Bill Faust, president CSEA decrying proposed CSEA cuts

Bill Faust current CSEA president was allowed to have a Forum published in the North County Times today decrying the potential cuts to CSEA members in the proposed budget adjustment.

I agree with him the cuts are draconian. I spend a couple of years as a custodian. It is a tough thankless job. No one seems to notice that the room gets cleaned at night. They just seem to take it for granted that it happens "by magic" every night. But when the custodian is absent, the room suddenly is dirty and dusty in the morning, and everyone notices. Suddenly custodians become important again. It looks like this scenario is about to happen here in VUSD not because the custodians are suddenly all ill instead because budget shotfalls may result in lay offs.

Mr. Faust is decrying in his Forum piece the potential loss of not just custodians but many other fine CSEA workers. His Forum piece is found here:

http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/article_0637c825-2670-5fba-ae77-70b193083be1.html?mode=story


Here is the answer I gave to the ANTI bloggers who immediately attacked the VTA even though the VTA is not what he is upset about.


Mr. Faust is not ragging on the VTA. He is saying that schools need more than just teachers and administrators to run. He is correct. We need the classified staff of secretaries, custodians, food service workers, bus drivers, and others. The problem is money. Our funding has been reduced due to lower state and local tax revenue during the recession.

Vista teachers have some of the lowest salaries in the county of San Diego. The money is not going to teacher salaries. ALL Vista teachers gave up a full day of pay to keep other teachers from being fired and K-3 class size from being increased hence no lay offs. But that money came out of teacher take home pay not from anywhere else.

Stimulus money (Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) came from the federal government and saved the seven school days that the Governor Schwarzenegger had proposed cutting from the school year. Otherwise the cuts would have been greater. We are all grateful to President Obama and the democrats that voted for the stimulus (Bilbray and Issa, our local Congressman voted AGAINST the stimulus that allowed our California school children to be educated for a full year of school this year)

Vista test scores are increasing and have been for years. We outperform most other school districts in the state with our demographics.

As to what happened in 1999, the third school bond (Prop LL) was 'defeated' by a tiny minority of ANTI public education folks in our district. They "defeated" it even though Prop LL passed with a two thirds majority in every single VUSD precinct on election day. A few hundred absentee ANTI votes tipped the election to 'defeat' meaning even though the VAST majority of voters wanted new schools, over 66%, the bond failed due to California's archaic two thirds majority bond requirements at the time.

After that third defeat in 1999, many discouraged parents at our highest performing and most overcrowded schools moved their children out of our school. Over TWO THOUSAND left before the start of the following school year. Losing high performing students did drop our scores temporarily but VUSD scores are now recovering. We outscore Oceanside school district which has a nearly idenical demographic.

The teachers union is not at fault for the bond failure. We worked hard to pass it. We spent our time and money knowing that if a bond passed, money for salaries would be in shorter supply as new schools are never fully funded and stocked by a bond.

Finally we teachers, parents and other community members passed a bond, Prop O, and built many, many new schools in VUSD six or seven elementary schools, a middle school and a high school.

The teachers in this district have been the hardworking heroes in the struggles of that this district has had overcoming the influence of ANTI public education folks who do not believe in government schools nor building new public schools nor fact based science, history and sex education classes.