The North County Times continues its downward spiral into irrelevancy and no editorial standards by allowing Richard Kirk to publish a virtually completely fact free editorial laced with false and malicious slander. "Union Muscles in Vista"
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/kirk/article_633f063e-a1bd-5e2e-9dab-adba3ba060f4.html
Kirk lies, slanders and gross propagandistic inaccuracies are printed in red, reality is printed in blue:
(1)Kirk lie: "officials of the Vista Teachers Association, who seem to have the local school board on a short leash."
THE TRUTH: Yeah right Kirk, the union has the school board on a short lease.
No current contract. No raises in several years. A medical plan that constantly raises its deductibles and takes more and more out of teacher salaries flat lined salaries each year. A dental plan that has not raised its reimbursement in TEN YEARS. VUSD teachers get covered with the same amount of dental dollars today that they did TEN YEARS ago. A VUSD teacher can barely get one tooth crown covered in a year with nothing left for dental cleaning or other dental procedures. The same is true for optical services.
In two decades, VUSD teacher salaries going from the third highest unified district salaries to the average VUSD salary being one of the lowest in the county. Last year alone total VUSD teacher salaries dropped by more than 2%--the highest in the county.
The VUSD teachers taking a PAY CUT this year (2009-2010) to save class size reduction. So all the teachers in the district give back more than one half of one percent of their pay so children can learn better in smaller classes. Sounds pretty evil to me.
The hiring of Dr. Joyce Bales without any consultation or input of any kind from the VTA. Dr. Joyce Bales has had ONLY support from the ANTI crowd in VUSD who wrote dozens of blogs and letters to the editor supporting her positions on her expensive reading program. As far as I know no PRO public education person every wrote anything in support of Bales.
Bales went out of her way to support our kooky ANTI board member Stephen Guffanti in his 'jihad' against the RBVHS varsity baseball coach. She went to the secret illegal meeting called by Guffanti to trash the coach.
Bales would never have been interviewed let alone hired if the VTA ran the school board.
The extension of Dr. Joyce Bales contract just before last November's election in which every supporter of Bales was defeated in a near record numbers. It was a clean sweep.
If VTA has the board members on a short lease explain the above FACTS Kirk? Oh that's right an evil bomb thrower like you does not deal in facts. Kind of like showing a vampire a cross, you cringe and run away when facts are present.
(2) Kirk Lie: "when a cost-saving vote to do away with class-size reduction was immediately followed by a flurry of union-inspired actions that resulted in an apparently illegal meeting of three union-responsive board members"
The TRUTH about this meeting can be found in a North County Times article.
As I posted after Kirks opinion piece:
This error filled piece is a new low for Kirk and a sad commentary of the loss of all editorial standards at the North County Times.
There was no "apparently illegal meeting" of any school board members as reported in this newspaper. The following article in the North County Times CORRECTLY notes that there was NO ILLEGAL MEETING.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/03/06/news/coastal/vista/zafeb0db720418fa8882575710068a8e6.txt
If you want real scandal, note that the developer opposed to the new high school gave $5000 to Stephen Guffanti campaign in 2006 when Guffant was NOT running for re-election. Guffanti turned around and gave the EXACT same amount of money to the Jim Gibson who was his political ally. Gibson WAS running for re-election in 2006. This double transaction was hidden from the public until AFTER the election was held and was not reported in the North County Times until January 2007 over two months after the election. One can only wonder why the $5000 was not given directly to Jim Gibson. A good San Diego DA or other legal entity might want to explore illegal campaign money laundering in order to deceive the electorate in this matter.
Anyone who wants to read how Jaka, Chunka, and Herrera ended up in the same place at the same time is invited to read the entirely innocent explanation in Elizabeth Jaka's own words at:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/
under the title:
"Secret Illegal Meeting, NOT. Jaka Answers."
(3)Kirk Lie: "the money and effort that goes into the district's school board elections ---- clout whose real dollar-value is obscured by an organizational machine that's deft at minimizing its electoral footprints."
The truth: The VTA as never made a secret about the school board candidates that it endorses. By going through a long deliberate, unbiased and fair interview and recommendation process that includes a vote by the governing body of the VTA the Representative Assembly, we in the VTA have picked incredibly good and competent candidates.
