Below is another view point about the damages caused by local Sacramento Republicans Martin Garrick, Diane Harkey, Nathan Fletcher, Mark Wyland and their Republican friends in the California State Assembly and California State Senate.
I copied this post from the Letters to the Editor comment section of the North County Times on June 20, 2008.
I post it with no pleasure as I am a life long Republican. A fifth generation Republican.
One set of my ancestors (John and Amanda Hathaway Williams) ran the last station on the underground railroad in Ashtabula Ohio. John Brown was a guest in their home. They provided material support for John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. And they helped establish the Republican Party in Ohio.
I am deeply sadden by the take over of MY PARTY by ill informed, angry and racist tea baggers, Limbaugh listeners and FOXnotNews viewers.
I am eagerly awaiting either Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck to lead the nuts out of MY PARTY. Until then I have to report the sad facts about folks calling themselves conservative or Republican, but acting like Hitler's Brown Shirts including the recent imitation of Kristallnacht with the breaking of windows in Democratic Field Offices across our country and racial slurs and crude verbal attacks on blacks, gays, and Jews elected to Congress.
It is a fact that our local elected Sacramento Republicans refused any solutions to our state funding crises besides MASSIVE cuts to education and health and welfare for the poor and disabled. They should be held responsible. It is not just me who thinks so. Below is another local person's views about what Republicans did in Sacramento. It is a view not allowed on AM CONman radio or FOXnotNEWS.
BlueBird June 20, 2009 8:32AM PST
Jim Jones’ letter is just more of that conservative Kool Aid. As usual, the Republicans do not want to take responsibility for the mess they have created. As I have repeatedly noted, Republicans have held the governorship for 20 of the last 26 years, with all the powers of administrative appointments and the veto that go with it. Additionally, for at least 30 years they have had enough votes to prevent the Democrats from getting the 2/3 vote necessary for passing fiscal reforms to save our state, and have obstructed the Democrats legislatively and administratively.
Case in point: the Democrats are trying to pass a simple reform that would generate billions in revenue. Californian is the ONLY one of 22 oil-producing states that does not have ANY tax on drilling! Democrats have proposed a tax rate that, if adopted, would be the LOWEST tax rate of any oil-producing state. Of course, Republican obstructionists are standing in the way, dancing to the strings being pulled by their Big Oil puppeteers.
In contrast, the Republican governor of Alaska (hmmm, trying to think of the name....), last year raised her state’s oil tax. And to top it off, these freeloaders want MORE drilling when they won’t even pay the freight on the free ride they are currently ripping us off for! Just more feeding at the public trough of corporate welfare and calling it “private enterprise.” Private enterprise, my tailfeathers!
And of course, the Jim Jones Kool Aid is eagerly swallowed by gullible letter-writer John Sable whose solution is NOT to stop the corporate welfare gravy train, but to expand it by privatizing just about everything! Sorry, but the middlemen profiteering off public health and safety is the problem not the solution. In the meantime, I don’t see Sable going for the obvious solution, to stop the free handouts to the Big Oil Bullies.
So please, I do not want to hear any scolding from REPUBLICAN oil whores who not only refuse one of the most basic, universal sources of taxation, but want to further rape our offshore coastal areas while the Big Oil Bullies return NOTHING of value to our state except more gouging.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Jack Killeen and Dan Piro, two mighty lions of the VUSD Wars, have fallen
In the past three months, we have lost two mighty battle lions in the Great VUSD Wars. The lions were Jack Kileen and Dan Piro.
THE PRO PUBLIC EDUCATION LION
Jack Killeen was on the PRO public education side. He believed in free and fact based public education for all. He loved numbers. He called himself ‘dataman’. Jack is the one who mined the district data and discovered the lost of nearly two thousand students from our highest performing schools after the bitter 1999 Prop LL school bond defeat. Parents who could afford to move their children did so after the third school bond defeat in ten years.
According to Jack Killeen, the pro public education vote won a two thirds majority at all eight voting precincts on Election Day in 1999, but the write in votes counted in the following days pushed the vote count to just under two thirds needed to pass the bond. The ANTI public education minority “won” with just over one third of the vote. They defeated a needed school bond for the third time. Many VUSD parents gave up on our district and left after that election.
Just five years earlier we had recalled the extremist school board whose views on sex education, science and history made national headlines and turned our district into a joke. With the terribly overcrowded schools, our third school bond loss in ten years, and an echo of that extremist board's actions still in the air, parents of high performing students just gave up and took their children from our district by the thousands after the 1999 Prop LL school bond defeat. Our district test scores never recovered.
Without Jack Killeen, the pro public education forces might never have known what had happened. Our ANTI friends were claiming that VUSD test scores were down because the teachers had destroyed the district by joining in the Recall against the 1992-94 school board extremists. The phony ANTI story would have been the only one out there had Jack not mined the data to find the truth behind the test score decline.
Jack was the father of prominent CSEA leader, Alicia Evilsizer. I wish Alicia and all of Jack’s family the very best.
He died on March 2, 2010 after a long illness from a particularly terrible condition known as pulmonary fibrosis. His own immune system slowly destroyed his lungs turning them into scar tissue. It is death by slow suffocation. I talked to Jack several times in this last year. He was on constant oxygen, yet he remained cheerful and upbeat. He was one of the most courageous human being I have ever known. Those who loved an took care of him also showed great courageous as well as compassion during that last long difficult ordeal.
His obituary can be read here:
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nctimes/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=140544814
THE ANTI PUBLIC EDUCATION LION
Dan Piro was a major supporter of the ANTI public education crowd. You may remember him in regards to the RBVHS varsity baseball coach, Leo Fletes and his temporary firing.
Piro provided the home for the meeting of Dr. Stephen Guffanti, Dr. Joyce Bales and others to meet in secret to talk about their “concerns” with Leo Fletes. The coach was not invited to attend or given an opportunity to answer the charges. Joyce Bales had participated in a similar firing of a coach at Pueblo before she came to VUSD.
From the North County Times article, “Coach's firing polarized VUSD: Latest flash point echoes previous battle”
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/article_1f86bd9b-5565-5b4f-9722-cdc87feb111e.html
“Eyebrows were raised in July, when a handful of upset parents met with Guffanti, Superintendent Joyce Bales and Chief Academic Officer Sandy Gecewicz at the home of Guffanti's political ally, Dan Piro.”
I believe he posted in the comment sections of the North County Times under the pseudonym, “Samuel”. Samuel was one of the most informed of our ANTI public education crowd. Like other of our ANTI friends he was a very black and white thinker. Of all the bloggers for the ANTIs, “Samuel” was the one who forced me to do the most research. His knowledge was impressive. He was an honorable opponent and not a name caller or angry hater. I really did not think his knowledge base or his lack of angry over the top accusations fit well in with our other friends in the ANTI group. He was an anomaly.
He also was a community volunteer. I applaud his efforts with the Boys & Girls Club of Vista.
http://www.nctimes.com/lifestyles/relationships-and-special-occasions/article_f1952bdf-2e27-5f8a-8d1d-6ffe599d32ba.html
Dan Piro passed away on January 27, 2010.
I wish his wife and son the very best.
---------------------
Below are a sample of North County Times Letters to the Editor of Jack Killeen and Dan Piro.
McWey makes the tough, but correct, decisions
In June of this year Mrs. Letha McWey, Vista Unified School District board president, made a gutsy decision, though not a popular one, to reduce school busing and keep the school budget within the state-mandated regulations.
Trustees Jim Gibson and Steve Guffanti naturally did not agree with the decision. Gibson does not make politically unpopular decisions. This is especially true on all bond efforts. Knowing that for 10 years the VUSD voters have voted over 60 percent for bond passage, Gibson has failed to support those efforts.
In spite of the untenable overcrowding, multitracking and limited school day schedule, he would not support the 1999 bond. Caring parents and students left this school district. So for three more years those critically necessary needs were put on the back burner and the district's progress and budget conditions worsened.
If the bond had passed in 1999, could some of the critical personnel jobs and some busing have been salvaged? Probably so. McWey did what had to be done. Maybe the majority of voters in this district will recognize her courageous effort.
In the meantime, Gibson's war dogs, the Johnsons (Stan, Pat, Patty, Patricia and Eric), Dan Piro and Matt Brunet, all acknowledged anti-bond advocates, will belittle her decision.
JACK KILLEEN
Vista
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2002/09/02/export17430.txt
Teachers union leader should stop posturing
Some day Randy Wiens will stop posturing. I suspect that day will come only long after he ceases to be a Vista Teachers Association union boss.
His Oct. 9 Community Forum ("Trustee opposes Vista school bond"), in which he admits that VUSD desperately needs to build schools, was merely Weins#' latest round of posturing. More than $1.2 billion in revenue has come and gone over the last eight years. Yet at no time did Weins ever use his control to ease the burden of the overcrowding. Had the board demanded that the district allocate a mere 4 percent of its annual operating revenue to facilities projects for the past eight years, the worst of the overcrowding would have been remedied.
Weins tells us that Trustees Valerie Wade, Letha McWey and David Hubbard have always supported a bond. Unfortunately, that was the limit of their willingness to provide needed facilities. Not only have they failed to undertake even modest building projects, they have allowed critical health and safety maintenance projects to remain backlogged for years.
Our community needs to remedy the facilities shortage by passing a bond this March. The following November, the same voters need to say no to the union candidates and the union's attempt to buy another election.
DANIEL PIRO
Oceanside
---------------
School candidates and fuzzy numbers
Mr. Matt Brunet has stated that with a $180 million yearly budget, he can't understand why Vista Unified School District cannot build the school facilities we need.
Unfortunately, that $180 million is what the district uses to pay teachers, buy books, cook food, operate buses and do thousands of other things. It's not meant for land purchases and multimillion-dollar school construction projects.
Mr. Brunet apparently is not concerned by his lack of knowledge of school matters and believes his electability is assured without attending candidate forums since he has a bloc of constituents who will vote for his agenda, which looks a lot like the 1992 fiasco that has split this community for eight years.
He is joined in this confusion by Stephen Guffanti, who claims to have built two high schools during his tenure, when in fact one of the high schools, Rancho Buena Vista, was under construction long before Guffanti was elected in 1986, and Palomar Community High School consisted of one relocatable classroom next to Alta Vista High School.
Both Brunet and Guffanti support Proposition 38, school vouchers, which will contribute to the abandonment of the public school system.
JACK KILLEEN (august 6 2000?)
Vista
THE PRO PUBLIC EDUCATION LION
Jack Killeen was on the PRO public education side. He believed in free and fact based public education for all. He loved numbers. He called himself ‘dataman’. Jack is the one who mined the district data and discovered the lost of nearly two thousand students from our highest performing schools after the bitter 1999 Prop LL school bond defeat. Parents who could afford to move their children did so after the third school bond defeat in ten years.
According to Jack Killeen, the pro public education vote won a two thirds majority at all eight voting precincts on Election Day in 1999, but the write in votes counted in the following days pushed the vote count to just under two thirds needed to pass the bond. The ANTI public education minority “won” with just over one third of the vote. They defeated a needed school bond for the third time. Many VUSD parents gave up on our district and left after that election.
Just five years earlier we had recalled the extremist school board whose views on sex education, science and history made national headlines and turned our district into a joke. With the terribly overcrowded schools, our third school bond loss in ten years, and an echo of that extremist board's actions still in the air, parents of high performing students just gave up and took their children from our district by the thousands after the 1999 Prop LL school bond defeat. Our district test scores never recovered.
Without Jack Killeen, the pro public education forces might never have known what had happened. Our ANTI friends were claiming that VUSD test scores were down because the teachers had destroyed the district by joining in the Recall against the 1992-94 school board extremists. The phony ANTI story would have been the only one out there had Jack not mined the data to find the truth behind the test score decline.
Jack was the father of prominent CSEA leader, Alicia Evilsizer. I wish Alicia and all of Jack’s family the very best.
He died on March 2, 2010 after a long illness from a particularly terrible condition known as pulmonary fibrosis. His own immune system slowly destroyed his lungs turning them into scar tissue. It is death by slow suffocation. I talked to Jack several times in this last year. He was on constant oxygen, yet he remained cheerful and upbeat. He was one of the most courageous human being I have ever known. Those who loved an took care of him also showed great courageous as well as compassion during that last long difficult ordeal.
His obituary can be read here:
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nctimes/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=140544814
THE ANTI PUBLIC EDUCATION LION
Dan Piro was a major supporter of the ANTI public education crowd. You may remember him in regards to the RBVHS varsity baseball coach, Leo Fletes and his temporary firing.
