Guffanti's latest email and commentary

The following email commentary dissecting Guffanti's latest email has been making the rounds of private personal email accounts of dedicated teachers and other staff members in VUSD. I received it yesterday. I received permission to post it with a few minor changes.
(1) Guffanti again sent his campaign emails to DISTRICT email accounts in violation of his own rule against using district email for campaigning. For Guffanti rules only apply to other people never to himself. He and his causes are too important for rules.
(2) The printing in blue below was written by an expert in our district who does not want to be identified. The blue sections are inserted into the body of Guffanti's email.
(3) This expert refers to Guffanti as 'DocG"and to his emails as "gmail"
(4) I labelled the Guffant parts of the post as Guffanti says: followed in black the words from his email

blog editor vistaschools.blogspot.com

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One thing that's interesting, I'm told that this piece went to more district e-mail addresses than before. That's interesting because he (Guffanti) was told that he can't send campaign materials through district e-mail addresses, and with his statements about his running mates, and the inclusion of the web address for their campaign website, this sure looks like a campaign piece.

(And there's already another piece out. This guy (Guffanti) has too much time on his hands - I can't keep up!)


-----Original Message-----From: Stephen Guffanti [mailto:sguffanti@cox.net]Sent: Friday, October 17, 2008
Subject: board goals expanded, union reports
Hi,

Here are the highlights of last night's school board meeting.

Union reports

Guffanti says: Every election season the union's "reports" include attacks on the candidates they oppose. This meeting was no different. They denied that they want to get rid of our superintendent, but said they don't like her plan to turn around our schools -- and, in fact, don't want a plan at all! They know that by state law, we are required to have a plan, but the law is of no interest to them. They know we have just two weeks of pay in reserves, and then we are broke -- but they still insist on a raise.

REAL INFO: [Every election season, certain candidates resort to shameful, dishonest and even unethical tactics in a "no-holds barred" drive to win the election. Each time it becomes necessary for district leaders to respond, to increase awareness of the inappropriate behavior. This year is no different. This time, Randy Wiens addressed the board for the teachers. He talked about out how disrespectful it was to parents and community members for Dr. G and his running mates not to participate in the PTA Forum that was run and moderated by the non-partisan League of Women Voters on Wednesday night.

Henrietta Black also addressed the board. Among other things, she wanted to clarify that there is not now, nor has there ever been, a "Bail out on Bales" campaign.

There was never any talk of not liking Dr. Bales' plans to "turn around our schools" from either person, nor did they say that they didn't want a plan. As for raises, Mr. Weins pointed out that teachers voluntarily gave up their overdue raises (money that the district had set aside) to protect smaller class sizes. When the budget cuts loomed, DocG voted to eliminate Class Size Reduction, but now he keeps taking credit for protecting the program.]

Guffanti says: Our government was built on a system of checks and balances and the quickest way around that is to let the employees buy board seats. The fundamental difference between Anderson, Fernandez and Guffanti and the union PAC is that we represent bringing the public back into public school. We are publicly funded with scores of small donations while they have $20,000 dumped into their campaign by the people with whom they will sign a $170 million contract.

REAL INFO: [According to DocG, the unions have been "buying" board seats by endorsing candidates. There is a certain amount of irony to this claim since his first paragraph talks about the "unions" insisting on a raise. If they owned the board, they'd have the raise.

Ms Anderson-Johnson interviewed for an endorsement from the teachers' union, and DocG participated in the forum held by the classified employees in an attempt to secure their endorsement. (Ms Anderson-Johnson had a family emergency and couldn't make it.) If they have such a low opinion of the PACs, they shouldn't be trying to get their endorsements. As for "bringing the public back into public school," neither Anderson-Johnson, nor DocG put their children in Vista's public schools. It's also important to remember that DocG co-authored the 1992 voucher initiative, and actively supported the 2000 voucher initiative. He's also a big proponent of any and all charter schools. In addition to his connection to Vista Literacy Academy Charter (which went under a little more than a year after opening) he and Gibson tried to bring Options for Youth/Opportunities for Learning into the district in 2001. OFY/OFL is a chain of charter schools currently in trouble for overcharging the state by $57M.

The Anderson/Fernandez/Guffanti public funding? $5000 of it is a 2006 donation from Hillcrest Homes (even though DocG was not running that year). For those who don't know, Hillcrest Homes was the developer who tried to stop the purchase of the Melrose site for our new high schools. In 2004, Hillcrest spent over $33,000 on DocG's campaign by paying for automated calls, and those poisonous mailers (with crying children and blood dripping fonts), AND gave him $5,000 cash. He also received nearly $15,000 in donations from area growers who fought the purchase of the first planned site for the high schools, AND the purchase of the Melrose site. In the end, more than $56,000 was spent on HIS 2004 campaign alone. This time around he has more large donations ($1000 apiece) from those same growers. That's not exactly "scores of small donations," and some people are questioning what those growers hope to gain if he's re-elected.

Yes, the teachers have spent about $20,000 on the three campaigns combined. They bought signs with the names of the three candidates they endorsed, and they bought other advertising. Any normal candidate would be proud to have the endorsement of the teachers and the district's support staff. These are the people who work with parents to make this district successful, and their endorsement means that they believe we are in agreement in at least one thing: we have similar ideas of what's best for our children. We won't agree every time, but we will be able to work out our differences like adults.]

Guffanti says: What is the difference? Standards! When only 1 in 3 students were reading at grade level none of the union candidates complained and the union took no notice. But when the way a teacher teaches reading isn't working, and we ask them to use a proven program that is working, they put signs in elementary students' hands that say "Bail out on Bales." The bottom line is that before the unions took over the district's board we were the best district in North County. After 14 years of union rule we have one-third of North County's federally sanctioned schools! That's three times more than our dwindling school enrollment justifies. Isn't it time to return the schools to the public and let the community do the job of running the board? Can the community possibly do any worse than the candidates the union has selected over the years?

