't prove it was us." To that I say there are millions of things we can't prove, like gravity, but if no other explanation handles all the facts then you are left with this conclusion: despite their protests to the contrary, the union bosses

and the union-supported candidates, Jaka and Chunka, are part of Plan C - take over the board and eliminate Lindamood Bell and if the superintendent protests that she can't do her job without it then fire her. (By the way Lindamood Bell is less expensive than the long used reading specialist that many schools have and we currently have several schools that are self-sufficient using Lindamood Bell. When all our teachers are trained the cost will be about 15% of what it is now.)

["Yeah, it happened, but you can't prove it was us." That doesn't even make sense.I don't know anyone stupid enough to say something like that to him. His facts aren't facts, and his conclusions are an attempt to justify his position. It certainly doesn't prove there's a plan for us to eliminate LmB, or to fire the superintendent.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: We had LmB in this district long before Dr. Bales came here, and because it does work for some students, it should be here for some time to come. However, it concerns me that he would indicate that Dr. Bales can't do her job without it. There are other districts that are having marvelous success without LmB, and so far I've seen no indication that our increased test scores are because we've expanded the use of LmB. The scores have continued to increase at the same rate they were already increasing.

By the way, the "long used" reading specialist program he refers to was begun a year before LmB, and some believe the rise in test scores can be directly attributed to that program. Reading First is a state funded program. Unlike LmB, which the district pays for out of several different funding sources, the state gives the district funds specifically for Reading First. This year, the district delayed applying for Reading First funds until very recently. We risked losing the grant for this year AND next year. That would have been a loss of $670K a year. Once they applied for the grant, they had to pull teachers back out of the classroom to return to their reading specialist positions.

Why do ALL the teachers have to be trained in a program that doesn't even work for many of the students? For example, it can't be used for students just starting to learn English. It's also of little or no use to students who are successful readers. And why, once all the teachers are trained, will it continue to cost us anything?]

If we simply let the superintendent do her job, VUSD will be one of the best districts in the county during the next four years.

[Dr. Bales should be allowed to do her job. However, it's the job of the board to ask questions and confirm what they THINK is happening is indeed what's happening. If it's not happening, then they need to find out why, and they need to work with the superintendent to correct the situation. THEN the district has a chance to be one of the best districts in the county.]

Your servant on the board, Your tired eyes and ears at the board,
Stephen Guffanti MD Elizabeth Jaka, parent and observer