Piro provided the home for the meeting of Dr. Stephen Guffanti, Dr. Joyce Bales and others to meet in secret to talk about their “concerns” with Leo Fletes. The coach was not invited to attend or given an opportunity to answer the charges. Joyce Bales had participated in a similar firing of a coach at Pueblo before she came to VUSD.
From the North County Times article, “Coach's firing polarized VUSD: Latest flash point echoes previous battle”
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/article_1f86bd9b-5565-5b4f-9722-cdc87feb111e.html
“Eyebrows were raised in July, when a handful of upset parents met with Guffanti, Superintendent Joyce Bales and Chief Academic Officer Sandy Gecewicz at the home of Guffanti's political ally, Dan Piro.”
I believe he posted in the comment sections of the North County Times under the pseudonym, “Samuel”. Samuel was one of the most informed of our ANTI public education crowd. Like other of our ANTI friends he was a very black and white thinker. Of all the bloggers for the ANTIs, “Samuel” was the one who forced me to do the most research. His knowledge was impressive. He was an honorable opponent and not a name caller or angry hater. I really did not think his knowledge base or his lack of angry over the top accusations fit well in with our other friends in the ANTI group. He was an anomaly.
He also was a community volunteer. I applaud his efforts with the Boys & Girls Club of Vista.
http://www.nctimes.com/lifestyles/relationships-and-special-occasions/article_f1952bdf-2e27-5f8a-8d1d-6ffe599d32ba.html
Dan Piro passed away on January 27, 2010.
I wish his wife and son the very best.
---------------------
Below are a sample of North County Times Letters to the Editor of Jack Killeen and Dan Piro.
McWey makes the tough, but correct, decisions
In June of this year Mrs. Letha McWey, Vista Unified School District board president, made a gutsy decision, though not a popular one, to reduce school busing and keep the school budget within the state-mandated regulations.
Trustees Jim Gibson and Steve Guffanti naturally did not agree with the decision. Gibson does not make politically unpopular decisions. This is especially true on all bond efforts. Knowing that for 10 years the VUSD voters have voted over 60 percent for bond passage, Gibson has failed to support those efforts.
In spite of the untenable overcrowding, multitracking and limited school day schedule, he would not support the 1999 bond. Caring parents and students left this school district. So for three more years those critically necessary needs were put on the back burner and the district's progress and budget conditions worsened.
If the bond had passed in 1999, could some of the critical personnel jobs and some busing have been salvaged? Probably so. McWey did what had to be done. Maybe the majority of voters in this district will recognize her courageous effort.
In the meantime, Gibson's war dogs, the Johnsons (Stan, Pat, Patty, Patricia and Eric), Dan Piro and Matt Brunet, all acknowledged anti-bond advocates, will belittle her decision.
JACK KILLEEN
Vista
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2002/09/02/export17430.txt
Teachers union leader should stop posturing
Some day Randy Wiens will stop posturing. I suspect that day will come only long after he ceases to be a Vista Teachers Association union boss.
His Oct. 9 Community Forum ("Trustee opposes Vista school bond"), in which he admits that VUSD desperately needs to build schools, was merely Weins#' latest round of posturing. More than $1.2 billion in revenue has come and gone over the last eight years. Yet at no time did Weins ever use his control to ease the burden of the overcrowding. Had the board demanded that the district allocate a mere 4 percent of its annual operating revenue to facilities projects for the past eight years, the worst of the overcrowding would have been remedied.
Weins tells us that Trustees Valerie Wade, Letha McWey and David Hubbard have always supported a bond. Unfortunately, that was the limit of their willingness to provide needed facilities. Not only have they failed to undertake even modest building projects, they have allowed critical health and safety maintenance projects to remain backlogged for years.
Our community needs to remedy the facilities shortage by passing a bond this March. The following November, the same voters need to say no to the union candidates and the union's attempt to buy another election.
DANIEL PIRO
Oceanside
---------------
School candidates and fuzzy numbers
Mr. Matt Brunet has stated that with a $180 million yearly budget, he can't understand why Vista Unified School District cannot build the school facilities we need.
Unfortunately, that $180 million is what the district uses to pay teachers, buy books, cook food, operate buses and do thousands of other things. It's not meant for land purchases and multimillion-dollar school construction projects.
Mr. Brunet apparently is not concerned by his lack of knowledge of school matters and believes his electability is assured without attending candidate forums since he has a bloc of constituents who will vote for his agenda, which looks a lot like the 1992 fiasco that has split this community for eight years.
He is joined in this confusion by Stephen Guffanti, who claims to have built two high schools during his tenure, when in fact one of the high schools, Rancho Buena Vista, was under construction long before Guffanti was elected in 1986, and Palomar Community High School consisted of one relocatable classroom next to Alta Vista High School.
Both Brunet and Guffanti support Proposition 38, school vouchers, which will contribute to the abandonment of the public school system.
JACK KILLEEN (august 6 2000?)
Vista
Friday, March 26, 2010
MRSA out of control in community and classrooms?
Even more reason to wash your hands often and use alcohol and/or bleach to clean surfaces that students touch--computer keyboards, desk tops, door handles, pencil sharpener, etc.
MRSA is a bacteria that is usually transmitted by contact with a contaminated surface. Many people carry and transmit MRSA with no symptoms. In certain susceptible people, MRSA can rapidly grown in a small cut and get into the blood stream causing death in a matter of hours ( sometimes less than 24 hours).
The MRSA strains of the common skin staph bacteria is not only resistant to antibiotics, but it is VERY virulent meaning it multiplies extremely rapidly and grows at an alarming rate. Just a few hours of delayed treatment can be the difference between life and death.
MRSA is a variety of a natural bacteria (staph) that grows on the skin of all human beings. Once exposed to MRSA, normal skin staph can be rapidly replaced or transformed into MRSA (The transformation occurs via a kind of bacteria sex where resistant genes are transferred.) The process of replacing or transforming existing innocuous staph on our skins is done rapidly and silently without any symptoms. An exposed person may not be aware that the MRSA strain of staph has replaced their normal staph flora until the MRSA enters a break in their skin and starts to multiply out of control. It is not only resistant to most antibiotics but also to the immune system's antibacterial defenses in susceptible people.
Heat kills MRSA. It is more susceptible to heat than your own skin cells. If your get a rapidly growing and very sore pimple, hot compresses should be applied immediately. They should be as hot as you can stand without burning.
The MRSA bacteria are very tiny compared to our own cells. Think of a earthworm compared to an elephant that will give you some idea of the size differential between MRSA bacteria and our own body cells. (MRSA is a prokaryotic cell as are all bacterial cells. Our cells are eukaryotic as are all animal cells. Eukaryotic cells are massive compared to prokaryotic cells.) An earthworm dies much sooner from a sudden rise in heat than the elephant would so the MRSA dies far quicker from heat than our own body cells.
I use a wet paper towel folded and placed in a plastic baggie, then heated in the microwave for ten or twelve seconds. The heat in the paper towel when placed on a rapidly growing pimple/boil can kill the bacteria in seconds. Then GO TO THE DOCTOR! MRSA infections are more sore and grow more rapidly and go down into the skin more deeply than any other infection you are likely to have had. If you get such an infection. First heat. Then go to the doctor. Do not delay.
Those who have had pink eye, impetigo or boils in the past are especially vulnerable to MRSA.
MRSA is the same bacteria that causes those infections, but in a "souped up" far more dangerous form.
If you have never had pink eye, impetigo, boils, or any other staph infection; you may be one of the lucky ones who has natural immunity to staph infections. Many people do. I do not. I have had many episodes of impetigo and one of pink eye.
Skin MRSA infections can be as a boil which is much more sore and goes deeper than a normal pimple. It is so sore you do not want to touch it let alone squeeze it. MRSA can also take the form of a 'red line' growing under the skin and away from the skin break.
Perhaps 50% of the population has resistance to MRSA, but at least one third are very vulnerable to MRSA and other bacterial infections. It is the luck of the genes.
Be careful out there. Even if you think you are immune, you never know. Clean surfaces with alcohol or bleach. Soap and water do not kill MRSA, they only spread it. Even alcohol may not kill it instantly. Only 10% bleach solutions are universally effective at killing all MRSA that the bleach solution comes in contact with. Alcohol is also very good if the surface is moistened and allowed to dry. It desiccates and breaks the cell walls of the bacteria. However alcohol wipes can be used too long and sections of the wipes can spread the bacteria if there is not sufficient alcohol on that section or the wipe becomes dirty giving MRSA safe areas on the alcohol wipe to survive on.
Be aware that MRSA has been found to be viable and infectious on bone dry surfaces for more than eight weeks. The most dangerous surfaces are made of plastic which provides tiny depressions in even the smoothest feeling plastic. These depressions allow the MRSA to remain viable and infectious much longer than any other surface. Plain wood is the most lethal to MRSA and MRSA does not remain infectious for more than a few days on it. But cloth even dry cloth is nearly as good for MRSA survivability as plastic. In the home the most likely place to find MRSA after the door knob and faucet handles is on the pillow case in your bed.
Some paranoia is appropriate.
Here is the article:
Community-acquired MRSA becoming more common in pediatric ICU patients
Universal screening may curb spread of MRSA
Once considered a hospital anomaly, community-acquired infections with drug-resistant strains of the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus now turn up regularly among children hospitalized in the intensive-care unit, according to research from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.
The Johns Hopkins Children's team's findings, to be published in the April issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, underscore the benefit of screening all patients upon hospital admission and weekly screening thereafter regardless of symptoms because MRSA can be spread easily to other patients on the unit.
Community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) is a virulent subset of the bacterium and impervious to the most commonly used antibiotics. Most CA-MRSA causes skin and soft-tissue infections, but in ill people or in those with weakened immune systems, it can lead to invasive, sometimes fatal, infections.
In 2007, The Johns Hopkins Hospital began screening all patients upon admission and weekly thereafter until discharge. Some states have made patient screening mandatory but the protocols vary widely from hospital to hospital and from state to state.
"MRSA has become so widespread in the community, that it's become nearly impossible to predict which patients harbor MRSA on their body," says lead investigator Aaron Milstone, M.D., M.H.S., a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Hopkins Children's.
"Point-of-admission screening in combination with other preventive steps, like isolating the patient and using contact precaution, can help curb the spread of dangerous bacterial infections to other vulnerable patients."
The new Johns Hopkins study found that 6 percent of the 1,674 children admitted to the pediatric intensive-care unit (PICU) at Hopkins Children's between 2007 and 2008 were colonized with MRSA, meaning they carried MRSA but did not have an active infection. Of the 72 children who tested positive for MRSA, 60 percent harbored the community-acquired strain and 75 percent of all MRSA carriers had no previous history or MRSA. MRSA was more common in younger children, 3 years old on average, and among African-American children. The reasons behind the age and racial disparities in MRSA colonization remain unclear, the investigators say. Patients with MRSA had longer hospital stays (eight days) than MRSA-free patients (five days) and longer PICU stays (three days) than non-colonized patients (two days).
Eight patients who were MRSA-free upon admission became colonized with MRSA while in the PICU. Of the eight, four developed clinical signs of infection, meaning that the other four would have never been identified as MRSA carriers if the hospital was not performing weekly screenings of all patients.
###
The research was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, the Thomas Wilson Sanitarium for Children in Baltimore and by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Other investigators in the study included Karen Carroll, M.D.; Tracy Ross; Alexander Shangraw; and Trish Perl, M.D., M.S.; all of Hopkins.
MRSA is a bacteria that is usually transmitted by contact with a contaminated surface. Many people carry and transmit MRSA with no symptoms. In certain susceptible people, MRSA can rapidly grown in a small cut and get into the blood stream causing death in a matter of hours ( sometimes less than 24 hours).
The MRSA strains of the common skin staph bacteria is not only resistant to antibiotics, but it is VERY virulent meaning it multiplies extremely rapidly and grows at an alarming rate. Just a few hours of delayed treatment can be the difference between life and death.
MRSA is a variety of a natural bacteria (staph) that grows on the skin of all human beings. Once exposed to MRSA, normal skin staph can be rapidly replaced or transformed into MRSA (The transformation occurs via a kind of bacteria sex where resistant genes are transferred.) The process of replacing or transforming existing innocuous staph on our skins is done rapidly and silently without any symptoms. An exposed person may not be aware that the MRSA strain of staph has replaced their normal staph flora until the MRSA enters a break in their skin and starts to multiply out of control. It is not only resistant to most antibiotics but also to the immune system's antibacterial defenses in susceptible people.
Heat kills MRSA. It is more susceptible to heat than your own skin cells. If your get a rapidly growing and very sore pimple, hot compresses should be applied immediately. They should be as hot as you can stand without burning.
