Guffanti's Sour Grapes

I read the article in the San Diego Union Tribune today regarding the magnificient victory of the PRO-public education parents and teachers over Guffanti and his group of ANTIs. You will not be surprised to know that Guffanti left our VUSD board spewing bitterness and nastiness. What else would we expect? A scorpion is a scorpion is a scorpion. Here are his final words to Bruce Lieberman the fair-minded, Union Tribune reporter,

“What I think the voter doesn't understand is the teachers union is not the classroom teacher . . . and that their purpose is not to educate kids,” Guffanti said. “Their (the union) purpose is to get more money for their teachers for less work.”

Isn't Guffanti a lovely man. According to Guffanti all the work we did to save public education from the fringe political agenda of the his group of ANTIs was just for money.

I am retired. I will make a lot more money by saving public education in VUSD. Yeah Guffanti it was all about me getting more money, the six hours I spent on the phone calling more than three hundred VUSD, voters the scores of hours I put in on this blog--all of that was about me making more money. Right! What a jerk!

The parents who supported us by the hundreds will get a lot more money, too. Right Guffanti?

Dr. G has never been gracious in victory, so who would expect him to be gracious in defeat?

He cost our district tens of millions of dollars and years of over crowded schools with his stubborn and purposeless delaying tactics whenever the majority wanted to pass a bond or build a new school. We could have had a new high school in town at least three years ago and perhaps as much as a decade ago if Guffanti had supported building new public schools instead of organizing opposition. So yes, Guffanti your devastating and humiliating defeat was a bit about money. It was about the money YOU WASTED that could have educated our children.

The comments after the UT article are even more revealing about the nasty and hateful ANTI education views of Guffanti and his supporters. Read them below and you will again see why the decent and good folk of this district fought so hard to keep Guffanti and his small gang of malcontents out of power and off our VUSD board.
Here are the Guffanti Gang's ugly and false comments:

1. The teacher's union does not care about quality of education... the teachers union does not care about test scores...the teacher's union does not care about your kids
2. What the teacher's union wants is money. Money for their members, money for their political action committee, money, money, money...........That's it!
3. We keep throwing good money into bad schools, bad because the teachers would rather be the students (sic) buddy than teacher
4. bad schools because these teacher's students cannot pass tests aimed at testing the most basic of knowledge
5. Teachers make more than most of us already. They make more than those of us who work 12-months each year while they work 8-months each year. They have better benefits than most of us; they have better retirement than most of us.
6. the three "winners" of this election will make sure the rest of us are losers with higher taxes so they can pay off their buddies who sponsored them

Guffanti and his gang do not have children in our VUSD schools or any public schools so they have no point of reference. They only hear how evil teachers are. They do not know any. They have never visited our schools or seen our classrooms. Except for passing out campaign literature on campus or barging into a classroom unannounced causing a security alert, can anyone name any other time Guffanti (or Gibson) or any of the other Gang members ever came to any public school any where? NO! All Guffanti and the Gibson Gang can do is hate and spew lies.

Let's take the six lies above that either Guffanti or one of his Gang associates wrote about our good district, wonderful teachers and incredible teacher's union.