REAL INFO: [He keeps saying only 1 in 3 students were reading at grade level in 2004, but the CA Dept. of Ed. (CDE) website says it was 40% - still way too low, but not quite how he paints it. That year, we also met 42 out of 42 criteria for Adequate Yearly Progress. That's something we have not achieved since. I HAVE been told that when you factor out students because of mobility, the proficient/advanced level drops to the 37% figure he gives, but for now I'll go with the straight CDE numbers.

Contrary to what DocG says here, EVERYONE serving on the board was concerned about the numbers, and that's why they selected Dr. Bales for the new superintendent - she came to them as someone who could turn the numbers around. Teachers were (and are) also concerned since it's their reputation on the line.

The "proven program" DocG's referring to has been "proven" by the vendor, but no one has been able to get the raw numbers. District scores have gone up and credit has been given to one program, but no one can tell if numbers for students in THAT program have gone up. As for the signs, I have never seen a "Bail out on Bales" sign, and I don't know when or where teachers are supposed to have put them "in students' hands." DocG's the only one who ever mentions that.

DocG often compares the current status of the district to what it was before, but he fails to factor in the changes in the community that have taken place since then. There really isn't much data readily available to back up his claims either. On the CDE website, test score information doesn't go back 14 years, but some demographic numbers come close, and they give a little insight into changes that have taken place in our district that have an effect on test scores. For example, the CDE website shows that VUSD had an English Language Learner population of 28.2% in 1995-1996. In 2006 it was 39.2%, and in 2008 it was 41.5%. I can only track the socio-economically disadvantaged students back to 2002, but that year they comprised 43.2% of our student population. In 2006 it was 50.0%, and in 2008 they made up 51.2% of the student body. Both subgroups are the areas where the district is struggling, and the rate of increase would seem to show that they were an even smaller part of the population in the district's much touted earlier days. That doesn't mean that the district has an excuse to fail students; it's simply a factor in the district's struggles, and a clue as to where we need to work harder.

DocG's right about one thing: the community should be running the board. It should be comprised of people who believe in public education, and support it instead of wanting to tear it down.]

Guffanti says: Board Goals Expanded

One improvement: we changed our first goal from students gaining one year of skill each year to English-language learners will become fluent in English in five years. This goal now more closely states what we really want to achieve.

REAL INFO: [They've finally acknowledged what many of us have been saying for a while: students gain fluency faster in the beginning, but need more time to refine their skills as they become more proficient.]

Guffanti says: We will keep our second goal, literacy, which states all students will perform at or above grade level within 3 years of enrollment, but intensify our intervention for students who come to us in grades 7 to 12. They just don't have three years to get up to grade level.

REAL INFO: [I've been talking for some time about upper grade students who come to the district with no English. For a while there's been an assumption on the part of some people that all ELL students come to us in elementary school, and that there's no reason for them to be learning English in middle school and high school. This change takes that into consideration.]

Guffanti says: Our third goal is 98% average daily attendance. It turns out our students' attendance is better than our employees' and there was some debate over whether we should have a goal for the employees. We will see.

REAL INFO: [The point was made that this is about the students, and an employee goal was not appropriate. If they do decide to pursue an employee goal, they need to bear in mind that, unlike students, employee absences are often caused by illness of a child or other family member, household emergencies and other factors, as well as their own health.]

Guffanti says: Our fourth goal, adopted in 2006, is to develop and implement a district homework policy. This goal never got guidelines, but these will be coming in the next few months.

REAL INFO: [People who served on the homework committee were surprised to learn that the district does not have a policy. They spent many hours on research and discussion to create a homework policy and, as you may recall, even included the community with an extensive survey. Hopefully they'll move forward from what was already done instead of starting from scratch.]

Guffanti says: Our sixth goal is develop a comprehensive plan to expand and strengthen vocational and career preparation courses of study. Our newest high school, Trade Tech High, is a perfect step in that direction.

REAL INFO: [Opening the Mission Vista High Schools in the fall of 2009 is the perfect next step in this goal. We need to follow that with more career oriented programs at the two existing high schools.]

Guffanti says: The fifth goal is to reduce the number of school site discipline referrals, dropouts, suspensions, and expulsions. We will continue to work on reducing our expulsions - only 120 last year - most of whom have severe problems in reading. We will break out the dropout problem into another goal. I have a concern with the discipline referral part of this goal; it seems this goal is being accomplished in part simply by allowing children to remain undisciplined at school so the principal's numbers stay down. Dr. Lilly again reiterated that he doesn't see that happening. I wonder if our parents, school site employees and students agree?

REAL INFO: [Strangely enough, I agree with him on the referral issue, up to a point. I have heard from teachers at several schools that they're being discouraged from writing referrals, and even told to rescind them when they do write them. Some teachers have had incidents where a referral might have headed a problem off early, but when they weren't allowed to write one, the student escalated his/her behavior and ended up getting into additional trouble and even being suspended. Teachers are not feeling supported on discipline issues, and most of the teachers I've heard from seem to believe that the orders came from the district office to reduce referrals any way possible. I've also heard from some parents who feel that appropriate action is not always taken.

If we want to reduce referrals, suspensions and other disciplinary actions, we need to pinpoint problems early and use more preventive interventions. Ignoring a student's problems does not make them go away - they just become bigger and badder down the line.]
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Your servant on the board,
Stephen Guffanti, MD
http://www.vistaschoolboard.com/ *

*(Please notice that Guffanti provides no disclaimer that his campaign site, www.vistaschoolboard.com, is not an official site of the Vista Unified School District, but actually an election site--But then who expects Guffanti to be honest?)