Are VUSD teachers selfish 'thugs"?

Our ANTI friends often call school teachers in VUSD union thugs or just thugs. They accuse us of being selfish. They say we are only concerned about our salaries, benefits and retirement. They falsely say student attendance has declined but the number of teacher in VUSD has not. Read the comments of Roxy at 10:31 am or 666 at 5:12 am here:

http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_5d484135-59db-577e-8f37-22631a428030.html?mode=comments

Of course we know that their nasty accusations are not true. The fine teachers in our district are among the finest, most self sacrificing found anywhere in America.

Here is my response to our ANTI friends unfounded accusations:

VWDog on January 29 at 5:10 am again writes from ignorance when he posted the following, "VUSD has seen a SIGNIFCANT (sic) decline in enrollment over the past 5 years and it is time for equal cuts in the number of teaches employed by VUSD"

1) Teachers are eliminated every single school year. If students do not show up at the start of the school year, teaching positions are cancelled. VW dog knows this or should know this. VUSD operates no differently than any other California school district.

2) Under the current proposed budget for next year even more teachers will be laid off. Many K-3 teachers will lose jobs as K-3 class size reduction is ended by the budget. Next year under the proposed budget, there will be 30 or more students in every K-3 classroom again instead of 22 there were this year or the twenty last year.

3) Last spring, VUSD teachers agreed to take a UNILATERAL salary reduction to save the jobs of about one third of the k-3 teachers. If that had happened there would have been at least 30 in every K-3 class room instead of the 22 this year. If the the VUSD teachers were selfish "thugs" as alleged by our ANTI friends, then the VUSD teachers would have kept their entire salary this year. Then THIS year class size would have increased and many K-3 teachers would have lost their jobs.

VUSD teachers are among the best in the county. They are also among the most caring. Not only did VUSD teaches sacrifice their own money to keep class size small for the our youngest students last year, Vista Teachers Association is the single largest contributor to college scholarships in VUSD. No other teacher's association in the North County provides as many college scholarships as the VTA members do. This money comes from a voluntary contribution of after tax money by the good teachers of VUSD.

In addition, four different times the VTA led the drive to pass bonds to build new schools. We put our time our money and the seat of our brows into getting these new schools. We lost three times but the fourth time we succeeded with prop O in 2002. Now we can all be proud of the new schools in VUSD. Each time we knew that if a bond passed our salaries and benefits would suffer in the following years as a school bond never pays for the full cost of a new school. We supported the bonds anyway.

The VTA has also led the fight to keep a small group of extremists from returning our district to the NATION wide ridicule it received from 1992-1994 when religious extremists used our district for their own NON-educational, narrow extremist, political agenda.

Read more about that extremist board in the LATimes archives here:

http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/vista-ca-schools


or the NYTimes archives here:

http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&n=10&srcht=s&query=creationism+Vista&srchst=nyt&submit.x=13&submit.y=7&submit=sub&hdlquery=&bylquery=&daterange=full&mon1=01&day1=01&year1=1981&mon2=01&day2=26&year2=2010