1. We do not care about children, right. That is why we take low paying, high work jobs with virtually NO chance of promotion and no chance of advancement. How could someone who was not a caring giving person survive in a classroom full of needy students? The attrition rate for teachers is OVER FIFTY PERCENT in the first five years!** The highest for ANY profession. The attrition rate for peace officers and fire fighters is not as high.
2. The union is about money? Then why did we organize four different times to pass school bonds. We spent time and money trying for twenty years to pass those bonds. Finally we passed Prop O on the FOURTH attempt. When new schools are built in a district, there is never enough bond money and teacher's salaries ALWAYS go down. We accepted the probable loss of pay and still acted as the PRIME MOVERS in getting Prop O passed. Secondly our salaries and benefits have consistently been reduced compared to the San Diego County average over the last 16 years that we have backed school board candidates. With board majorities backed by our union, our salaries went from third highest unified district in the county to second lowest! Our fight for decent school board candidates was always about getting folks who supported PUBLIC EDUCATION and who believed in FACT BASED education especially in science, health, history and sex ed. Guffanti was one of the first members of a nationwide organization dedicated to the DESTRUCTION of PUBLIC EDUCATION. Read the year 2000 NCTimes articles about the organization and Guffanti's involvement here: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2000/10/20/export19941.txt and here: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2000/10/21/export20028.txt and here:http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2000/10/24/export20272.txt
3. Again Guffanti's Gang only reads inaccurate reports about teachers on hate sites. The Gang has no idea what really happens in public schools. Teachers that are "buddies" with their students and do not exert authority do not last in a classroom, not even as a substitute. I wish Guffanti's Gang Associates would try "sub"bing for a few days. It would give them a bit of perspective. But then again learning new ideas in foreign to the Gang.
4. The tests that are given in public schools do not test the most basic of knowledge anymore. I am betting that most of Guffanti's Group could not pass the third grade benchmark test. The math alone would floor them. examples here:
5. No public school teacher now or ever worked only eight months. When I started over thirty years ago it was 9 and 1/2 months. Today it is a full ten months of ten and twelve hour days. Teachers put in more hours over those ten months then eight hour factory workers do in twelve months and we are paid about half as much as high school graduate makes in a factory.
6. The good and noble victors in the VUSD school board race Jaka, Chunka and Lilly CANNOT RAISE TAXES. That is correct. They have NO POWER TO RAISE TAXES. A school board can vote to put a bond measure on a ballot but the state strictly limits the use of the money raised by a bond to the construction related costs. BY LAW BOND MONEY CANNOT BE USED FOR TEACHER SALARIES. Guffanti knows this. He also knows that over 90% of VUSD operating budget comes from the state of California and not from the residents of this district. Prop 13 transferred the cost of running schools from local districts to the state. The only other way to raise money locally for VUSD is to raise developer fees on new home construction. The state of California strictly limits the percentage that can be charged to a VERY LOW amount after successful lobbying by home builders. However it does not matter as there is almost no free land left for development in Vista and if there was a bit of land some where, there is no money for construction loans in this economy.

To read the entire article in the San Diego Union Tribune with the comments that follow go here:http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20081106-9999-1mc6skuls.html

Note that Bruce Lieberman wrote the article for the UT. He is good and fair reporter that many of us remember from the great VUSD Evolution and Recall Wars of 1992-1994. He worked then for a now defunct North County newspaper. (was it the Blade Tribune?) We are glad he landed on his feet at the Union Tribune.

**From the book, "Relentless Pursuit," by Donna Foote.

No Child Left Behind gets an "F" from Professor

'No Child' law gets an 'F' from education professor at Illinois
11/5/08
Phil Ciciora, News Editor217-333-2177;pciciora@illinois.edu


Sarah J. McCarthey, a professor of language and literacy in the department of curriculum and instruction in the College of Education, says the controversial No Child Left Behind law has forced teachers in low-income school districts to craft a curriculum that marginalizes writing at the expense of teaching to the test.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — The controversial No Child Left Behind law has forced teachers in low-income school districts to craft a curriculum that marginalizes writing at the expense of teaching to the test, resulting in educators who feel straitjacketed by a high-stakes test, according to a U. of I. education professor who has studied the issue.Sarah J. McCarthey, a professor of language and literacy in the department of curriculum and instruction in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has studied the impact of the 7-year-old law on teachers’ writing instruction in both high- and low-income schools. She discovered that teachers, especially those in low-income schools, are increasingly jettisoning writing from their language arts block in favor of reading comprehension, one of the subjects along with mathematics used to benchmark a school’s progress through an annual battery of federally mandated tests administered by the states. The federal government then uses the test score data to either reward states with federal education funds or to impose punitive measures.

McCarthey, who published her findings in an article titled “The Impact of No Child Left Behind on Teachers’ Writing Instruction” in the October issue of Written Communication, said that because the federal government uses only math and reading scores to measure a school’s progress, there’s little incentive for schools to teach students non-tested subjects such as writing, music, art and science.

“Writing instruction has been neglected at the expense of teaching to the test,” McCarthey said, noting that from a pedagogical standpoint, that strategy is somewhat counterintuitive, considering that reading and writing are complementary cognitive activities.

