He's Back! Guffanti Resurfaces!

The well deserved sending of Dr. Stephen Guffanti into political oblivion has ended. His political coffin lid has been pried open by the folks who run the NCTimes. They are ANTI middle class and ANTI union just as he is. They have give Guffanti a regular column in their less and less relevant "news" paper.

Why such a hateful and uniformed person like Guffanti would be given a column, I can only speculate about. Perhaps the NCTimes is trying to get more hits on its website as the irrational rantings of Guffanti always spark controversy and lots of comments. Or it could simply be that the anti Public Education, anti union editorial staff just sees Guffanti as a fellow traveler who needs support. Who knows? What ever the reason, it is bad news for our VUSD students and public education in the North County to let a person who has a visceral dislike of real teachers and real schools to be given space to vent his inaccuracies and bile.

Guffanti lies and cherry picked "facts" leading to false conclusions and deceptions can be found here: http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/01/22/opinion/guffanti/z7361df8a254d6174882575380069869e.txt#nctcomments

If you hate FACT based public education as Guffanti does, then his skewed views are for you. If you like students having all relevant facts and information in science, history and sex education for living safe and sane lives in the twenty first century then Guffanti's views are not yours.

For the moment I will not comment on the old cherry picked data he is using in his attack on public schools.(Doesn't he ever get tired of beating the same horse?Wouldn't he like to be a 9/11, JFK or UFO conspiracy theorist for a while?)

I first want to comment on three of the lies that he and his supporters spread about him and his recent well deserved forced retirement from our VUSD school board.

LIE 1 "PLAIN TRUTH" at 7:10 AM wrote "Nearly half the schools in Vista Unified were built while he was on the board." Yes, and there were more than four thousand sunrises and sunsets during the same twelve years. Guffanti had no more to do with building schools in VUSD than with the rotation of the earth giving us sunrises and sunsets.

In fact Guffanti wrote numerous letters to the editor and was given Community Forum space to OPPOSE our three failed school bonds before we finally passed Prop O WITH NO HELP FROM GUFFANTI. He was on the school board when the PTA, the Vista Business community and the VTA got the bond passed but he did not lift one finger to help, not one phone call, not one letter, not one time did Guffanti help not even to come out to encourage volunteers. Other school board members did help, BUT NOT GUFFANTI or his political ally Jim Gibson either.

Trying to give Guffanti credit for schools being built in VUSD is a 100% reversal of his true position. At the time we were trying to pass bonds and build schools, he was in complete public opposition in letters to the editor and editorial in local newspapers. Instead of new schools for our kids he wanted to use the old K Mart building and parking lot on Sycamore in Shadowridge as a school, even though it had no playground area and was not built to earth quake safe standards. he thought a broken down retail building was good enough for our VUSD kids instead of building a new school for them.

Guffanti and his friends and associates do not care about our kids or our kids' schools because none of them ever had students in any of our VUSD schools. That is why he and his ilk are so dangerous to our schools. If they are ever in charge of VUSD again and make decisions that destroy educational opportunities for our VUSD children, they will not care because their children and the children of their fellow travellers are "educated" elsewhere. They are conspiracy theory nuts who fear "gummit" schools.

LIE 2--The blogger Plain Truth asks, Since Guffanti and Gibson were in the minority, how could they have held up the construction of any schools? This lie is always asked in the form of a question since the blogger Plain Truth knows the implied answer is a lie. It is very FOX NEWS--"I did not lie because I only asked a question." But Plain Truth knows that by California State Law it took FOUR VOTES to acquire land for the new high school. Guffanti and Gibson REFUSED to be that fourth vote for several years. Finally just before a school board election in which he was running, Gibson caved and became the fourth vote for acquiring the land on Highway 76. Sadly that land cost between 17 and 25 million more dollars in actual land cost, increased construction and site preparation costs and construction delays than the original site on Strawberry Hill would have.

LIE 3--Samuel at 10:39 am says Guffanti lost the election because of a "hit piece" "two weeks before the election."

