VUSD Hero, Elizabeth Jaka, Pushes to Open Third HS

Elizabeth Jaka continues her outstanding reign of service to the students and taxpayers of VUSD by suggesting that the new high school open temporarily at Washington Middle School where there is extra room behind the school. The first few hundred students will start next September. Otherwise VUSD students would have to wait an additional year for their new third high school.

Here is the article in the NCTimes reporting her brilliant suggestion.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/05/15/news/coastal/vista/z8916a8369d444e3a882575b7001af393.txt#tp_newCommentAnchor
This is what the North County Times reported Elizabeth saying about getting the high school opened:

"We have put it off, put it off, put it off and promised and promised," Trustee Elizabeth Jaka said before the vote about the delays the school has already seen. Not opening the school this year would cause the district to lose credibility, she said, and be unfair to the students who have signed up for it.

Thank you, Elizabeth!

Let's get this high school started. The VUSD community has suffered through three previous failed bond issues from 1985 through 1999, the one in 1999 failed by only a few hundred votes. Any one of those bonds would have had our third high school built more than a decade ago and on cheaper more centrally located land. Too bad our ANTI friends did not support those bonds. Think of the taxpayer money that could have been saved if the third high school had been built when construction and land costs were so much less.

Finally in 2002, the VUSD community passed Prop O and money was available to build that third high school. Sadly our two ANTI board members Jim Gibson and Stephen Guffanti refused to be the necessary fourth vote for VUSD to acquire the only graded level site that was large enough for a high school and still available inside our district boundaries.

The VUSD community thought we would get a new high school right away, but no. Our Gibson and Guffanti, who are more interested in non-VUSD issues like Prop 8 and Carrie Prejean, refused to be the fourth necessary vote. That site was the Jay Kawano property behind Strawberry Hill. It would have cost only one million dollars.

Instead we are five years later at a much more expensive site to buy (17.7 million) that was neither level or graded and has required many, many millions more dollars of tax payer money for grading and site preparation.

What could have been a fifty or sixty million dollar high school in 2002 will now cost taxpayers of VUSD at least a 100 million dollars.

Let's elect more school board members like Elizabeth Jaka, Angela Chunka, Carol Herrera, and Steve Lilly who have broad community support and believe in using VUSD taxpayer bond money to build a new high school as quickly and cheaply as possible.

Too bad all four were not on the school board in 2002 or we would have had the votes for building a much cheaper high school that could have been built by September 2005. That wonderful opportunity was denied to the taxpayers and students in VUSD by two minority voting members (Gibson and Guffanti) either of who could have volunteered to be the necessary fourth vote.

I wonder if Gibson and Guffanti would have refused to be the needed fourth vote if any of their school age children or their supporter's children actually attended VUSD schools.

Thank goodness Guffanti after the last election is no longer on our school board.

Jim Gibson can do less damage to the taxpayer now that he is only one vote. But he has demonstrated that he can still damage VUSD reputation by stirring controversy on non education matters like his request for a Carrie Prejean Day. Sad that extremists like Gibson and Guffanti with other than education agendas were ever elected to our VUSD board.