“Being able to write well can make a student a better reader,” she said. “But only teaching reading isn’t going to make that student a better writer.”

The effect on writing instruction has hit underperforming lower-income schools the hardest. In those schools, teachers often had pre-packaged teaching materials foisted upon them by their district, McCarthey said.

“Because they were deemed an underperforming school based on the test results, the district had to legislate the curriculum they were using in both reading and writing. So when they taught reading and writing, they had to use this canned material.”

For teachers in struggling schools, the imposition of a district-mandated, one-size-fits-all curriculum turns all the fun and spontaneity of learning into a forced march.

“Both teachers and students became so tired of focusing on and preparing for the test that by test time, they were mentally exhausted,” McCarthey said.

“For teachers still on probation or in their first three years of teaching, that loss of control over curriculum inevitably leads to a loss of morale and, in some cases, turnover.”

McCarthey found that younger teachers in low-income schools felt more pressure to teach to the test than their more experienced counterparts in high-income schools.

“Young teachers in low-income schools are monitored to a greater degree than teachers in high-income schools,” she said. “When that happens, there’s that much more pressure to perform. Veteran teachers have the latitude to be a little more cavalier, but younger teachers felt much more beholden to the test because the stakes were so high for them.”

The problem is compounded because the best veteran teachers invariably end up in higher-income schools, leaving the least prepared and least experienced teachers disproportionally assigned to schools with the greatest needs and challenges.

“Our most-qualified veteran teachers are not ending up where they’re needed most,” McCarthey said. “They’re typically in the higher-income schools because they can afford to pay them more money.”

For all of its negatives, McCarthey did note that one positive consequence of No Child Left Behind was that teachers were forced to lavish attention on low-achieving students.

“This is actually one of the benefits of the law, that teachers are thinking a lot more about their low achievers,” she said.

But even that benefit has a downside that is symptomatic of the unintended consequences brought about by the law.

“The flip-side is that average and high-achieving students in high-income schools don’t receive the attention they deserve,” she said. “So we’re undermining their educational progress by not challenging them enough.”

Final Results--Clean sweep for the PROs

From http://www.sdvote.com/ at 9:10 am. Dr. Steve Lilly, Elizabeth Jaka, and Angela Chunka are in. Dr. Stephen Guffanti is no longer a member of the VUSD school board. Neither of his political allies, Patty Anderson or Eileen Fernandez were elected either.

The only ANTI-public education board member left is Jim Gibson. Gibson remains on our board because he was rejected by Oceanside Voters for Oceanside City Council. This was his second attempt at getting on the Oceanside City Council. He was also rejected in his run for State Assembly several years ago. His attempt to use our VUSD school board as a springboard for higher office has failed again.

Gibson now will sit on our VUSD board ALONE! Four nice, normal, rational people will occupy the other school board seats. Fringe political issues and obstructionism will no longer dominate our school board. The new high school will be built! In two years we have a chance to retire Jim Gibson to the same porch where Guffanti will be seating.

Here are the final results of the 2008 VUSD School Board Election:
VISTA UNIFIED SCHOOL
Precincts: 102Counted: 102Percentage: 100.0%
Vote for: 3
STEVE LILLY
19825
21.35%
ELIZABETH JAKA
18980
20.44%
ANGELA D. CHUNKA
18931
20.39%
-----------------------------------------
STEPHEN GUFFANTI
14558
15.68%
PATTY ANDERSON
11822
12.73%
EILEEN FERNANDEZ
8723
9.40%

Clean Sweep

It is 5:12 am. With over 85% of the ballots counted, it looks like a clean sweep. Steve Lilly, Elizabeth Jaka and Angela Chunka appear to have an unbeatable lead. I am finding it difficult to type. I do not want to jinx the outcome, but I cannot see how any of Guffanti's gang can make up the ground on our Pro-public education candidates. Guffanti in fourth place trails Chunka in third by over 3700 votes. Amazing!

Many, many thanks to all of VUSD's Education Heroes who saved our district. Congratulations to the students and staff of VUSD! You have a PRO-PUBLIC EDUCATION MAJORITY FOR AT LEAST FOUR MORE YEARS!