The MRSA bacteria are very tiny compared to our own cells. Think of a earthworm compared to an elephant that will give you some idea of the size differential between MRSA bacteria and our own body cells. (MRSA is a prokaryotic cell as are all bacterial cells. Our cells are eukaryotic as are all animal cells. Eukaryotic cells are massive compared to prokaryotic cells.) An earthworm dies much sooner from a sudden rise in heat than the elephant would so the MRSA dies far quicker from heat than our own body cells.
I use a wet paper towel folded and placed in a plastic baggie, then heated in the microwave for ten or twelve seconds. The heat in the paper towel when placed on a rapidly growing pimple/boil can kill the bacteria in seconds. Then GO TO THE DOCTOR! MRSA infections are more sore and grow more rapidly and go down into the skin more deeply than any other infection you are likely to have had. If you get such an infection. First heat. Then go to the doctor. Do not delay.
Those who have had pink eye, impetigo or boils in the past are especially vulnerable to MRSA.
MRSA is the same bacteria that causes those infections, but in a "souped up" far more dangerous form.
If you have never had pink eye, impetigo, boils, or any other staph infection; you may be one of the lucky ones who has natural immunity to staph infections. Many people do. I do not. I have had many episodes of impetigo and one of pink eye.
Skin MRSA infections can be as a boil which is much more sore and goes deeper than a normal pimple. It is so sore you do not want to touch it let alone squeeze it. MRSA can also take the form of a 'red line' growing under the skin and away from the skin break.
Perhaps 50% of the population has resistance to MRSA, but at least one third are very vulnerable to MRSA and other bacterial infections. It is the luck of the genes.
Be careful out there. Even if you think you are immune, you never know. Clean surfaces with alcohol or bleach. Soap and water do not kill MRSA, they only spread it. Even alcohol may not kill it instantly. Only 10% bleach solutions are universally effective at killing all MRSA that the bleach solution comes in contact with. Alcohol is also very good if the surface is moistened and allowed to dry. It desiccates and breaks the cell walls of the bacteria. However alcohol wipes can be used too long and sections of the wipes can spread the bacteria if there is not sufficient alcohol on that section or the wipe becomes dirty giving MRSA safe areas on the alcohol wipe to survive on.
Be aware that MRSA has been found to be viable and infectious on bone dry surfaces for more than eight weeks. The most dangerous surfaces are made of plastic which provides tiny depressions in even the smoothest feeling plastic. These depressions allow the MRSA to remain viable and infectious much longer than any other surface. Plain wood is the most lethal to MRSA and MRSA does not remain infectious for more than a few days on it. But cloth even dry cloth is nearly as good for MRSA survivability as plastic. In the home the most likely place to find MRSA after the door knob and faucet handles is on the pillow case in your bed.
Some paranoia is appropriate.
Here is the article:
Community-acquired MRSA becoming more common in pediatric ICU patients
Universal screening may curb spread of MRSA
Once considered a hospital anomaly, community-acquired infections with drug-resistant strains of the bacterium Staphylococcus aureus now turn up regularly among children hospitalized in the intensive-care unit, according to research from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.
The Johns Hopkins Children's team's findings, to be published in the April issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, underscore the benefit of screening all patients upon hospital admission and weekly screening thereafter regardless of symptoms because MRSA can be spread easily to other patients on the unit.
Community-acquired methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (CA-MRSA) is a virulent subset of the bacterium and impervious to the most commonly used antibiotics. Most CA-MRSA causes skin and soft-tissue infections, but in ill people or in those with weakened immune systems, it can lead to invasive, sometimes fatal, infections.
In 2007, The Johns Hopkins Hospital began screening all patients upon admission and weekly thereafter until discharge. Some states have made patient screening mandatory but the protocols vary widely from hospital to hospital and from state to state.
"MRSA has become so widespread in the community, that it's become nearly impossible to predict which patients harbor MRSA on their body," says lead investigator Aaron Milstone, M.D., M.H.S., a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Hopkins Children's.
"Point-of-admission screening in combination with other preventive steps, like isolating the patient and using contact precaution, can help curb the spread of dangerous bacterial infections to other vulnerable patients."
The new Johns Hopkins study found that 6 percent of the 1,674 children admitted to the pediatric intensive-care unit (PICU) at Hopkins Children's between 2007 and 2008 were colonized with MRSA, meaning they carried MRSA but did not have an active infection. Of the 72 children who tested positive for MRSA, 60 percent harbored the community-acquired strain and 75 percent of all MRSA carriers had no previous history or MRSA. MRSA was more common in younger children, 3 years old on average, and among African-American children. The reasons behind the age and racial disparities in MRSA colonization remain unclear, the investigators say. Patients with MRSA had longer hospital stays (eight days) than MRSA-free patients (five days) and longer PICU stays (three days) than non-colonized patients (two days).
Eight patients who were MRSA-free upon admission became colonized with MRSA while in the PICU. Of the eight, four developed clinical signs of infection, meaning that the other four would have never been identified as MRSA carriers if the hospital was not performing weekly screenings of all patients.
###
The research was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, the Thomas Wilson Sanitarium for Children in Baltimore and by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Other investigators in the study included Karen Carroll, M.D.; Tracy Ross; Alexander Shangraw; and Trish Perl, M.D., M.S.; all of Hopkins.
Four education letters to the editor in one day.
In today's North County Times Letters to the Editor section, there were four letters published about K-12 education. I believe that is the most education letters in any non-electioneering month that I have seen.
The first letter (red) was from Peter Murnieks, a man I know. He is a good solid man. He thinks in very black and white terms. He wants to do right, but sometimes his prejudices get in the way. He makes one mistake in his letter. Obama never said fire everyone and start over. That is one of four choices in President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act. So it would be more accurate to say, Bush said fire everyone and start over.
I do not know the other three letter writers, but I reproduced their excellent letters below.
Solutions for fixing education
Re: the North County Times editorial, "What our children deserve," March 19: Problems with teacher seniority, tenure and the politics of education are addressed two pages later in the article "Obama effigy hung at R.I. school with fired teachers." Do not lay off teachers or anyone else in the system, but do what Obama says should be done in poorly performing schools — fire everyone and start over.
Class size, technology and teachers' time are parts of the only sane solution. Small class sizes starting in kindergarten and increasing in size through middle school.
As students enter high school, they should be issued laptop computers, which will not only serve as writing and reading tools, but also as a method of completing and handing in papers and tests. Research can be done by Wi-Fi Internet access. Much cheaper than hard-copy books and papers. The computers might just pay for themselves in one semester and also teach modern methods of providing and gathering information. Classes could be as large as 300 students, as lecture groups in college often are. Papers can be graded rapidly using computers, and tests could be graded automatically. Administration could monitor progress daily if so desired. Finance should only be local.
Peter Murnieks
Vista
VUSD teachers' anger is justified
In the recent article by Board President Steve Lilly and Superintendent Joyce Bales ("Inaccurate statements hurt VUSD contract talks," March 21), the class sizes in the Vista Unified School District secondary schools were described as "... among the lowest in San Diego County." In other words, neighboring districts have larger class sizes, so it's OK for VUSD to increase class sizes in order to balance the budget.
If the authors of this article used the same countywide method of comparing VUSD teacher salaries with those of the neighboring districts, they would find that Vista's teachers lag far behind in wages. The "wage gap" is $5,000 or $10,000 or $17,000 per year, depending on whose statistics we use. This wage gap between we VUSD teachers and neighboring districts' teachers hurts our families badly, and is the greatest source of anger and mistrust between the union and management.
Lilly and Bales used comparisons between districts to justify larger class sizes, but they ignore similar comparisons of teacher salaries and wonder why teachers are upset. Instead, they spend millions on pet projects (Lindamood Bell) and do not make public the results of those projects.
Robert Hutchinson
teacher, VUSD
Oceanside
Shadowing your student is a must
I challenge parents of all middle-school students to shadow them during school. My husband and I decided to do this, and our child had no idea we were showing up at his school.
As we sat back and observed each period, I can truly say that the teachers are doing their very best. If your child is having a hard time with a teacher or teachers, or if they complain, it would behoove you to find out the whole truth, just as we did. The teachers did not display inappropriate behavior with our students. We witnessed some students having no respect, displaying bad behavior problems and who were disruptive toward the teachers in some classes.
I see this as a reason for our children not being educated and dropping out of school because we as parents are not doing our parental jobs at home. The teachers expressed their desire for more parents to do as we did. Come to find out, not many parents get involved and have no idea how their children are behaving.
Parents, please take this to heart and visit your child's teachers. There are no regrets in the end, just a brighter future for our kids.
Rachel Quezada
Oceanside
A comment about merit pay for teachers
There is one big problem that I don't see addressed by proponents of merit pay for teachers: How will teachers be evaluated and who will do the evaluating? If you base the quality of a teacher on student performance, who will want to teach the kids who are unsupported or neglected at home, apathetic and unmotivated, or simply not very bright?
These children we teach are humans. They don't arrive in our classrooms with the same backgrounds and attitudes toward learning. We are not a homogeneous society here in Southern California. Families here come in all shapes, sizes and cultures and values. Teachers do what we can with whoever walks in the door in the morning.
If you are going to quantify the quality of a teacher, then be prepared to sort children by their culture, number of parents raising them, number of homes they live in, previous life experiences and whether or not they have a loving family willing to put educational support before activities that "babysit" the children.
Why do people insist on reducing our children to numbers?
Kathryn Graf
Vista
The first letter (red) was from Peter Murnieks, a man I know. He is a good solid man. He thinks in very black and white terms. He wants to do right, but sometimes his prejudices get in the way. He makes one mistake in his letter. Obama never said fire everyone and start over. That is one of four choices in President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act. So it would be more accurate to say, Bush said fire everyone and start over.
I do not know the other three letter writers, but I reproduced their excellent letters below.
Solutions for fixing education
Re: the North County Times editorial, "What our children deserve," March 19: Problems with teacher seniority, tenure and the politics of education are addressed two pages later in the article "Obama effigy hung at R.I. school with fired teachers." Do not lay off teachers or anyone else in the system, but do what Obama says should be done in poorly performing schools — fire everyone and start over.
Class size, technology and teachers' time are parts of the only sane solution. Small class sizes starting in kindergarten and increasing in size through middle school.
As students enter high school, they should be issued laptop computers, which will not only serve as writing and reading tools, but also as a method of completing and handing in papers and tests. Research can be done by Wi-Fi Internet access. Much cheaper than hard-copy books and papers. The computers might just pay for themselves in one semester and also teach modern methods of providing and gathering information. Classes could be as large as 300 students, as lecture groups in college often are. Papers can be graded rapidly using computers, and tests could be graded automatically. Administration could monitor progress daily if so desired. Finance should only be local.
Peter Murnieks
Vista
VUSD teachers' anger is justified
In the recent article by Board President Steve Lilly and Superintendent Joyce Bales ("Inaccurate statements hurt VUSD contract talks," March 21), the class sizes in the Vista Unified School District secondary schools were described as "... among the lowest in San Diego County." In other words, neighboring districts have larger class sizes, so it's OK for VUSD to increase class sizes in order to balance the budget.
If the authors of this article used the same countywide method of comparing VUSD teacher salaries with those of the neighboring districts, they would find that Vista's teachers lag far behind in wages. The "wage gap" is $5,000 or $10,000 or $17,000 per year, depending on whose statistics we use. This wage gap between we VUSD teachers and neighboring districts' teachers hurts our families badly, and is the greatest source of anger and mistrust between the union and management.
Lilly and Bales used comparisons between districts to justify larger class sizes, but they ignore similar comparisons of teacher salaries and wonder why teachers are upset. Instead, they spend millions on pet projects (Lindamood Bell) and do not make public the results of those projects.
Robert Hutchinson
teacher, VUSD
Oceanside
Shadowing your student is a must
I challenge parents of all middle-school students to shadow them during school. My husband and I decided to do this, and our child had no idea we were showing up at his school.
As we sat back and observed each period, I can truly say that the teachers are doing their very best. If your child is having a hard time with a teacher or teachers, or if they complain, it would behoove you to find out the whole truth, just as we did. The teachers did not display inappropriate behavior with our students. We witnessed some students having no respect, displaying bad behavior problems and who were disruptive toward the teachers in some classes.
I see this as a reason for our children not being educated and dropping out of school because we as parents are not doing our parental jobs at home. The teachers expressed their desire for more parents to do as we did. Come to find out, not many parents get involved and have no idea how their children are behaving.
Parents, please take this to heart and visit your child's teachers. There are no regrets in the end, just a brighter future for our kids.