Second truth Guffanti was so nasty, so intemperate and so unfair to school site council supporters and to the RBVHS Coach Fleetes that a HUGE number of parents throughtout the district including student athletes at RBVHS voluntarily joined in the campaign to retire Guffanti and put in place a new trustee who would put the interest of students in VUSD ahead of the political agenda that seemed to drive all of the actions of Guffanti.
(4)Kirk's lie: the salary paid by the district to the President of Vista's Teachers Association-not for teaching but for doing union business
Truth: The VTA president gets absolutely NO MONEY for doing union activities especially political activities. If she did she would not only be fired by the district but she would likely be prosecuted as well. All political activities goes through the Political Action Committee of which she is not and can not be a member. In addition she must record her activities on a daily basis in order to be paid by the district. Here is what I posted in response to anther frequently blogged lie by our ANTI friends:
"Samuel" the acronym for one of the ANTI's most virulent and most fact challenged posters at the North County Times website posted this outright lie when he said:
NCTimes blogger, "Samuel", posted this lie: " The District keeps asking for a breakdown of the union president’s time but those requests are ignored."
As Samuel knows the VTA president submits a MONTHLY report of her DAILY activities, day by day, hour by hour.
There has been NO MONTH EVER that this requirement has ever been ignored. If the president ignored this job requirement, she would NOT BE PAID in fact she could be fired for insubordination.
Geez, how much more can our ANTI friends make up?
(5)Kirk wrote: "As Jill Parvin noted in an Aug. 6 presentation to the board, this union subsidy is occurring..."
Interesting Note: Funny Jill Parvin was mentioned in this article, she is the ONLY person to ever be allowed to publish a letter to the editor and a forum piece in the same week (three days apart) in violation of long standing North County Times editorial standards (oops, sorry for the oxymoron).
What is it about being anti-public education that so appeals to the North County Times editorial staff that two anti public education advocates are given special exceptions to publish on the NCTimes editorial pages.
Parvin pieces violate NCTimes published standards due to timing. Kirk violates all traditional newspaper standards with a piece full of inaccurate information, nasty insinuations, and out right lies.
(6)Blog Editor Note: Following is Kirk's greatest lie and slander in his 'hit piece' which could and should easily have been fact checked and eliminated by the editor of the opinion section of the North County Times if there were any editorial integrity left at that place:
The LIE: it seems that this $30,000-plus per anum gift to the VTA president is not just improper but also illegal
THE TRUTH: The VTA president has a shared contract with the district. Half is paid by the union, half by the district. Most large school districts have a similar contract with their union president. The contract is shared because of the large percentage of hours the union president is working on school district personnel matters saving the district substantial money over creating a special high cost administration position.
Shared contract have passed legal scrutiny not only in VUSD but across California for decades. VUSD has a hired lawyer (the county counsel) whose job it is to screen contract changes for legality. Shared contracts passed the test here and elsewhere in our state.
(7)In 1985, the longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers, Al Shanker, made this statement: "When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children."
THE TRUTH: This statement is the standard out of context guilt by association crap that our ANTI friends are so good at.
Al Shanker is NOT a VTA member, NEVER was.
Al Shanker is NOT a CTA member NEVER was.
Al Shanker is NOT a NEA member NEVER was.
However Al Shanker was the president of a RIVAL national teacher group to the NEA and its affiliates CTA and VTA.
His comment was made OVER TWENTY years ago in answer to some vicious and libelous comment made to him by an ANTI. His out of context comment has been used on every ANTI public education website, ANTI public education column and ANTI public education radio and TV program virtually every time these evil folks decide to attack the good folks who provide FACT BASED free public education to all children in the United States from K through 12th grade. That Kirk would use this old out of context quote that Stephen Guffanti and other ANTI submitters have used many times before in the North County Times shows how very thin his evidence of selfish union action is.
(8)Kirks Lie: it's hard to deny that unions are doing much better than the pupils whose interests they purport to serve ---- by serving themselves.
The teachers of this district have sacrificed a great amount of time and effort in saving this district from the disrupting influence of the ANTI public education crowd who for two decades 'defeated' school bonds for desperately needed schools in our district.
Teachers gave TENS OF THOUSANDS of hours of free volunteer time after a hard day of school teaching for each of the three defeated bonds and the for Prop O the bond that finally passed.
Teachers gave those hours knowing that new schools cost money out of the general fund that provides teacher salaries, knowing that when a bond passed there would be less future money for salary increases and to maintain medical, dental and optical benefits.
If we did not do that for the children who did we do it for?
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