Year Around Education (YRE) was a VTA plot claims Roxy, ANTI blogger

The latest conspiracy our ANTI friends accuse the good teachers of VUSD of doing is a plot to institute the Year Round Schedule and track system in order "to deny students the FULL benefits of an education."

What? Is this bizarro backwards land logic? We all know that the VUSD was forced into the year around schedule after our ANTI friends TWICE "defeated" school bonds to build much needed new schools.

Our ANTI friends were able to circumvent the will of the majority voters by convincing barely more than one third of the VUSD voters to vote no on Prop K and then Prop L. At the time California State law required a two thirds super majority for school bond passage. Had either Prop K or L passed there would have been no need for Year aRound Education(YRE). The bonds would have provided funds for building additional schools and providing needed classrooms for our students thus ending any need to discuss alternatives like YRE. The only other choice was double sessions where half the students came in the morning and the other half came in the afternoons.

At the time none of us in the VTA leadership had heard of YRE. We expected double sessions to be instituted when the second bond failed. The school district literally had no more room in the parking lots for temporary buildings to house our over crowded elementary and middle school students. After the failures of Prop K and Prop L., VUSD had to find a way to house more students. There was no other choice.

Lucky for VUSD students someone in district admin came across the idea of YRE which was far superior to double sessions. In YRE students were given the same amount of minutes as in a 180 day school year but in double sessions the number of minutes would have been less, not to mention having sleepy students in the classroom for the first session starting at 6AM would have impacted learning. Not to mention the exhaustion students would have in the afternoon sessions ending as late as 7PM

Had our ANTI friends supported either of those two bonds, they would have passed easily. Instead they campaigned against both of them. Our ANTI friends force on the rest of us the Sophie's choice between YRE or double sessions. Passage of either Prop K or Prop L would have meant there would never have been a need to consider either alternative.

The ANTIs caused the problem of lack of classroom space, then they blame the consequences of the problem they created on the teachers. So typical of our ANTI friends not to have any shame about the problems they have caused and worse to blame those very problems on innocent bystanders. To think the ANTI movement got its start in churches. Their behavior and their sense of responsibility is the far from Christ like.

The idea for a Year Round Education plan as a solution to the overcrowding after the failure of the two bonds,came from the district administration not teachers. The district admin was desparately seeking a solution for the overcrowding problem that the ANTIs caused by not supporting our school bonds.

I was a member of the VTA Executive Board at the time the district admin came up with the YRE idea. I distinctly remember the very first mention of year round education or a tract system. Pete McHugh, then assistant superintendent of VUSD, took me aside after a meeting between VUSD and VTA leadership. He asked me what I thought of the idea of 163 day school year with the same number of minutes of instruction as a 180 day year. I asked how that would help and he explained that the district could get 50% more students into the same space with a three track system.(I know at first consideration one our of three tracts off at a time seems like it should make room for 33.3% but trust me the math works, YRE allowed for 50% more use of existing classroom space). He assured me it would get 50% more in and would work, other districts had done it already and the state would approve it.

(Pete McHugh wondered how I thought membership would like the idea. He really was wondering if I could sell the idea. Because of the change in working conditions YRE would have to be approved by a majority vote of the entire VTA membership--check that maybe it was just the Representative Assembly that had to vote for it. Darn, I cannot remember. I think it was just the Rep Assembly. I need to go to the VTA office and check the old minutes of the meetings. Anyway Pete was interested in my reaction and what I might say to membership about this YRE idea that district admin was floating.)

I told Pete, it sounded great to me. A slightly longer teaching day in order to teach two months and have one month off, who could be against that? The VTA approved the idea, whether full membership vote or Rep Assembly again I am not sure right now.

YRE was instituted and continued in our district until the VTA and good folks of VUSD finally passed Prop O in 2002 and built new school providing new classroom space to handle the 50% extra students we crammed into our schools by going to YRE. Obviously without a bond passing, there never would have been space in our schools to end YRE so everyone who helped pass Prop O helped to end YRE. Those who did not help with the bond did nothing to end YRE.

I never saw any of our ANTI friends helping to pass the 2002 bond. I never saw either Jim Gibson or Dr. Stephen Guffanti helping in the bond office stuffing envelops or going out to walk precincts. They never even bothered to write a letter to the editor in support of the bond. In fact Guffanti wrote a Community Forum in October of 2001 opposing a new school bond.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2001/10/09/export20388.txt
Trustee opposes Vista school bond Monday, October 8, 2001 10:00 PM PDT ∞
Stephen Guffanti Commentary

Guffanti also abstained from setting a date for a vote for the school bond without explanation. At the same meeting Gibson tried to delay the vote by asking for "more study" of what everyone including the City Council of Vista knew to be a desperate overcrowding problem in VUSD schools.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2001/02/10/export2810.txt
District bond committee gets direction Friday, February 9, 2001 10:00 PM PST ∞
HARRY BROOKS North County Times Staff Writer

At the previous board meeting ANTI darlings, VUSD board members, Jim Gibson and Dr. Stephen Guffanti voted to delay the bond that would eventually pass and get rid of year round education.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2001/01/19/export1213.txt
School board to hire bond consultant Thursday, January 18, 2001 10:00 PM PST ∞
HARRY BROOKS North County Times Staff writer

Three days before Jim Gibson and Dr. Stephen Guffanti said the school board was moving too fast and they opposed hiring a consultant to prepare for getting a school bond passed. A school bond whose major state purpose was to end year round education by building schools.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2001/01/17/export1019.txt
New bond issue pondered Tuesday, January 16, 2001 10:00 PM PST ∞
HARRY BROOKS North County Times Staff Writer


Current School Board member, Carol Herrera, on the other hand, was the single most important person in getting Prop O passed. She was working on it for ten and twelve hour days every single day for months. Without her the bond would not have passed and we would still have year round education. Her wonderful work on the bond lead directly to her election to the school board in November of 2002. Do our ANTI friends thank her? No they revile her as an ex nun who broke her vows and got married. They also have mocked her as "the flying nun". Our ANTI friends do not believe in civil discourse.

Yet the very folks who caused the over crowding problem and did nothing to solve it now blame the innocent for the very sins caused by their own actions. Sadly this is typical of our the angry ANTIs and their reactions to those who favor FACT based public education.

VTA did not bring the idea to VUSD. No one on the Executive Board of the VTA had ever heard of the idea before. The VUSD was forced to bring the idea to the VTA and ask for a change in the contract because the two school bonds were defeated by our ANTI friends. Yet our ANTI friends re-write history and blame the VTA for a problem they themselves caused. A problem they did nothing to try to help solve.

Here is the latest incredible re-write of history by our truth impaired ANTI friend, NCTimes blogger,Roxy.
Roxy said on: February 17, 2010, 9:40 am
Wasn’t the track system another sweet heart deal orchestrated and pumped by the VTA? Another brainwashing disgraceful act to deny students the FULL benefits of an education. Fully supported by CDE in which the FEDS came in and GOTCHA VUSD!!!!!!
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_b2a39fd6-a2d2-54e4-a042-22c3d319df47.html?mode=comments