Rachel Quezada
Oceanside
A comment about merit pay for teachers
There is one big problem that I don't see addressed by proponents of merit pay for teachers: How will teachers be evaluated and who will do the evaluating? If you base the quality of a teacher on student performance, who will want to teach the kids who are unsupported or neglected at home, apathetic and unmotivated, or simply not very bright?
These children we teach are humans. They don't arrive in our classrooms with the same backgrounds and attitudes toward learning. We are not a homogeneous society here in Southern California. Families here come in all shapes, sizes and cultures and values. Teachers do what we can with whoever walks in the door in the morning.
If you are going to quantify the quality of a teacher, then be prepared to sort children by their culture, number of parents raising them, number of homes they live in, previous life experiences and whether or not they have a loving family willing to put educational support before activities that "babysit" the children.
Why do people insist on reducing our children to numbers?
Kathryn Graf
Vista
North County Times blogger, "clare" wins best post of the week award
Our ANTI public education friends still are posting occasionally. Their posts are often full of errors. Facts are misstated or just plain made up. Grammar and punctuation are problematic.
Last Sunday one of our friends who calls herself, "housewife" wrote a post after the Lilly/Bales opinion piece. I have copied her post in red. Her reference to the union owing the district money has to do with the legal opinion of a single lawyer who decided that the long used and collectively bargained VUSD reimbursement formula for the release time president was illegal.
The problem with this single lawyer's opinion is that this president release time language has been used for twenty years in dozens of school districts all across California and found to be legal hundreds of times in the past.
It may turn out that this new lawyer could be correct or he may not be. The question of who owes what and how much, if any, is owed is still being resolved. CTA lawyers maintain that our the Vista Teacher's Association owes the district nothing. The legal discussions are ongoing. I imagine it will be resolved in court. Of course, no one pays in a legal argument until a legal resolution is reached. Certainly the side with two decades of precedents on their side( theVTA) certainly would not pay. If fact if the VTA did pay before a legal resolution of the legal questions, then the VTA would be guilty of violating its fiduciary responsibility to not waste members dues money. This subtle point seems to have been missed by "housewife".
Here is "housewife's" comment, followed by "clare's" award winning response is below:
Housewife said on: March 21, 2010, 5:24 pm
It wouldn't matter what was in the article, someone would find it offensive in one way or another. It would seem to be of some assistance if the VUSD union would pay the monies declared by attorneys to be owed the school district. When other districts can ask for a reduction of much greater per centage (sic) of their teachers (sic) wages and an agreement can be reached, what does that say for VUSD's union? (run-on) Inflexible at best and greedy at the worst.(fragment) These are HARD times and HARD decisions must be made.
clare said on: March 21, 2010, 10:22 pm
Dear Housewife,
Are you aware that Dr. Bales is the highest paid superintendent in SD county? She earns $233,000 a year. The average salary for SD superintendents is $185,000. She spent over $10 million of our school budget on her ineffective LindaMood-Bell program.
Vista teachers rank 30th out of 37 districts in SD county in terms of salaries. I cannot afford to buy a home, and I am a college graduate with several degrees. If I were teaching in Oceanside, I would be making $17,000 more a year. That is appalling. It's not all about money. The district wants to make its proposed changes PERMANENT, and teachers want to place a two year limit on the changes.
We are not being unreasonable or greedy. We've been working without a contract for two years. Dr. Bales and Dr. Lilly mention other districts in their piece, but they make no mention of the fact that other districts have given their teachers pay raises over the years, and that their salaries are higher to begin with. I wish people would be truthful and honest. Misleading the public to gain public support is just plain irresponsible.
You are fortunate that you don't have to support yourself. I, and many other people do. As a teacher, I would LOVE to have you volunteer in my classroom for day, so you can see how hard my colleagues and I work. I have some amazing, bright, and lovely students who constantly inspire me. I also have 10 students in my classroom who have severe behavior and emotional issues due to their chaotic home environment. Increasing class sizes is not going to help these or any students.
Teachers are at school before after our contract hours, and on the weekends, to ensure that our students receive a rigorous and challenging education. I would also encourage you and other members of our community to attend a school board meeting so that you can be informed about the issues with the Vista School District before you make inaccurate statements.
Last Sunday one of our friends who calls herself, "housewife" wrote a post after the Lilly/Bales opinion piece. I have copied her post in red. Her reference to the union owing the district money has to do with the legal opinion of a single lawyer who decided that the long used and collectively bargained VUSD reimbursement formula for the release time president was illegal.
The problem with this single lawyer's opinion is that this president release time language has been used for twenty years in dozens of school districts all across California and found to be legal hundreds of times in the past.
It may turn out that this new lawyer could be correct or he may not be. The question of who owes what and how much, if any, is owed is still being resolved. CTA lawyers maintain that our the Vista Teacher's Association owes the district nothing. The legal discussions are ongoing. I imagine it will be resolved in court. Of course, no one pays in a legal argument until a legal resolution is reached. Certainly the side with two decades of precedents on their side( theVTA) certainly would not pay. If fact if the VTA did pay before a legal resolution of the legal questions, then the VTA would be guilty of violating its fiduciary responsibility to not waste members dues money. This subtle point seems to have been missed by "housewife".
Here is "housewife's" comment, followed by "clare's" award winning response is below:
Housewife said on: March 21, 2010, 5:24 pm
It wouldn't matter what was in the article, someone would find it offensive in one way or another. It would seem to be of some assistance if the VUSD union would pay the monies declared by attorneys to be owed the school district. When other districts can ask for a reduction of much greater per centage (sic) of their teachers (sic) wages and an agreement can be reached, what does that say for VUSD's union? (run-on) Inflexible at best and greedy at the worst.(fragment) These are HARD times and HARD decisions must be made.
clare said on: March 21, 2010, 10:22 pm
Dear Housewife,
Are you aware that Dr. Bales is the highest paid superintendent in SD county? She earns $233,000 a year. The average salary for SD superintendents is $185,000. She spent over $10 million of our school budget on her ineffective LindaMood-Bell program.
Vista teachers rank 30th out of 37 districts in SD county in terms of salaries. I cannot afford to buy a home, and I am a college graduate with several degrees. If I were teaching in Oceanside, I would be making $17,000 more a year. That is appalling. It's not all about money. The district wants to make its proposed changes PERMANENT, and teachers want to place a two year limit on the changes.
We are not being unreasonable or greedy. We've been working without a contract for two years. Dr. Bales and Dr. Lilly mention other districts in their piece, but they make no mention of the fact that other districts have given their teachers pay raises over the years, and that their salaries are higher to begin with. I wish people would be truthful and honest. Misleading the public to gain public support is just plain irresponsible.
You are fortunate that you don't have to support yourself. I, and many other people do. As a teacher, I would LOVE to have you volunteer in my classroom for day, so you can see how hard my colleagues and I work. I have some amazing, bright, and lovely students who constantly inspire me. I also have 10 students in my classroom who have severe behavior and emotional issues due to their chaotic home environment. Increasing class sizes is not going to help these or any students.
Teachers are at school before after our contract hours, and on the weekends, to ensure that our students receive a rigorous and challenging education. I would also encourage you and other members of our community to attend a school board meeting so that you can be informed about the issues with the Vista School District before you make inaccurate statements.
Lilly and Bales' opinion piece--an Olive Branch?
Steve Lilly president of the Vista Unified School District School Board and Dr. Joyce Bales co-wrote an opinion piece that appeared in Sunday's North County Times.
I found the piece informative and remarkably restrained. After years of wild accusations and paranoid fantasy published in the North County Times written by Jim Gibson and Dr. Stephen Guffanti, it is refreshing to have district leaders write a fact based and conciliatory perspective.
I am no fan of Dr. Joyce Bales. Her salary is excessive. Her refusal to offer to reduce her salary when she was demanding cuts in teacher salaries was very poor leadership. Her inflexibility is legendary. Her inability to see other points of view has lead to unnecessary conflicts in her last district (Pueblo City Schools--district 60) and in VUSD. She has no appreciation for the impact on teachers, their class preparation or their family life of her huge new volumes of Bales Busy Work. The impact has been especially devastating on elementary teachers. She was never able to come up with a cogent explanation for VUSD being the only district in California to buy the full and very expensive Linda Mood Bell program which is in itself another failure in leadership. Yet I am glad she co-wrote this opinion piece that was published on Sunday.
I agree that we must all step back from the precipice.
The No Confidence petitions for Dr. Bales are justified, but we must be careful not to "demand". We must not alienate the four member majority on the school board. They are not the enemy nor the author of our financial problems. They are the reasonable folks that we supported in school board elections.
It was Jim Gibson (currently still a board member) and Dr. Stephen Guffanti (who was retired by voters in November 2008), who while sitting on our school board from 2002 through 2006 delayed the start of construction on our third high school for five years at an increased cost of nearly FIFTY MILLION dollars. Wouldn't it be nice to have that money now? It is Gibson and his small band of extremist supporters who are the sworn enemies of public education and public school teachers and all rational fact based folks everywhere. They started the fight. They intend to win. If we are not careful we might help them in their nefarious plot to end public education.
The twenty five percent reduction in money from Sacramento was chiefly the fault of our local Republican State Assembly persons and State Senator who were instrumental in the log jamming any proposals to fix the California Funding Crisis. Martin Garrick, Diane Harkey, and Nathan Fletcher in the Assembly and Mark Wyland in the State Senate voted time after time in lockstep with other SACRAMENTO Republicans to prevent any solutions to the funding crises except massive cuts to California education and services to our California's poor and disabled. Had our local state assembly persons and state senator changed their votes on key funding solutions like an oil production tax, there would have been billions less in cuts. Aim your rage at Garrick, Harkey, Fletcher and Wyland, not the rational and compassionate four member VUSD school board majority.
(Note: California is the third largest oil producing state in the USA and the only state with no state tax on oil production. Sarah Palin raised the Alaska tax on oil production. Virtually the whole state government of Alaska is run on those taxes which also return several thousand dollars directly to every single citizen of Alaska every single year. But here in California the exact same tax was prevented by the actions of Garrick, Harkey, Fletcher and Wyland.)
I hope we all think first before we address the school board members. What is our goal? Is it to make them angry? Is it to drive wedges? Is it to blame the board for cuts that the Republicans in Sacramento forced on them? Or is it to get a fair settlement during these financially difficult times?
We must never forget that in Vista Unified we have a small, but politically powerful group, that has a fanatic devotion to the complete destruction of all public education in America. Guffanti had membership in a group that openly advocated that goal. Members of Citizens for Excellence in Education helped train and elect school board candidates for our school board.The current president of CEE believes that "government" school teachers "participate in the spiritual rape of Christian students". I know it sounds crazy but it is on their website.
This group once controlled our school board from 1992-94. They did terrible damage to our district's reputation and drove thousands of students from our school district. After we recalled their first batch of ANTI public education candidates they managed to elect Dr. Stephen Guffanti and Jim Gibson to our school board. Those two obstructionists caused the waste of more than a third of our Prop O school bond money by delaying the construction of the new high school--now called Mission Vista High School.
This same group of ANTI public education fanatics has started a recall against the Steve Lilly, Elizabeth Jaka, and Angela Chunka. Should they succeed we could lose the district. The first goal of Guffanti and Gibson and their group is to privatize as much of the district as possible--bus services, custodial services and school sites. The second is to split up our schools into separate charter schools. Each charter with its own board, own union or no union, own health care etc.
Our only power is in unity. The haters of unions and public education know they cannot win on facts. Their only winning strategy is to reduce our collective ability for action. We must not help them in their un-American goals for us and our school district. Be careful with what you say and how you say it. We must not give our local ANTIs ammunition or help in their attempts to spread dissention and destruction of our public school system.
Below is what I consider an olive branch from Steve Lilly and Dr. Joyce Bales. No matter how rightfully aggrieved we are by our low county salary standing and by the actions of Dr. Bales, we must be the better people. Please let your better natures rule your actions. We do not want to risk losing everything to the ANTI-public education crowd that lurks in the dark corners of our fine school district.
Here is the URL and the first paragraphs of the Lilly/Bales opinion piece:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/perspective/article_e51ee7ad-a2d1-546e-8a3c-2190c1e9025b.html
LOCAL VIEW: Inaccurate statements hurt VUSD contract talks
By STEVE LILLY and JOYCE BALES -- Vista Unified School District Posted: March 21, 2010 12:01 am
Vista Unified School District is at an impasse with the Vista Teachers' Association in contract negotiations. California's budget crisis has required a 25 percent budget cut in VUSD over three years (2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11), making a contract agreement even more difficult.