We now appear to have a 4 to 1 school board majority of trustees who will get the new high school built and put educating our children as the number one priority. Fringe issues, stalling new school construction, purposeless obstruction, and putting personal political views over the welfare of our students, are all finished in VUSD for the foreseeable future.

These next four years for our newly elected trustees will be very tough. Guffanti and Gibson incessant delaying tactics and stubborn refusal to support a third high school managed to waste somewhere between 16 and 25 million dollars of our Prop O school bond funds. The LindaMood Bell program has taken millions more from our school site councils and district funds. The California budget is billions in debt. I see virtually no chance that the state can bail out our district. We will all have to tighten our belts. We need to support our new Pro-education trustees in the upcoming difficult financial decisions forced on them by Guffanti and Gibson's irresponsibility. I do not envy our four brave and good board members their jobs or the agonizing decision they will have to make.

But still, I am so happy! In the difficult financial times ahead, our district will be lead by four decent and rational people who will make the "Sophie's Choice" decisions ahead with wisdom and compassion.

HUGE RALLY---HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS ATTEND

Today's rally was incredible.

Hundreds and hundreds of PRO-public education supporters came together today. It was by far the biggest bunch yet. People just kept coming and coming. There were babies in strollers and teachers and folks with backpacks and gray haired folk. Every segment of our VUSD community joined in one massive demonstration for PUBLIC EDUCATION!

Thank you heroes!

Who knew that there were so many good people in our community ready to support our public schools? After months and months of vicious lies told about our good public school district teachers and schools by Gufanti and his ANTI followers, the community still overwhelmingly supports public education.

The forces of good are on the rise in VUSD. No matter what happens tomorrow in the election, we have made Guffanti and his nasty team of liars eat their lies and fear the ability of the good descent folks in our district to fight back against their unfounded smears against our good public schools and teachers.

I remain hopeful of a clean sweep tomorrow. All three PRO-public education candidates elected and Guffanti shown the door.

There is still a lot to do. First vote. Second get your (PRO) friends to vote as well.
AGAIN:
(1) MAKE SURE YOU VOTE
(2) HELP BRING IN PRO VOTERS TOMORROW.

(3) JOIN THE GET OUT THE VOTE CAMPAIGN AT THE VTA OFFICE 10AM-7;30PM TOMORROW, 1717 East Vista Way, Vista.

COME FOR AS LONG AS YOU CAN.

EVEN A HALF AN HOUR VOLUNTEERED TOMORROW COULD BRING IN A HALF DOZEN MORE PRO-PUBLIC EDUCATION VOTES.

Last Rally Today 4pm-5:30pm Meet at Chili's

I found a Barbara Franklin email in my inbox. I thought I would share it.

Barbara Franklin is our great VUSD hero and organizer of the Community Resistance to the Intolerance of the ANTIs. Her official title is VTA PAC chair person. We should all thank her every time we see her for her months of 18 to 20 hour days dedicated to saving the children of our district.

Please remember the following:

Today is the LAST RALLY! Vista Village Dr. At Chili's 4pm -5:30pm
(note earlier meeting time due to daylight savings time change)

Tomorrow is the last and perhaps the most important campaign event--GET OUT THE VOTE. VTA office 1717east Vista Way 10AM to 7:30pm

We need to get every one of our supporters to the polls. Any time you can contribute is helpful. Each volunteer could get another dozen PRO-education voters to the polls and another dozen nails in the coffin of Guffanti's political career. Bring family and friends.

Let's get a sweep--all PRO public education candidates in office on Wednesday and Guffanti a well deserved boot off our board.


Dear Colleagues,

This Sunday finds us in the last push for the election. We had several members work today to get the last of the signs up in time for the election. We have only a few more events scheduled.

Monday is our last rally. The rallies have been a great strategy for the campaign. We have gotten a lot of positive feedback from people about how visible we have been.

Our last rally will be at a different time because of the time change. We will meet from 4-5:30 on Vista Village Drive by the Chili's Restaurant. You can park anywhere in the lot by Staples.

We would love to have a couple of hundred people show up wearing their T-shirts(if you don't have one yet we have extras). Please come and bring family and friends, it is important that this last rally is the biggest and makes a statement to the community that we are behind our candidates.

