Our new VUSD schools are just moldy trailer parks!

This is the newest inaccurate charge that our ANTI friends are saying about our fine new VUSD schools built with Prop O school bond money.

We need to remember that our ANTI friends opposed each of the four school bonds, the VUSD community tried to pass.

They managed to "defeat" the first three by getting slightly more than one third of the VUSD voters to vote no. The vast majority of VUSD voters have wanted new schools each time. In the late 1980's when our first bond Prop K for Kids "failed", 60% of the VUSD electorate was in favor of its passage.

Our ANTI friends then "defeated" Prop L even though 62.5% of the electorate was in favor.

But what they see as their greatest triumph was the "defeat" of Prop LL by a few absentee votes in 1999. More than two thirds of the electorate on election day voted for it but those absentee votes barely pushed the numbers slightly below the required 66.7% needed to pass a school bond in California at that time.

The defeat of Prop LL resulted in over 2000 of our students leaving our top performing VUSDS schools according to data collected by Jack Kileen. The parents of these students gave up on VUSD ever passing a bond and reducing over crowding. We were on year around school at the time with only 163 days of instruction (compared with 180 days before YRE). This was also at a time when each of our two high schools was education over one thousand more students than their capacities. Extra students were put into temporary classrooms in the student parking lots. As a result of the defeat of Prop LL student enrollment in VUSD dropped precipitously because these students were mostly from wealthier families at high performing schools are test scores dropped as well.

When the good folks of our district finally overcame the ANTIs and passed a school bond Prop O and started building new schools, our ANTI friends used this opportunity to criticize the kind of schools being built. Some Chutzpah! as they had nothing to do with the campaign that got the bond passed. But that's ANTI-ism for you, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct and then complain when obstructionism fails.

Here is my response to their complaint that the new schools are not good enough for our students:

con no more (that's me) said on: January 31, 2010, 7:06 am
Roxy on January 29th at 9:06pm inaccurately referred to our fine state of the art modular classrooms with the following:

"You talk about building schools? Which schools? You mean those trailer parks with leaky roofs, and moldy classrooms? These trailer parks look more like prisons, what the heck I guess preparing kids for their future penitentiary is a noble cause right?"

Roxy's post provides an example of the over the top, baseless, inaccurate charges, leveled at the good taxpayers, teachers and students of VUSD so often in political dialogue by our ANTI public education friends.

Let me correct some of her inaccuracies.

Classrooms at the new schools are brand new, state of the art, modular classrooms not cheap trailers. These state of the art buildings have many advantages over traditional stick and mortar schools.

First they are cheaper to build.

Second they contain more bells and whistles--built in AV equipment and a microphone and speaker system for the teachers so that all students are given equal opportunity to hear the instructors voice. Teachers love these modular classrooms and actively compete to be placed in one.

Third, these modular classrooms make more sense for school districts with changing student population centers then do the the old fashioned stick and mortar buildings of schools built decades ago. The modulars allow the district to affordably shift classrooms from one location in the district to another to quickly accommodate student populations changes. Virtually all California districts are using these modular classrooms for new school construction for just that reason.

In the past as neighborhoods aged and student populations declined, the only choice a district had was to close down schools with declining enrollment or bus students long distances from areas of rapid growth to these older schools. With modulars, VUSD will be able to shift classrooms to new sites as the population shifts. This ability to move modulars will reduce the need for future bond issues to build new schools.

Modulars are a win win for taxpayers. Cheaper to install now and cheaper in the future when they are moved to existing school sites to accommodate growth rather than the district being forced to build new schools at taxpayer expense.

Our ANTI friends could not be more wrong about the need to use modular buildings.

Roxy was a little bit correct in one area, there was a problem at one of our schools with one contractor who provided and erected some of the modulars. There were leaks. They have been repaired. That happens in construction. Not all workmen and not all contractors work to the standard we all would like to see. When that happens they are required to fix the problems by contract. Who does not expect to see some glitch with new construction?

Our ANTI friends concentrate on one small problem and miss the glorious whole of seven new schools in VUSD and the renovations at several others. (Maybe the number of new schools should be counted as eight if the Mission Meadows is a dual magnet high school?)

Our ANTI friends opposed each of our four school bond attempts, Prop K, Prop L, Prop LL and Prop O. Thankfully we finally crossed the two thirds of the electorate hurtle with Prop O and were able to build new schools in spite of our ANTI friends best attempts to stop all new public schools from being built in VUSD.

Here is a list of new schools built by Prop O bond: Hannalei Elementary School, Major General Murray Raymond High School, Maryland Elementary School, Mission Vista High School, Rancho Minerva Middle School, Temple Heights Elementary School, Guajome Park Academy permanent buildings, and major renovations at Vista Magnet Middle School among others.