How ridiculous. This is the pot calling kettle black. Guffanti and Gibson perfected the art of hit pieces except they put out their trash in expensive mailer which arrived in the mail just a day or two before the elections in 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2006. The tens of thousands of dollars in production costs and postage used for their inaccurate mailers NEVER came from people in VUSD. Guffanti and Gibson big money always came from outside interests with agendas other than the best possible education of our VUSD children. Gufanti and Gibson slickly produced mailers always came out so that there was NO TIME to rebut them. Since they were never accurate, it was a real shame. Many VUSD voters were deceived by these mailers in the past.

Yet the so called "hit piece" that Samuel complains about came out WEEKS before the election. There was plenty of time for rebuttal. The NCTimes has always allowed Guffanti as much space in the paper as he asked for to run with any accusation he can think of against public schools, the PTA or the VTA. He has had free and frequent access to the Community Forum on the editorial page. He also could have written letters to the editor correcting any misinformation. He did not. Guffanti had plenty of time to tell his side during the weeks after the hit piece and before the election, yet Guffanti never publicly rebutted any of the info in the so called "hit piece" I read the information in the "piece" and found nothing inaccurate in the copy I saw apparently neither did Guffanti.

Instead I saw information in the piece that the NCTimes refused to print not because it was not true or of community interest, but because the NCTimes has always been "in the bag" for Guffanti. He is an ideological twin of the editors as far as hating unions is concerned.

Obviously the facts in the information piece that 'Samuel" is complaining about must have been true. Otherwise why would Guffanti not try to rebut it? He had PLENTY of time to rebut any part of it but he did not. The "hit piece" can be assumed to be accurate due to Guffanti's lack of response unlike the cowardly lies he and Gibson disseminated just days prior to each of the previous elections. (I have those mailers in a file. On another day, I will share Guffanti's extremely expensive and slick fliers containing the despicable lies with you if I can figure out how to reproduce them on this blog.)

Here is the real truth about why Guffanti lost. Here are the top 17 reasons he lost.
(1) He made enemies so easily. He said horrible things about and to people e.g. calling a concerned parent with a legitimate question about school site councils a "meddling mom", or calling hardworking classroom teachers "union thugs"
(2) His complete disregard and disrespect for all parents at the board meetings when they asked reasonable questions about school site councils or any other subject.
(3) His black and white approach to everything. Any one who does not agree with his hatred for FACT based education is evil in his weird world.
(4) His "dissing" of the PTA by refusing to attend the BIGGEST forum of the campaign season.
(5) The refusal (of both he and his team) to show up for the NCTimes editorial interview. The NCTimes gave him their endorsement as they have every time he has run for office. (He and they both share a hatred for unions and the middle class). But they did not give him huge front page articles to spew lies about teachers and parents and his opposition as they have in the past.
(6) His lies and deceptions caught up with him. People of the district were on to his games. He no longer was able to claim to have built schools, be pro education, or care about our students without those darn inconenient facts from his past coming up showing him to be a hypocrite
(7) His "Governor Blagojevich crazy talk" style of dealing with his own inconsistencies and lies and the people who reminded him of both.
(8) His poor attendance record at board meetings. I believe his absent percentage was higher by far than any VUSD board member in the district's eighty year history.
(9) His absolute refusal to support the building of new schools and his total opposition to bonds for building those schools
10) His puposeless obstructiveness when the bonds were passed delaying the building of a third high school for years for no reason.
11) His irrational obstructionism costing our district millions in wasted Prop O money. He refused to be the fourth vote for acquiring the Kawano Strawberry Hill site. A property that would have cost 1 million dollars instead of 17 million for the Highway 76 site that the district finally had to settle for. He forced our kids to be in two over crowded high schools for an additional five years at a cost to our district of between 17 and 25 million dollars.
12) His remarkable ability to constantly acquire new political enemies with his rude actions and words
13) His support of creationism and a six thousand year old earth
14) His support for the denial of basic human rights to large groups of people
15) His support for denying our kids FACT based science, history and sex education
16) His mercurial temperament that had him challenging audience members at board meeting to fight him.
17) His utter disregard for any viewpoint but his own


For these reasons and others Guffanti generated a great deal of unnecessary political heat for himself. He motivated HUNDREDS of parents, business owners, community members and VUSD employees from custodians to principals to actively work to put him out of office.

The sign rallies against him and for PRO education candidates in downtown Vista were huge. They were unprecedented. Even during the 1994 recall, their were not rallies of that size. The one thing Guffanti is good at is generating at lot of opposition to himself and his political views.