Impasse involves a series of steps designed to produce a negotiated agreement if at all possible. First, an impartial third-party mediator confers with both sides to see whether common ground can be found. If mediation is unsuccessful, a three-person "fact-finding" team studies the situation, directs a new round of bargaining and issues a report of its findings. As with mediation, the fact-finding process focuses on producing an agreement.
A state mediator spent two full days with the district and union negotiating teams in February and March, without producing agreement on all unresolved issues. After two days, the mediator advanced the process to fact-finding.
Any extended negotiation raises anxieties and strains relationships, and that is the case with VUSD. Teachers are justifiably concerned about their well-being and working conditions, and the nature of contract negotiations makes full disclosure impossible.
For the rest of the article go to the URL listed above.
I found the piece informative and remarkably restrained. After years of wild accusations and paranoid fantasy published in the North County Times written by Jim Gibson and Dr. Stephen Guffanti, it is refreshing to have district leaders write a fact based and conciliatory perspective.
I am no fan of Dr. Joyce Bales. Her salary is excessive. Her refusal to offer to reduce her salary when she was demanding cuts in teacher salaries was very poor leadership. Her inflexibility is legendary. Her inability to see other points of view has lead to unnecessary conflicts in her last district (Pueblo City Schools--district 60) and in VUSD. She has no appreciation for the impact on teachers, their class preparation or their family life of her huge new volumes of Bales Busy Work. The impact has been especially devastating on elementary teachers. She was never able to come up with a cogent explanation for VUSD being the only district in California to buy the full and very expensive Linda Mood Bell program which is in itself another failure in leadership. Yet I am glad she co-wrote this opinion piece that was published on Sunday.
I agree that we must all step back from the precipice.
The No Confidence petitions for Dr. Bales are justified, but we must be careful not to "demand". We must not alienate the four member majority on the school board. They are not the enemy nor the author of our financial problems. They are the reasonable folks that we supported in school board elections.
It was Jim Gibson (currently still a board member) and Dr. Stephen Guffanti (who was retired by voters in November 2008), who while sitting on our school board from 2002 through 2006 delayed the start of construction on our third high school for five years at an increased cost of nearly FIFTY MILLION dollars. Wouldn't it be nice to have that money now? It is Gibson and his small band of extremist supporters who are the sworn enemies of public education and public school teachers and all rational fact based folks everywhere. They started the fight. They intend to win. If we are not careful we might help them in their nefarious plot to end public education.
The twenty five percent reduction in money from Sacramento was chiefly the fault of our local Republican State Assembly persons and State Senator who were instrumental in the log jamming any proposals to fix the California Funding Crisis. Martin Garrick, Diane Harkey, and Nathan Fletcher in the Assembly and Mark Wyland in the State Senate voted time after time in lockstep with other SACRAMENTO Republicans to prevent any solutions to the funding crises except massive cuts to California education and services to our California's poor and disabled. Had our local state assembly persons and state senator changed their votes on key funding solutions like an oil production tax, there would have been billions less in cuts. Aim your rage at Garrick, Harkey, Fletcher and Wyland, not the rational and compassionate four member VUSD school board majority.
(Note: California is the third largest oil producing state in the USA and the only state with no state tax on oil production. Sarah Palin raised the Alaska tax on oil production. Virtually the whole state government of Alaska is run on those taxes which also return several thousand dollars directly to every single citizen of Alaska every single year. But here in California the exact same tax was prevented by the actions of Garrick, Harkey, Fletcher and Wyland.)
I hope we all think first before we address the school board members. What is our goal? Is it to make them angry? Is it to drive wedges? Is it to blame the board for cuts that the Republicans in Sacramento forced on them? Or is it to get a fair settlement during these financially difficult times?
We must never forget that in Vista Unified we have a small, but politically powerful group, that has a fanatic devotion to the complete destruction of all public education in America. Guffanti had membership in a group that openly advocated that goal. Members of Citizens for Excellence in Education helped train and elect school board candidates for our school board.The current president of CEE believes that "government" school teachers "participate in the spiritual rape of Christian students". I know it sounds crazy but it is on their website.
This group once controlled our school board from 1992-94. They did terrible damage to our district's reputation and drove thousands of students from our school district. After we recalled their first batch of ANTI public education candidates they managed to elect Dr. Stephen Guffanti and Jim Gibson to our school board. Those two obstructionists caused the waste of more than a third of our Prop O school bond money by delaying the construction of the new high school--now called Mission Vista High School.
This same group of ANTI public education fanatics has started a recall against the Steve Lilly, Elizabeth Jaka, and Angela Chunka. Should they succeed we could lose the district. The first goal of Guffanti and Gibson and their group is to privatize as much of the district as possible--bus services, custodial services and school sites. The second is to split up our schools into separate charter schools. Each charter with its own board, own union or no union, own health care etc.
Our only power is in unity. The haters of unions and public education know they cannot win on facts. Their only winning strategy is to reduce our collective ability for action. We must not help them in their un-American goals for us and our school district. Be careful with what you say and how you say it. We must not give our local ANTIs ammunition or help in their attempts to spread dissention and destruction of our public school system.
Below is what I consider an olive branch from Steve Lilly and Dr. Joyce Bales. No matter how rightfully aggrieved we are by our low county salary standing and by the actions of Dr. Bales, we must be the better people. Please let your better natures rule your actions. We do not want to risk losing everything to the ANTI-public education crowd that lurks in the dark corners of our fine school district.
Here is the URL and the first paragraphs of the Lilly/Bales opinion piece:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/perspective/article_e51ee7ad-a2d1-546e-8a3c-2190c1e9025b.html
LOCAL VIEW: Inaccurate statements hurt VUSD contract talks
By STEVE LILLY and JOYCE BALES -- Vista Unified School District Posted: March 21, 2010 12:01 am
Vista Unified School District is at an impasse with the Vista Teachers' Association in contract negotiations. California's budget crisis has required a 25 percent budget cut in VUSD over three years (2008-09, 2009-10, 2010-11), making a contract agreement even more difficult.
Impasse involves a series of steps designed to produce a negotiated agreement if at all possible. First, an impartial third-party mediator confers with both sides to see whether common ground can be found. If mediation is unsuccessful, a three-person "fact-finding" team studies the situation, directs a new round of bargaining and issues a report of its findings. As with mediation, the fact-finding process focuses on producing an agreement.
A state mediator spent two full days with the district and union negotiating teams in February and March, without producing agreement on all unresolved issues. After two days, the mediator advanced the process to fact-finding.
Any extended negotiation raises anxieties and strains relationships, and that is the case with VUSD. Teachers are justifiably concerned about their well-being and working conditions, and the nature of contract negotiations makes full disclosure impossible.
For the rest of the article go to the URL listed above.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
North County Times attacks teacher tenure and seniority
Today the North County Times editorial staff published another in their perennial series of attacks on public schools and public school teachers. Today the editors attacked both seniority and tenure. Sadly the editorial staff did not bother to discover the difference between the two concepts before they wrote their hit piece.
Read their latest attack on dedicated public school teachers here:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_d188a847-c70e-5b1f-a8a3-830474d41c43.html
If you took the time to go to the URL above and read the article you would have found that the North County Times editorial staff again failed to do basic research. Their editorial today confused tenure with seniority. Two different concepts used in different ways.
Their first error, they are beating a dead horse. There is no tenure at Oceanside Unified or any other California K-12 school district. Tenure does not exist in California K-12 public schools. It is not in our Education Code.
Second error, seniority is not tenure. It simply is one way to structure lay offs when times get tough and cut backs are made. Whether or not a teacher has tenure makes no difference in seniority. A tenured teacher could be laid off if that teacher had less seniority than another teacher during cut backs. Tenure and seniority are two very different concepts. Seniority means the last hired is the first fired. This is a common practice in many many kinds of jobs. It is a very fair concept. Everyone knows where they stand on the list.
A teacher hired on August 21st of a particular year is not laid off until one hired on August 22nd of the same year is laid off first. Nothing at all to do with tenure.
Third error, there are NOT fewer students in most California school districts. No teachers should be laid off. There is a need for every one of the potential laid off teachers. We should not be laying off any of them.
What there is, is a FUNDING CRISES caused by the obstructionist Republican Assembly persons and Republican State Senators who refused to allow reasonable FUNDING increases like a Sarah Palin oil producer's tax.
In Alaska the tax pays for most of all state operations. In California, the third largest oil producing state, there is NO TAX on oil production at all.
The Sacramento Republicans will not allow any tax of any kind to be considered. They hold our state hostage with only one third of the State Legislature due to our archaic two thirds majority constitutional requirement to pass a state budget.
The SAC Republicans vote in lockstep, Soviet Politburo style, and deny all reasonable fixes to our state's income problem.
The editors should be decrying the horrible immoral behavior of the Sacramento Republican mob--Martin Garrick, Diane Harkey, Nathan Fletcher and Mark Wyland. These and their fellow SAC Republicans have caused the mess in California.
The fiscal crises could be easily fixed. State colleges and universities, K-12 education, compassionate programs for health and welfare for the poor and disabled could be fully funded except Garrick, Harkey, Fletcher, Wyland and their immoral fellow "new" Republicans find cuts politically easy. A conscience is a hard thing to find among Sacramento Republicans.* (I write this sadly. I am a fifth generation Republican. I no longer recognize my party.)
*Check out the California Tax Reform Association website
http://caltaxreform.org/?p=211
Read the following article:
"Low Hanging Fruit in the Tax System: 10 Policies for $20 Billion"
Listed at the web site are ten relatively easy solutions to our INCOME problem for the state treasury. None of those ten would cost anyone reading this a single cent. In fact regressive taxes on the middle class and poor like car registration and sales tax could be reduced if these funding solutions were enacted.
Fourth how does one decide who is a good teacher or is not. It often is a completely arbitrary decision NOT based on classroom performance.
I know a young public school teacher living in Fresno who believes he was not rehired at the end of his second year as a successful middle school teacher because he refused to coach a fourth sports team after school. Each team required five days a week several hours a day after school during that particular sports season. He wanted to devote more time to preparation for his classroom duties, so he declined the fourth "opportunity" of the year to coach. The principal wanted male teachers to coach. The parents liked after school sports. The principal wanted happy parents. So the young teacher was dismissed.
Of course the young teacher cannot prove it. California state law does not require the principal to give new teachers any reason at all for not being rehired.
Until we elect someone else to Sacramento or chance our archaic two third majority for passing the California State Budget, the funding problems that has resulted in tens of thousands of lay off notices to public school teachers, immense increases in California college tuition, and heartless cut backs for the poor and disabled will continue in our state.
Read their latest attack on dedicated public school teachers here:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/editorial/article_d188a847-c70e-5b1f-a8a3-830474d41c43.html
If you took the time to go to the URL above and read the article you would have found that the North County Times editorial staff again failed to do basic research. Their editorial today confused tenure with seniority. Two different concepts used in different ways.
Their first error, they are beating a dead horse. There is no tenure at Oceanside Unified or any other California K-12 school district. Tenure does not exist in California K-12 public schools. It is not in our Education Code.
Second error, seniority is not tenure. It simply is one way to structure lay offs when times get tough and cut backs are made. Whether or not a teacher has tenure makes no difference in seniority. A tenured teacher could be laid off if that teacher had less seniority than another teacher during cut backs. Tenure and seniority are two very different concepts. Seniority means the last hired is the first fired. This is a common practice in many many kinds of jobs. It is a very fair concept. Everyone knows where they stand on the list.
A teacher hired on August 21st of a particular year is not laid off until one hired on August 22nd of the same year is laid off first. Nothing at all to do with tenure.
Third error, there are NOT fewer students in most California school districts. No teachers should be laid off. There is a need for every one of the potential laid off teachers. We should not be laying off any of them.
What there is, is a FUNDING CRISES caused by the obstructionist Republican Assembly persons and Republican State Senators who refused to allow reasonable FUNDING increases like a Sarah Palin oil producer's tax.
In Alaska the tax pays for most of all state operations. In California, the third largest oil producing state, there is NO TAX on oil production at all.
The Sacramento Republicans will not allow any tax of any kind to be considered. They hold our state hostage with only one third of the State Legislature due to our archaic two thirds majority constitutional requirement to pass a state budget.
The SAC Republicans vote in lockstep, Soviet Politburo style, and deny all reasonable fixes to our state's income problem.
The editors should be decrying the horrible immoral behavior of the Sacramento Republican mob--Martin Garrick, Diane Harkey, Nathan Fletcher and Mark Wyland. These and their fellow SAC Republicans have caused the mess in California.