After the rally we will all head over to Lamppost Pizza by the Krikorian Theater for Pizza and beverages. Please come and join the celebration, we have worked hard on this campaign.

Tuesday we will meet at the VTA office for Get Out the Vote (GOTV) activities. We will call supporters and conduct some poll watching to make sure every vote counts. If you would like to join us come over when you can, we will have someone at the office from 10:00 AM until 6:30-7:00 PM.

Thank you for all you have done, we could not have accomplished all the work we have without your support.

Hopefully when we all wake up Wednesday we will have the results we need to make the Vista School Board again one of the best in County!

See you tomorrow,
Barbara Franklin
VTA PAC Chairperson

Desperate Guffanti, Dirty Tricks for our Children

Poor Guffanti, he just cannot figure out appropriate behavior for dealing with others. He reminds me of Sheldon on the Big Bang show on TV. Normal human interactions are just so difficult for him. This time the poor dufus used the trick or treat baskets of our children as waste receptacles for his campaign literature.

Yes, that is correct. Our happy lovely children came to the door of Guffanti and a few others in his ANTI education gang and were given an ugly trick in their basket. He and his tiny band of extremists put a half sheet of Guffanti Garbage printed on orange paper in the baskets of the poor unsuspecting, innocent children of our district that showed up at their doors.

The paper contained Guffanti's usual rants about evil unions and teachers, that goes like this, 'if you hate teachers and unions the way I hate teachers and unions, then you should vote for me and my fellow ANTI education co-conspirators.' How sad, and how pathetic is poor Guffanti!

I cannot help but wonder how many parents were angered by his inappropriate use of their children. Imagine ruining a bit of our children's fun at Halloween by putting political garbage in their Halloween baskets! Well that is Guffanti for you.

He well earns his nick name: "NO RULES FOR ME, GUFFANTI"

Jaka corrects another Guffanti email

Vistaschools blog spot editor note: I found the post below in my inbox. I felt it needed to be shared with more people so I am posting it on the blog today. It contained both a Guffanti disingenuous and self serving email along with corrections by Elizabeth Jaka, one of our courageous PRO-public education candidates. As before what Guffanti wrote is in brown. The correct information written by Elizabeth Jaka is in blue.


Still working backwards on these. This one's almost two weeks old and, depending on how busy I am for these next couple of days, may be the last "old" g-mail I get around to correcting.

I'm actually surprised that there hasn't been anything new in the past couple of days. I HAVE heard that his supporters passed out fliers with candy for Halloween. I still feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it's getting a little late for them to pull anything.

;-D EJ
From: Stephen Guffanti [mailto:sguffanti@cox.net] Sent: Monday, October 20, 2008 To: sguffanti@cox.netSubject: FW: Please Read and Forward

Hi,
I was asked to respond to a young man's video on youtube about the school board race.

[Here's the link to the video. It's the one that made the rounds not long ago, and was the first of the two videos created by a VUSD student. http://webmail.west.cox.net/do/redirect?url=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.youtube.com%252Fwatch%253Fv%253DoWVKleR22LY]

The child has three reasons why you should not vote for me. His logic seems to be if you are not going to vote for me you must then vote for Lilly, Jaka and Chunka. Perhaps, he forgot about Hernandez and Anderson.

[At the forums, Fernandez and Anderson-Johnson just parroted statements found in DocG's e-mails. If you're not going to vote for DocG, then you won't want to vote for Fernandez or Anderson-Johnson either, since it appears they think exactly the same as he does.]

His reasons are:
1. Lmb cost 9 million for only 3% of the children. For some reason even though Lilly, whom he is promoting, has voted for LmB I am the only one accountable. Not logical, but attached is the documentation. Bottom line LmB is for 17% of the students and the cost was about $2.1 million per year or 1% of the budget. (75% of the $2.1 million goes to teacher training not students at all.)

[The district spent $3.5M the first year, and $3.4M last year on LmB.The numbers were shared with the Budget Advisory Committee. I don't have a breakdown handy for two years ago, but I'm attaching a copy of the Budget Committee handout for last year's figures. The committee was also told that the district had planned to spend $3.6M on LmB this year, but because of budget cuts they cut back by 6.9%, to $3.4M.

