Letha McWey, a VUSD Hero! Compare her life to an ANTI

I talked to someone a few days ago who knew Letha and was told that Letha was helping out at the high school with an anti-drunk driving campaign for our VUSD students.

I was reminded of all the wonderful volunteer work she has done for our district over the last twenty or twenty five years. I believe she has been PTA president at three different schools. She has organized countless fund raisers and other events to improve our schools. She helped in each of the bond campaigns. She helped to recall an extremist board that felt that did not want FACT based science, history or sex education for our children and whose actions lead VUSD to become infamous with headlines on the front page of the New York Times, LA Times, SF Chronicle and others around the country.

She also was willing to run for school board as a Pro-public education candidate and as we all know in VUSD that means suffering a lot of slings and arrows of outrageous charges and lies by our ANTI friends. They smeared up one way and down the other. Finally in a terrible tragedy for our district she lost her 2002 bid for re-elction and Jim Gibson retained his seat.

Had it been the other way around, VUSD would have had the needed FOUR votes to acquire Jay Kawano's land for our high school. The dual magnet high school would have been built at least four years ago. Such a shame for our district and our students who were forced into four more years of overcrowded high schools. I heard recently that Jay Kawano was kicking himself for not selling the land outright back in 2002 without an eminent domain proceeding as the one million he would have gotten from the district in 2002 was more than the land is worth today.

The tragedy of not obtaining the graded level Kawano property in 2002 has been one all the way around--for our students, for the bond money, even apparently for Kawano. Having Gibson instead of McWey on our board is a tragedy VUSD will live with for years. Imagine if we had the 17 million dollars in the value of the land and the twenty million dollars in cost rides and construction delays at Melrose site! We could completely finish and landscape Rancho Minerva as well as Maryland and other new school sites with money to spare. Instead the money is gone.

I consider Letha and the many other wonderful folks in our district who worked for years against incredible odds and with withering disappointments. * The people on the PRO-public education side work so hard to try to improve our community, our schools and our children's education.

Compare and contrast people like Letha to the name calling, truth challenged, anti-school bonds, anti-public education, anti-improvement folks who challenge us in VUSD at every turn. Gibson Guffanti, Anderson, Brunet, Piro, et. al. when was the last time you heard of any of them volunteering at one of our VUSD schools? Where were they during the three school bonds that failed before Prop O passed? Certainly I never saw or heard of them helping Prop O to pass.Where were they when VUSD had a chance to buy the one million dollar Jay Kawano high school site on Strawberry Hill? Why do they complain that VUSD was forced into the secondary non-level and far more expensive eighteen million dollar Melrose site? What do they do constructively with their time? Anything? Ever?

*Besides her school board seat lost in 2002, there was the 99 million dollar Prop LL school bond failure by a few hundred absentee votes. It garnered more than the required two thirds vote in EVERY precinct in VUSD making it appear to have won causing the defeat to be even more bitter. Within a year of losing that bond issue, TWO THOUSAND students left our four highest performing schools. A lot of really good folks gave up on VUSD and moved elsewhere when that bond failed. It was the second blow following the horrible national headlines generated by our ANTI controlled board from 1992-1994.