The fiscal crises could be easily fixed. State colleges and universities, K-12 education, compassionate programs for health and welfare for the poor and disabled could be fully funded except Garrick, Harkey, Fletcher, Wyland and their immoral fellow "new" Republicans find cuts politically easy. A conscience is a hard thing to find among Sacramento Republicans.* (I write this sadly. I am a fifth generation Republican. I no longer recognize my party.)
*Check out the California Tax Reform Association website
http://caltaxreform.org/?p=211
Read the following article:
"Low Hanging Fruit in the Tax System: 10 Policies for $20 Billion"
Listed at the web site are ten relatively easy solutions to our INCOME problem for the state treasury. None of those ten would cost anyone reading this a single cent. In fact regressive taxes on the middle class and poor like car registration and sales tax could be reduced if these funding solutions were enacted.
Fourth how does one decide who is a good teacher or is not. It often is a completely arbitrary decision NOT based on classroom performance.
I know a young public school teacher living in Fresno who believes he was not rehired at the end of his second year as a successful middle school teacher because he refused to coach a fourth sports team after school. Each team required five days a week several hours a day after school during that particular sports season. He wanted to devote more time to preparation for his classroom duties, so he declined the fourth "opportunity" of the year to coach. The principal wanted male teachers to coach. The parents liked after school sports. The principal wanted happy parents. So the young teacher was dismissed.
Of course the young teacher cannot prove it. California state law does not require the principal to give new teachers any reason at all for not being rehired.
Until we elect someone else to Sacramento or chance our archaic two third majority for passing the California State Budget, the funding problems that has resulted in tens of thousands of lay off notices to public school teachers, immense increases in California college tuition, and heartless cut backs for the poor and disabled will continue in our state.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Trageser Tones Down--an early "Easter Miracle?"
Jim Trageser has finally written a column without name calling or malicious, inaccurate and highly inflammatory accusations against the fine teachers of VUSD. Apparently the some of those fine VUSD teachers from Madison Middle School invited him over to discuss his last column and its incendiary charges. To Jim Trageser's credit he accepted the invitation and even more to his credit he listened. Very rare for someone who has espoused such extreme views as Jim as done over the years to actually re-think his positions. Impressive.
More on Jim Trageser's anti teacher rants found here:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2008/09/jim-trageser-editorial-nctimes-reply.html
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2010/01/unfounded-charges-of-our-anti-friends.html
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2010/02/jim-trageser-caught-in-lie-refuses-to.html
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2010/03/trageser-spanked-again-for-bias-by.html
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2010/03/jim-tragesers-other-hit-piece-on-good.html
Below are the first several paragraphs of the new Jim Trageser tone apparently thanks to the miracle workers at Madison Middle School.
TRAGESER: It's time to talk, not fuss
By JIM TRAGESER -- jtrageser@nctimes.com Posted: March 14, 2010 12:01 am (6) Comments Print
I want to thank a group of teachers at Madison Middle School in Oceanside for taking time out of their busy schedules to meet with me last week and talk about a previous column of mine they didn't much care for, as well as the general situation facing public education in North County (and particularly the Vista Unified School District) these days.
To be clear, let me state a few points I assumed were obvious but that bear repeating in the interests of clarity:
-- Teachers should not have to purchase classroom supplies out of their own pocket. Ever.
-- Teachers should not feel compelled to work more than a 50-hour workweek, salaried or no. Their families need them, too, and balance is important in life.
-- Teachers' input should be taken seriously by the administration of every school district in the country. They're the ones, especially the good ones, who actually know what works at getting students to learn quickly and well.
Having said that, I'll reiterate what I wrote in the comments section of the online version of my column: "Step increases" are indeed raises, and when teachers and their unions argue that they are not, it only causes the rest of us to wonder why they're trying to downplay the fact that most teachers are eligible for a year-to-year increase in pay as their experience (and, often, education) increase. Look, if your paycheck is bigger this year than it was last, that's a raise.
More on Jim Trageser's anti teacher rants found here:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2008/09/jim-trageser-editorial-nctimes-reply.html
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2010/01/unfounded-charges-of-our-anti-friends.html
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2010/02/jim-trageser-caught-in-lie-refuses-to.html
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2010/03/trageser-spanked-again-for-bias-by.html
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2010/03/jim-tragesers-other-hit-piece-on-good.html
Below are the first several paragraphs of the new Jim Trageser tone apparently thanks to the miracle workers at Madison Middle School.
TRAGESER: It's time to talk, not fuss
By JIM TRAGESER -- jtrageser@nctimes.com Posted: March 14, 2010 12:01 am (6) Comments Print
I want to thank a group of teachers at Madison Middle School in Oceanside for taking time out of their busy schedules to meet with me last week and talk about a previous column of mine they didn't much care for, as well as the general situation facing public education in North County (and particularly the Vista Unified School District) these days.
To be clear, let me state a few points I assumed were obvious but that bear repeating in the interests of clarity:
-- Teachers should not have to purchase classroom supplies out of their own pocket. Ever.
-- Teachers should not feel compelled to work more than a 50-hour workweek, salaried or no. Their families need them, too, and balance is important in life.
-- Teachers' input should be taken seriously by the administration of every school district in the country. They're the ones, especially the good ones, who actually know what works at getting students to learn quickly and well.
Having said that, I'll reiterate what I wrote in the comments section of the online version of my column: "Step increases" are indeed raises, and when teachers and their unions argue that they are not, it only causes the rest of us to wonder why they're trying to downplay the fact that most teachers are eligible for a year-to-year increase in pay as their experience (and, often, education) increase. Look, if your paycheck is bigger this year than it was last, that's a raise.
Read the rest at the North County Times URL:
Here is what dumbfounded North County Times blogger wrote after reading Jim's latest column:
eric said on: March 14, 2010, 1:59 pm
I had to check the byline a few times while reading this column to make sure it was Jim Trageser. I would also like to congratulate those Madison teachers who talked to Mr. Trageser and performed this transformation. I never understood how anyone with children in our public school system could bash teachers as selfish and greedy. Or print things in his column like "The argument could also be made that teachers have made very clear that Vista students are not their priority."(2/21) Maybe it is just springtime making our hearts lighter. Or President Obama's moral leadership. Or both.
--------------------
Here is my blog post including why it is unfair to call step salary increases raises.
con no more said on: March 14, 2010, 7:54 am
Thank you Jim Trageser for having the courage to go to Madison and listen to teachers. Few on your side of the aisle are willing to listen to other points of view. Thank you as well for the change in tone of your writing. Teachers are not the enemy nor representatives of some evil empire, they are fine folks in our community who make tremendous sacrifices to try to educate our children.
Also I congratulate the Madison Middle School teachers for presenting their views in a professional and courteous manner that obviously had a positive impact on Mr. Trageser.
However, I still have a mild disagreement with Jim on step increases being seen as raises. The clear implication of this viewpoint is that there is no need to feel sorry for teachers who have not had any raises in three years and who will have substantial cuts in pay next year because after all they have their step increases.
Step increases are increases for experience. In any job those with experience perform better than those with none. The goal of any employer is to cut down on turn over and keep experienced employees. Hence all jobs have raises for experience. However few jobs make new employees wait a full year for that raise as teachers must.
I got a raise as a hamburger flipper after a month on the job. I understand that firefighters get raises after a few months of experience as do the police. Rookie pay is always lower than non-rookie pay. Even rookie newspaper folks get lower pay than those who have worked for years. (Although I do understand the terrible circumstances the newspaper industry finds itself in today may have changed some of the past promotion practices.)
On the VUSD teacher salary schedule, no teacher, no matter how many units they have earned and paid exorbitant out of pocket money for, gets more than 15 years of annual step increases in pay. To get 15 straight years of step raises, a teacher has to use his or her own time and money to get either 90 post graduate units or 75 units plus a master's degree. We are talking about many years of school and tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars of out of pocket expense for a teacher to get these units. No teacher could afford the expense if there were no way to recoup it.
It is to a district's best interest to have teachers who are trying to get better educated. The more educated the teacher the more that teacher can share with his or her students. Incentives to get more units are needed by districts and those incentives must cover the time and especially the cost of those very expensive post graduate units.
No other profession that requires so much education, before a job is offered and more after the job is taken, pays so poorly in the first few years. My three nieces with accounting and majors started out in jobs that paid what my wife and I were making after more than a decade of teaching. My son with the law degree started in a job that paid one third more in his first year than my wife and I made after twenty years in the classroom with 90 post graduate college units.
The lower teaching pay to start is fine. That is the system. No one becomes a teacher to get rich. The incentive of a much higher salary in years to come is what keeps the low initial salaries from scaring away everyone who wishes to be a teacher.
Teaching has a very difficult learning curve. Students do not just sit and listen in their desks to a teacher lecturing. New green teachers have to master difficult classroom management techniques with very few allowable management tools to use. Almost half of all newbie teachers quit in five years or less.
They never see salaries at the top of the step column. We would lose even more new teachers if there were no incentives to stay. Step increases are routine in every district in California. To imply that only VUSD teachers get them is wrong. To call getting these step raises, "a dirty little secret" is wrong and rude. To imply step increases are ordinary raises, so teachers have no reason to complain about not getting a salary schedule raise, is mean spirited and shows a misunderstanding of what step raises are for and why they are fair way to bring and keep people in this poorly paid profession (At least poorly paid in the first few years).
Work To Rule. Stop Working Overtime for Free.
Work to Rule is a labor technique that is actually just what ordinary workers do at their regular jobs every ordinary working day.
Work to Rule means working only for the actual time you are paid. No more the extra free two or three hours the district gets from teachers each day. Instead of those hours of UNPAID work that every teacher in the district gives every day, teachers just stop work finished or not and go home. Our elementary colleagues have been especially impacted by extra hours as a result of No Child Left Behind and Joyce Bales mandates for ever more tests and reporting to the district office.
Why is it controversial to go home when the seven and a half hour work day is done? Well because teachers traditionally work until the job is done. This was a good system when teacher were in control of what they did in the classroom, what was assigned and how to grade it. This was in that halcyon time before the creation of Bales Busy Work. Prior to Bales there were some extras that district admin required of teachers but teachers were often given extra pay or time off from class work to do the district admin busy work. No more. In fact, not only no pay or even talk of comp time as payment, far worse has been the incredible expansion under Bales of the number of extra duties, forms, email checks, scantron running, district admin informing crapola. Bales Busy Work has increased beyond reason. It is time for the teachers to stop politely accepting ever more jobs that cannot be finished in their working day. It is time to just say no to Bales. It is time for Work To Rule.
When teachers Work To Rule, they simply stop working at the end of the day and go home. Teachers work hard and diligently during the time for which they are paid. However when they are not being paid, they do not work. Does this seem controversial? Well I am sure the North County Times will find a way to condemn teachers for not working when they are not being paid, but for reasonable folks this is a no brainer. Workers at any other job are incredulous when they find out how much UNPAID free time the teachers give in the service of Bales.
There is talk of starting Work To Rule in the next week or so. Spring break is coming soon so maybe after Spring Break I am not sure. The talk is for two days a week to start with. Perhaps a Tuesday and Thursday with everyone wearing black on those days. Also talk of synchronizing watches and clocks so that every teacher leaves together at the same time at the end of the teaching day. Perhaps also sitting in the parking lot in their cars until exactly the moment school starts and walking in together.
Local site leaders probably should begin talking about Work To Rule with their fellow members ASAP.
Work to Rule means working only for the actual time you are paid. No more the extra free two or three hours the district gets from teachers each day. Instead of those hours of UNPAID work that every teacher in the district gives every day, teachers just stop work finished or not and go home. Our elementary colleagues have been especially impacted by extra hours as a result of No Child Left Behind and Joyce Bales mandates for ever more tests and reporting to the district office.
Why is it controversial to go home when the seven and a half hour work day is done? Well because teachers traditionally work until the job is done. This was a good system when teacher were in control of what they did in the classroom, what was assigned and how to grade it. This was in that halcyon time before the creation of Bales Busy Work. Prior to Bales there were some extras that district admin required of teachers but teachers were often given extra pay or time off from class work to do the district admin busy work. No more. In fact, not only no pay or even talk of comp time as payment, far worse has been the incredible expansion under Bales of the number of extra duties, forms, email checks, scantron running, district admin informing crapola. Bales Busy Work has increased beyond reason. It is time for the teachers to stop politely accepting ever more jobs that cannot be finished in their working day. It is time to just say no to Bales. It is time for Work To Rule.
When teachers Work To Rule, they simply stop working at the end of the day and go home. Teachers work hard and diligently during the time for which they are paid. However when they are not being paid, they do not work. Does this seem controversial? Well I am sure the North County Times will find a way to condemn teachers for not working when they are not being paid, but for reasonable folks this is a no brainer. Workers at any other job are incredulous when they find out how much UNPAID free time the teachers give in the service of Bales.