LmB Intensive is only used for about 3% of the students. The numbers go back and forth, and sometimes the figures include the same kids twice. There is a push to use some facets of LmB more widely, but while some of the tools may in some cases, it's of little benefit to students who already read at or above grade level, or to students who speak little or no English.
The district's budgeted General Fund for 08-09 is $211.0M. Of that amount, $161.8M (82%) goes to salaries and benefits. That leaves about $49M for books, supplies, operating costs, capital expenses, etc. AND the state required 3% reserve. The district has actually budgeted $34M of that for those things, which means the $3.4M budgeted for LmB represents about 10% of that part of the budget. However, (and to be fair) even that's an oversimplification of the entire budgeting issue. For one thing, LmB is partially paid for from Title 1 funds, which aren't part of the general fund. So, LmB's place in the budget is far too complex to just state that it only represents "1% of the budget." And even if 75% is for teacher training, it's STILL part of the cost of the program.]

2. He seems to think that a 16% test score gain is insignificant because we had an 18% test score gain before Bails. Actually, he is talking about API which is a state rating system somewhat correlated with test scores, but not test scores. See attached scores. Students reading at proficient or Advanced are considered at or above grade level. You will notice that the percentage of students reading at or above grade level are consistently moving up. It is literacy, not API that our children really need. This turnaround started with the teachers and the superintendent has worked with the teachers to help them sustain it, which is why 75% of LmB goes to teacher training.

[The young man never says that a "16% test score gain is insignificant." He simply points out that DocG has been claiming that the district's scores did not increase for 8 years before Dr. BaLEs came to VUSD, when in fact we had an 18 POINT (not percent) increase the year before she came to the district. And yes, that is API. He never attached the scores, but the fact is that the API goes up because we have better test scores, and a big part of that is literacy. Our scores had the biggest jump when the district moved away from the bilingual program they were using, to Structured (or Sheltered) English Immersion (SEI). The turnaround not only started with the teachers, they have perpetuated it.]

3. Honor students don't use Lmb why are the other 97% of the students being ignored?
Well the other 97% aren't ignored they just use other programs like Gate for the gifted, etc. our district gets $42 million set aside for special issues like staff development, gifted and talented, special ed, poor performing students and low income students. It is illegal to use these funds on the general population. Why would an honor student need a remedial reading program?

[This is all fine, except that money for other programs is being pulled and reallocated. In most cases it's not going directly to LmB (it can't), but it's being applied to areas that previously used other funding. THAT funding is then freed up for LmB. That's actually the nature of education funding: Fund X can't be used to pay for Item A, but it can be used for Item B. Since Fund Y has more flexibility, we'll use it for Item A instead. The issue is whether or not the funds are being allocated in a way that allows the district to get the greatest possible benefit.
He uses "honor student" interchangeably with GATE student, but GATE students aren't always honor students, and there are many honor students who are not GATE. However, to answer his question, an honor student probably wouldn't need remedial reading, but they often need support in other areas, and they need to be challenged.]

Here is the kicker. Lilly, Chunka and Jaka know these things already. Lilly saw this video and states as far as he knows it has nothing to do with his campaign. Chunka and Jaka have actively promoted this misunderstanding. At the same time they are asking for better communication.

[He's right, we do know those things. And while we all heard about the video - and even shared it with people on our e-mail lists - not one of us had anything to do with its production. Speaking for myself, I'm honored to have the young man's support.
Yes, we're still asking for better communication - something more accurate than the déjà moo (same old bull) that DocG puts out, and more informative than anything the district puts out.

I hope you will look at this documentation and ask me any follow-up questions that you wish.

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

Sign Committee Heroes, GRAINGER AND ROBINSON

GRAINGER AND ROBINSON--COMMUNITY HEROES

I just talked to Randy Weins. contrary to what I have posted on this site, Randy is NOT the chairman of the Sign Committee. He is working on the Community Rallies.

Randy says the credit should go to CHRIS GRAINGER and MARK ROBINSON for the plethora of Pro-public education signs.