There is talk of starting Work To Rule in the next week or so. Spring break is coming soon so maybe after Spring Break I am not sure. The talk is for two days a week to start with. Perhaps a Tuesday and Thursday with everyone wearing black on those days. Also talk of synchronizing watches and clocks so that every teacher leaves together at the same time at the end of the teaching day. Perhaps also sitting in the parking lot in their cars until exactly the moment school starts and walking in together.
Local site leaders probably should begin talking about Work To Rule with their fellow members ASAP.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
You Tube links
For those of you who could not come to the mediation rally there are some You Tube clips that might give you a flavor of the event. Also VTA leadership Jan O' Reilly, Randy Wiens, and Ron Ferreirae have made several question and answer clips explaining the process of Mediation and the VUSD Budget Advisory Committee. Also parent Maria Lena Wilson is on a clip as well. Below are the links and a brief description of what I saw in the You Tube videos.
You Tube, “vista teachers” search brought these results:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFxP2gnicg8
fifteen seconds of guitar playing “I’m on my way”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaAXHk-D5ks
little blond three year old carrying a well lettered sign, “taking from teachers is taking from students” with the sound of beating drums
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlGwe3rFceI
Chants of Bales Out (sounds like Huelga), sign Teachers are the Real Success Makers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=235OEGfbGkM
drums corp leading the negotiating team and Jan O’ Reilly through crowd of cheering clapping teachers 12 seconds Mediation Rally
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBUPwSKhCDU
Jan O’Reilly standing at locked glass doors (district office?) chants of let us in lots of signs and teachers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DKePK0wgWU
Chants of “Teachers Count” in front of District Office, smiling woman walking up to the door in cleared path between large groups of teachers on each side of the door
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vtd3fyHdg38
guitar playing teacher probably at mediation rally at district office singing protest song music sounded like an Arlo Guthrie song, lyrics hard to hear
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWVKleR22LY
Election 2008, student for Jaka, Chunka, Lilly
Get rid of Dr. Stephen Guffanti
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXhU-cm3BuE
Election 2008, get rid of Guffanti, refused to come to forum, “Im done with you” he said
Guffanti voted against the new high school when and where we need it.
Best statement of why Guffanti and Gibson should not be on our school board.
You Tube search using key word: “vusd”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8lH5_pikms
Jan O’ Reilly you tube Q & A district declared impasse what will happen in impasse mediator tries to find agreement, mediator can be influenced by support,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPTcXbBOTI4
Jan O’Reilly Mediation Day rally thanks for the support over 1000 people showed up for the rally, thanks for your support, bargaining team resolve to come up with a fair agreement, consider reasonable alternatives to budget crises, March 10th at VTA office next Mediation Meeting, Come to school board meeting at Foothill Oak Elementary School, Thursday night 7pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBcjTbas4SY
Randy Wiens VUSD Budget Advisory Committee about the VUSD Budget Advisory Committee, used to be called the Budget Committee, used to be called into session only during crises, when cuts need to be made. In contract languague says there need to be an ongoing committee. The committee is made up of three members of VTA, three members CSEA, PTA reps, (VLAC?) members, school board member reps, community business leaders, and district admin members. All members are appointed by their various groups. There are eighteen or so members. The CTA has experts to help. The VUSD goes through a periodic audit tell that the district is in good or bad financial shape but makes no judgement on how the money is being spent (or where it is being hidden). This video clip is an excellent explanation of the BAC and the fine job that our VTA members do on that committee.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVozM74Ry38
Randy Weins #2 on the VUSD Budget Advisory Committee, significance of the VTA minority report, fond 9 million in additional reserves pointed out to board and admin, 3 million of that will be used over next three years, make sure budget cuts as far from the classroom as possible
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlDy5dMzm1Q
Maria Lena Wilson parent of magnet middle school and Alamosa children, concerned parent in district, concerned about eliminating site based decision making, involuntary transfer of teachers, School Site Council, PTA member, increasing of class size of grades 1 2 3 to 25 studentsat middle school student contact 190 to 216 over six periods, 165 to 185 over five periods, raise numbers over an indefinite time, not limit standards being mandated are so higher, expectations on children so much higher, need smaller class sizes, larger high paced classes not conducsive to learning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TjZujzGkQ8
Ron Ferreirae member of BAC is speaking. The district says that 6.5 million of 8.2 million in cuts should come from teachers because teachers have not sacrificed as much in prior year cuts. Classified and admin will be cut 1.7 million. That is more than the cost to the budget of teachers salary and benefits. The district says they understand that in this round of cuts they are asking teachers to take more than their fair or proportional share . VTA has agreed 25 to 1 in first through third grades, and 210 up from 190 student contacts at middle school, individual class cap at 36 for any one class at middle school, and 185 up from 165 student contacts per day at the high school, single class maximum 38. The VTA has agreed to five furlough days and early retirement incentive. 97 teachers have taken early retirement. The teachers did exactly what the district admin asked. This was supposed to save district general fund 400K but now the district says there was an accounting error and no money was saved by the early retirement insentive. The district is asking 1.7 million from classified employees and adminstators. The district is also canceling another buy back day in addition to the one cancelled this year. So next year there will be at least six unpaid days. The district can do cancel a buy back day without negotiating. The District Budget Advisory Committee is suggesting that the district tightening up master schedule planning at the high schools and middle schools. By a unanimous vote the BAC also called for district not to have legal representation at every bargaining session saving thousnads more. Also the BAC called for the immediate closing a school site saving $500K as well as changing staffing formula at new high school matching other high schools saving another 78K. The BAC called for the elimination of a human resources position and eliminating position of deputy superintendent 2011-2012 year saving 177K+60K= 233K for position and secretary. In addition because the state now allows professional development money to be used flexibly there are additional savings. The district has made no movement toward the BAC positions or on the district's view that the teacher’s should bear more than their fair share of the cuts for next year.
The VTA Crises Team is urging all VTA members to watch the You Tube clips especially the Maria Lena Wilson one. Here are there words:
"Please go to:to watch "youtube Q&A #4, with VUSD parent Maria Wilson" as Maria discusses her concerns about VUSD District Management positions with regards to the impasse.
If you have not signed up for email alerts from VTA do so now. Sign up at: http://www.vistata.org/
These You Tube clips can also be seen at the VTA website: http://www.vistata.org/ or join theFacebook group.
You Tube, “vista teachers” search brought these results:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFxP2gnicg8
fifteen seconds of guitar playing “I’m on my way”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaAXHk-D5ks
little blond three year old carrying a well lettered sign, “taking from teachers is taking from students” with the sound of beating drums
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlGwe3rFceI
Chants of Bales Out (sounds like Huelga), sign Teachers are the Real Success Makers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=235OEGfbGkM
drums corp leading the negotiating team and Jan O’ Reilly through crowd of cheering clapping teachers 12 seconds Mediation Rally
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBUPwSKhCDU
Jan O’Reilly standing at locked glass doors (district office?) chants of let us in lots of signs and teachers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DKePK0wgWU
Chants of “Teachers Count” in front of District Office, smiling woman walking up to the door in cleared path between large groups of teachers on each side of the door
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vtd3fyHdg38
guitar playing teacher probably at mediation rally at district office singing protest song music sounded like an Arlo Guthrie song, lyrics hard to hear
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWVKleR22LY
Election 2008, student for Jaka, Chunka, Lilly
Get rid of Dr. Stephen Guffanti
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXhU-cm3BuE
Election 2008, get rid of Guffanti, refused to come to forum, “Im done with you” he said
Guffanti voted against the new high school when and where we need it.
Best statement of why Guffanti and Gibson should not be on our school board.
You Tube search using key word: “vusd”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8lH5_pikms
Jan O’ Reilly you tube Q & A district declared impasse what will happen in impasse mediator tries to find agreement, mediator can be influenced by support,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPTcXbBOTI4
Jan O’Reilly Mediation Day rally thanks for the support over 1000 people showed up for the rally, thanks for your support, bargaining team resolve to come up with a fair agreement, consider reasonable alternatives to budget crises, March 10th at VTA office next Mediation Meeting, Come to school board meeting at Foothill Oak Elementary School, Thursday night 7pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBcjTbas4SY
Randy Wiens VUSD Budget Advisory Committee about the VUSD Budget Advisory Committee, used to be called the Budget Committee, used to be called into session only during crises, when cuts need to be made. In contract languague says there need to be an ongoing committee. The committee is made up of three members of VTA, three members CSEA, PTA reps, (VLAC?) members, school board member reps, community business leaders, and district admin members. All members are appointed by their various groups. There are eighteen or so members. The CTA has experts to help. The VUSD goes through a periodic audit tell that the district is in good or bad financial shape but makes no judgement on how the money is being spent (or where it is being hidden). This video clip is an excellent explanation of the BAC and the fine job that our VTA members do on that committee.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVozM74Ry38
Randy Weins #2 on the VUSD Budget Advisory Committee, significance of the VTA minority report, fond 9 million in additional reserves pointed out to board and admin, 3 million of that will be used over next three years, make sure budget cuts as far from the classroom as possible
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlDy5dMzm1Q
Maria Lena Wilson parent of magnet middle school and Alamosa children, concerned parent in district, concerned about eliminating site based decision making, involuntary transfer of teachers, School Site Council, PTA member, increasing of class size of grades 1 2 3 to 25 studentsat middle school student contact 190 to 216 over six periods, 165 to 185 over five periods, raise numbers over an indefinite time, not limit standards being mandated are so higher, expectations on children so much higher, need smaller class sizes, larger high paced classes not conducsive to learning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TjZujzGkQ8
Ron Ferreirae member of BAC is speaking. The district says that 6.5 million of 8.2 million in cuts should come from teachers because teachers have not sacrificed as much in prior year cuts. Classified and admin will be cut 1.7 million. That is more than the cost to the budget of teachers salary and benefits. The district says they understand that in this round of cuts they are asking teachers to take more than their fair or proportional share . VTA has agreed 25 to 1 in first through third grades, and 210 up from 190 student contacts at middle school, individual class cap at 36 for any one class at middle school, and 185 up from 165 student contacts per day at the high school, single class maximum 38. The VTA has agreed to five furlough days and early retirement incentive. 97 teachers have taken early retirement. The teachers did exactly what the district admin asked. This was supposed to save district general fund 400K but now the district says there was an accounting error and no money was saved by the early retirement insentive. The district is asking 1.7 million from classified employees and adminstators. The district is also canceling another buy back day in addition to the one cancelled this year. So next year there will be at least six unpaid days. The district can do cancel a buy back day without negotiating. The District Budget Advisory Committee is suggesting that the district tightening up master schedule planning at the high schools and middle schools. By a unanimous vote the BAC also called for district not to have legal representation at every bargaining session saving thousnads more. Also the BAC called for the immediate closing a school site saving $500K as well as changing staffing formula at new high school matching other high schools saving another 78K. The BAC called for the elimination of a human resources position and eliminating position of deputy superintendent 2011-2012 year saving 177K+60K= 233K for position and secretary. In addition because the state now allows professional development money to be used flexibly there are additional savings. The district has made no movement toward the BAC positions or on the district's view that the teacher’s should bear more than their fair share of the cuts for next year.
The VTA Crises Team is urging all VTA members to watch the You Tube clips especially the Maria Lena Wilson one. Here are there words:
"Please go to:
If you have not signed up for email alerts from VTA do so now. Sign up at: http://www.vistata.org/
These You Tube clips can also be seen at the VTA website: http://www.vistata.org/ or join the
Monday, March 1, 2010
Jim Trageser's other hit piece on the good teachers of VUSD
Besides the biased and untrue Jim Trageser opinion piece referred to in the last few posts on this blog, Jim Trageser had another infamous North County Times printed propaganda hit piece. It attacked our good VUSD teachers role in the 192-94 recall. It was published in August 2008 before the last school board election. The intent of the hit piece clearly was to bloody the school board candidate recommendation of the Vista Teachers.
This 2008 Trageser hit piece contained five factually wrong assertions about the 1992-94 recall of the extremist board majority. In that hit piece, Jim Trageser wrongly and falsely accused VUSD teachers of organizing the recall the night of the election in order to get better salaries among other outrageous fabrications. He wrote five lies in all. The five lies of Trageser are refuted below. His 2008 hit piece can be found here:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/08/10/opinion/trageser/z354f6144e8d0282d8825749f0060debd.txt
Sadly the North County Times editorial staff requires no fact checking of primary sources in its editorial standards if the editors agree with the opinions expressed. This editorial double standard allows Jim Trageser to use hearsay, gossip and his own fevered imagination as '"credible" fact checks for the "facts" in his opinion pieces. In other words there are no fact checks for Jim Trageser at all.