KUDOS TO CHRIS, MARK and the other HEROES on the sign committee. You folks have kept our pro-public education candidates names in the public eye!!

You have turned JAKA, LILLY and CHUNKA into household names in the VUSD.

TOUGH, DANGEROUS, and DAILY

For those of you who have never been on the sign committee, you need to know that it is a tough dangerous and daily job.

ROCK HARD GROUND

It is tough because the ground is hard. Wooden stakes do not go in easily. Pre-holes need to be made with a piece of iron bar (re-bar is good). Only then can one attempt to get a wooden stake into the ground. It still does not always go in. After seven months with no rain, the ground can be absolutely as hard as a rock. Sign committee members pray for rain to soften the soil.

SLEEP DEPRIVED

It also costs sleep. Good sign viewing (posting) locations are grabbed up a short time after the City of Vista sign ordinance allows campaign signs to be first posted. Sign Committee members have to show up early in the morning between 2-4am on the first day to get those locations. Then the locations have to be defended. Our signs are the most frequent target of stealing of any campaign signs. Committee members have to constantly monitor are prime locations and be ready to replace stolen signs.

PILES OF SIGNS, HAMMER AT THE READY

You can identify a vehicle of a sign committee member by the pile of signs inside. A sign committee member goes nowhere without extra signs ready to post. He/she also always has a hammer. Downed signs must be put back up. So many of our signs have been knocked over by wind or our ANTI friends.

THANK A HERO

If you see a vehicle in your school's parking lot with a hammer on the seat next to the driver and signs pile up in the back seat, leave a thank you note on the windshield. You are thanking a Public Education HERO.

DANGEROUS

It is also dangerous job. Sign committee members are stopped by the side of the road with cars whizzing by at 50 to 60 miles and hour. One sign member out posting signs came within an inch or two of grave bodily injury when a car speeded up and swerved toward him. He was barely missed as he jumped back. That was four years ago. He has still not told his wife. Hope she does not read this blog.

DAILY PATROL

Did I mentioned it is daily job lasting the better part of two months. Every day the sign committee member patrols his string of signs looking for missing or down signs. If more than a day or two goes by without defending our signs, our ANTI friends can steal or destroy hundreds of them. So all sign committee members learn the routine of the 'daily patrol.'

OUR HEROES

Now you know a few more reasons why the actions of CHRIS GRAINGER and MARK ROBINSON and the others on the signs committee make them all PUBLIC SCHOOL HEROES.

TWO DAYS TO CHANGE OUR DISTRICT

What can I do? With two days left there is still a lot left to do to help.

(1) WEAR YOUR JAKA, LILLY, CHUNKA SHIRTS when in public, shopping, getting gas, going to the theater, anywhere and everywhere the public can see you. Those who have been wearing them have gotten tremendous amounts of POSITIVE feedback. There are a lot of people in VUSD who want to be done with the negative and nasty excesses of Stephen Guffanti and his ANTI friends. Also wearing the shirts gives potential voters an opening to ask you about the election. We have gotten many votes for PRO-public education candidates JAKA, LILLY, and CHUNKA just by people remarking on our shirts and asking us questions.

(2) SIGN PARTY—last one meet at VTA office 4pm Sunday 1717 East Vista Way to put up the last of the campaign signs. We will be replacing the hundreds stolen by our ANTI friends.

(3) COMMUNITY RALLY—Monday from 4pm to 5:30pm (earlier time due to time change) near Chili’s at Vista Village Way. We will ROCK the town. It is the last and biggest rally. Our rallies have changed the way this district will vote. They are the talk of the town. No campaign of any kind for any office has been able to duplicate our success. Do not be left out. Show up Monday.

HEARD ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
Lilly, Jaka and Chunka Local Celebrities!

Someone came up to Steve Lilly and ask him how it felt to be a celebrity. He knew Steve must be a celebrity because there were so many signs with his name all around our district! Good job sign committee—Randy Weins, et. al (Luke? Goologaly?) I may not know all your names but you all are doing a great job.

One Stolen Sign, Twenty Replace It!

One local teacher had his PRO-Public Education candidate sign stolen from his front yard last week. He was so incensed that one of our ANTI friends would come onto his property and take his sign that he went down to VTA office and got twenty more. Then he went up and down his street for a quarter mile in each direction and put up all twenty signs. Of course our ANTI friends came back and took a few more and knocked down most of the others. But now our local teacher hero checks “his” signs every day and puts up the knocked down signs and replaces the stolen ones.

Moral of the story for our ANTI’s friends: steal one sign and get twenty more in its place!

NCTIMES TREMBLES!

The ANTI-public education, anti-union, anti-middle class editors at the NCTimes that have done so much to try to elect ANTI-education candidates to our VUSD school board have been so inundated by protests that they have not run their every two year ‘hit piece’ editorial or news story attacking our candidates or campaign in the days before the election.

Today even the in the editorial by the delusional Jim Trageser, who sees ‘conspiracies”**
everywhere, there were no lies about us! His editorial today (Sunday) decried campaign sign stealing. He did not mention that Jim Gibson, our VUSD board chairman who is also running for Oceanside city council, was caught stealing campaign signs for other Oceanside city council candidates. But then no one really expects an editorial from the extremist editors of the NCTimes to be completely fair.

The big news is he did not lie about us! Had we not called and called and called demanding fairness from the editors at the NCTimes, I am sure that Trageser would have put in a paragraph of lies accusing the good and honest PRO-public education campaign of stealing the signs of Trageser’s ANTI allies. For the last 18 years, the editors have always run a lying hit piece about us just before the election, but not this time. Neither was there a front page story of falsehoods about us! You folks have really put fear into the hearts of the partisan editors of the NCTimes. Good job!

I am betting that Trageser, partisan nut case that he is, probably had a paragraph in the draft of today’s editorial ripping us, but his publisher, worried about you folks, decided to take it out. Of course I am speculating, but this I know, for the first time ever the editorial staff of the NCTimes has not done anything blatant to swing the election to their ANTI friends.

The only reason NCTimes did not run a hit piece has to be because you folks held the NCTimes accountable this election. We know their tricks and we called them on those tricks. They trembled. They held back. A victory for the good guys! A victory for public education in VUSD! Pat yourselves on the back.

NCTIMES STILL IN THE TANK for the ANTIs
Where are our thirty letters?

The NCTimes still has not printed our thirty campaign letters in favor of PRO public education candidates. Where are they? Will they publish them all at once in tomorrow’s paper? Or will they never publish them? The editors at the NCTimes are still trying to get Guffanti back in office. His extremism and nastiness warms their hearts. They love the hate he spews at unions, teachers, and parents. It helps them sell papers. So they have held back our letters. One more day until the election, will we see the letters ever? Who knows? Keep calling if your letter has not been published. Demand that it be in the paper BEFORE the election.
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Jim Trageser, Delusional Editorial Writer for NCTimes

**For a view into the paranoid and delusional thinking of Trageser read about his fantasy that there was a nationwide secret conspiracy against Christians running for office. You must read the comment section after his article to see how fully delusional he is. See his editorial of lies about unions particularly the VTA and read his paranoid follow up comments after the article here:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/08/10/opinion/trageser/z354f6144e8d0282d8825749f0060debd.txt
In the body of the above "editorial", he makes a series of demonstrably false allegations about our good Vista Teachers including the out right lie that we disrupted board meetings (There are recordings of all board meetings proving this allegation to be false) and that our disruptions caused the national media including the New York Times to cover our local school board meetings. Yes it is nuts, but he wrote it in his "editorial". According to Jim Trageser, the New York Times, LATimes, SF Chronicle, CNN, FOX NEWS all came to our VUSD district to cover noisy teachers at a board meeting. I told you he was delusional. See my reply to his series of nutty paranoid rantings that the NCTimes published as an editorial! in my blog of September 4, 2008 entitled "Jim Trageser editorial, a reply."

How weird and nuts does he have to be to believe the nonsense he wrote? We all know that 95% plus of all candidates for all offices in the US for all of US history have been Christians. A few Jews and an agnostic or two get elected somewhere and Trageser thinks there is a conspiracy against Christians. Does he demand 100% of all candidates elected be Christian? How did he get and hold a job of importance at the NCTimes? What does that say about the hiring and retention policies at the NCTimes?