The existence of this blogspot is in large part a result of Jim Trageser's August 2008 opinion piece coupled with the total lack of objectivity and fairness of the North County Times editorial staff. Jim Trageser and the North County Times editorial bias and double standards were among the primary motivating factors that launched this blogspot on September 4, 2008.
The infamous double standards of the North County Times editorial staff come into play when commentary that does not fit their political bias is submitted. Those who write forums about politicians that Jim and the editors of the North County Times favor (e.g. Dr. Stephen Guffanti) are subjected to line by line grillings about sources.
Jim Wickstrom wrote a fact based brilliant expose of Dr. Stephen Guffanti in October of 2008 and according to Wickstrom his piece was delayed and gone over with a fine tooth comb line by line by J. Stryker Meyer. Before Wickstrom could publish he had to have factually justification for each and every line.
Read Jim Wickstrom's brilliant piece here:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/10/14/opinion/commentary/zc35553852f93f223882574c9005e9dea.txt
Jim Trageser can write anything he dreams up. Below are five easily disproved inflammatory charges he has made about the good teachers of VUSD in his opinion piece he wrote in August of 2008 before the last school board election. His charges were written as though they were fact. They exactly match the propaganda of the ANTI public education crowd here in VUSD. Jim Gibson and Dr. Stephen Guffanti have said all five of these lies on many occasions.
Trageser old lie (1) The New York Times devoted a front page story to the 1992-94 VUSD school board because VUSD teachers were chanting and disrupting board meetings. There are audio tape recordings of each of those board meeting available at VUSD district office. There was no chanting. I attended those meetings. I will give $100 to the favorite charity of anyone who can find one instance of chanting teachers disrupting any board meeting during the 1992-1994 time.
The real reasons that the national media covered that VUSD Board majority had to do with inserting creationism into the public school curriculum, weakening the teaching of real science, and denying life saving information to our students in our VUSD sex ed classes. URL of the New York Times articles is found below.*
Trageser old lie (2) The VTA organized the 1992-1994 recall. The truth is that the VTA did not join the recall of the 92-94 board until months after a broad based community group launched it. There was a lot of discussion and disagreement at the Executive Board and Rep Assembly meetings about the VTA becoming politically involved. The disagreements had to do with was it right for the VTA, for the first time ever, to have a role in local elections and a concern about what might happen if the VTA does get involved andthe recall fails.
The first time the idea of joining the recall was brought to the Executive Board in March of 2002, it was voted down. Executive Board and Rep Assembly minutes are on file at the VTA office which prove we joined late and only after much disagreement and discussion.
Trageser old lie (3) The VTA lead the recall to get more salary. No, it was about sex ed. The Executive Board only recommended that the VTA join the existing recall when the 92-94 extremist board voted to remove life saving information from our VUSD sex education courses. Executive Board and Rep Assembly Minutes on file at the VTA office prove the issue was sex ed not salary. Salary was never mentioned in the discussion either at Ex.Bd. or Rep Assembly.
Trageser old lie (4) The recall was organized the night the 92-94 majority was elected so it was unfair since the new board majority had done nothing yet to deserve a recall. The truth is that no one I know heard any talk of organizing a recall that night. If a few sour grape types did, so what? After every election there are a few angry people, their anger goes no where unless an opening is provided. The 92-94 board provided lots of openings and lots of national headlines that embarrassed VUSD and the City of Vista. Those actions and those headlines are why the recall was successful. By the way Jim Trageser has never provided any evidence other than he heard it "somewhere" that there really was any talk of a recall that night.
Trageser old lie (5) The 1992-94 recall was part of a "part of a national campaign against Christian conservatives on school boards". This lie is found in the comment section following his article. Those comments have been erased from the North County archives but I have a copy of them. The truth about VUSD school board members is that the vast vast majority of them in the sixty year history of VUSD were Christians. I know, I know there were a couple of Jews elected over the years. One has to wonder, were they part of this 'conspiracy' as well?
* 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
New York Times headlines about VUSD from 1992 to 1994 includes the following:
1.A School Board in California Makes Room for Creationism
2.Political Proving Ground For the Christian Right
3.A City Pulls Its School Board Back to the Center
4.TELEVISION REVIEW; Exploring the Crusade Of the Anti-Darwinians
Read more about that 92-94 VUSD board's actions at the Los Angeles Times Archives:
http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/vista-ca-schools
A few headlines about the 1992- 94 VUSD school board majority found at the Los Angeles Times site above:
1. New Vision for Vista Schools: After Recall of Religious Conservatives on School Board, Moderates Are Casting Off Many of Its Policies.
2. Bibles and the Board--a Skirmish Brews : Education: A new religious fundamentalist majority of school trustees in the San Diego County community of Vista raises fears about its agenda.
3. Christian Bloc Ousted From Board : Education: Two members of Vista school panel are recalled after seeking to impose a religiously oriented approach to teaching students about sex.
4. School Board's Creationist Trend Causes Stir in Vista : Education: Members to vote on forbidding 'dogmatic' teaching of science. Test of Christian right's strength seen.
5. Vista Schools OK Sex Education Program With Religious Theme
6. Vista Board OKs Teaching of Creationism
More commentary on the double standards at the North County Times:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2008/10/questions-for-nctimes-blog-editor.html
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2008/10/north-county-times-blog-editor-bias.html
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2008/10/nctimes-ends-pro-letter-embargo-keep-up.html
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2008/10/nctimes-not-playin-fair.html
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2008/10/nctimes-publishes-only-pro-guffanti.html
This 2008 Trageser hit piece contained five factually wrong assertions about the 1992-94 recall of the extremist board majority. In that hit piece, Jim Trageser wrongly and falsely accused VUSD teachers of organizing the recall the night of the election in order to get better salaries among other outrageous fabrications. He wrote five lies in all. The five lies of Trageser are refuted below. His 2008 hit piece can be found here:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/08/10/opinion/trageser/z354f6144e8d0282d8825749f0060debd.txt
Sadly the North County Times editorial staff requires no fact checking of primary sources in its editorial standards if the editors agree with the opinions expressed. This editorial double standard allows Jim Trageser to use hearsay, gossip and his own fevered imagination as '"credible" fact checks for the "facts" in his opinion pieces. In other words there are no fact checks for Jim Trageser at all.
The existence of this blogspot is in large part a result of Jim Trageser's August 2008 opinion piece coupled with the total lack of objectivity and fairness of the North County Times editorial staff. Jim Trageser and the North County Times editorial bias and double standards were among the primary motivating factors that launched this blogspot on September 4, 2008.
The infamous double standards of the North County Times editorial staff come into play when commentary that does not fit their political bias is submitted. Those who write forums about politicians that Jim and the editors of the North County Times favor (e.g. Dr. Stephen Guffanti) are subjected to line by line grillings about sources.
Jim Wickstrom wrote a fact based brilliant expose of Dr. Stephen Guffanti in October of 2008 and according to Wickstrom his piece was delayed and gone over with a fine tooth comb line by line by J. Stryker Meyer. Before Wickstrom could publish he had to have factually justification for each and every line.
Read Jim Wickstrom's brilliant piece here:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/10/14/opinion/commentary/zc35553852f93f223882574c9005e9dea.txt
Jim Trageser can write anything he dreams up. Below are five easily disproved inflammatory charges he has made about the good teachers of VUSD in his opinion piece he wrote in August of 2008 before the last school board election. His charges were written as though they were fact. They exactly match the propaganda of the ANTI public education crowd here in VUSD. Jim Gibson and Dr. Stephen Guffanti have said all five of these lies on many occasions.
Trageser old lie (1) The New York Times devoted a front page story to the 1992-94 VUSD school board because VUSD teachers were chanting and disrupting board meetings. There are audio tape recordings of each of those board meeting available at VUSD district office. There was no chanting. I attended those meetings. I will give $100 to the favorite charity of anyone who can find one instance of chanting teachers disrupting any board meeting during the 1992-1994 time.
The real reasons that the national media covered that VUSD Board majority had to do with inserting creationism into the public school curriculum, weakening the teaching of real science, and denying life saving information to our students in our VUSD sex ed classes. URL of the New York Times articles is found below.*
Trageser old lie (2) The VTA organized the 1992-1994 recall. The truth is that the VTA did not join the recall of the 92-94 board until months after a broad based community group launched it. There was a lot of discussion and disagreement at the Executive Board and Rep Assembly meetings about the VTA becoming politically involved. The disagreements had to do with was it right for the VTA, for the first time ever, to have a role in local elections and a concern about what might happen if the VTA does get involved andthe recall fails.
The first time the idea of joining the recall was brought to the Executive Board in March of 2002, it was voted down. Executive Board and Rep Assembly minutes are on file at the VTA office which prove we joined late and only after much disagreement and discussion.
Trageser old lie (3) The VTA lead the recall to get more salary. No, it was about sex ed. The Executive Board only recommended that the VTA join the existing recall when the 92-94 extremist board voted to remove life saving information from our VUSD sex education courses. Executive Board and Rep Assembly Minutes on file at the VTA office prove the issue was sex ed not salary. Salary was never mentioned in the discussion either at Ex.Bd. or Rep Assembly.
Trageser old lie (4) The recall was organized the night the 92-94 majority was elected so it was unfair since the new board majority had done nothing yet to deserve a recall. The truth is that no one I know heard any talk of organizing a recall that night. If a few sour grape types did, so what? After every election there are a few angry people, their anger goes no where unless an opening is provided. The 92-94 board provided lots of openings and lots of national headlines that embarrassed VUSD and the City of Vista. Those actions and those headlines are why the recall was successful. By the way Jim Trageser has never provided any evidence other than he heard it "somewhere" that there really was any talk of a recall that night.
Trageser old lie (5) The 1992-94 recall was part of a "part of a national campaign against Christian conservatives on school boards". This lie is found in the comment section following his article. Those comments have been erased from the North County archives but I have a copy of them. The truth about VUSD school board members is that the vast vast majority of them in the sixty year history of VUSD were Christians. I know, I know there were a couple of Jews elected over the years. One has to wonder, were they part of this 'conspiracy' as well?
* 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
New York Times headlines about VUSD from 1992 to 1994 includes the following:
1.A School Board in California Makes Room for Creationism
2.Political Proving Ground For the Christian Right
3.A City Pulls Its School Board Back to the Center
4.TELEVISION REVIEW; Exploring the Crusade Of the Anti-Darwinians
Read more about that 92-94 VUSD board's actions at the Los Angeles Times Archives:
http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/vista-ca-schools
A few headlines about the 1992- 94 VUSD school board majority found at the Los Angeles Times site above:
1. New Vision for Vista Schools: After Recall of Religious Conservatives on School Board, Moderates Are Casting Off Many of Its Policies.
2. Bibles and the Board--a Skirmish Brews : Education: A new religious fundamentalist majority of school trustees in the San Diego County community of Vista raises fears about its agenda.
3. Christian Bloc Ousted From Board : Education: Two members of Vista school panel are recalled after seeking to impose a religiously oriented approach to teaching students about sex.
4. School Board's Creationist Trend Causes Stir in Vista : Education: Members to vote on forbidding 'dogmatic' teaching of science. Test of Christian right's strength seen.
5. Vista Schools OK Sex Education Program With Religious Theme
6. Vista Board OKs Teaching of Creationism
More commentary on the double standards at the North County Times:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2008/10/questions-for-nctimes-blog-editor.html
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2008/10/north-county-times-blog-editor-bias.html
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2008/10/nctimes-ends-pro-letter-embargo-keep-up.html
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2008/10/nctimes-not-playin-fair.html
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2008/10/nctimes-publishes-only-pro-guffanti.html
Trageser spanked again for bias by Bruce G. Krider, PPH chariman
Jim Trageser, North County Times, opinion writer has been embarrassed again by not checking facts before writing one of his hit pieces. This time he unfairly attacked the Palomar Pomerado Health Board of Directors. Their chairman responded with a forum piece of his own that smacked Trageser around, as he deserved.
The good teachers of VUSD have been among his favorite targets for his style of inflammatory phony fact rants against 'evil' strawmen that he creates from his own imaginary facts. See:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2010/02/jim-trageser-caught-in-lie-refuses-to.html
In a recent column Trageser attacked the Palomar Pomerado Hospital Board for trying to build a state of the art hospital in the North County that will not collapse in an earthquake.
Typical Trageser, he complains loudly when people with real responsibilities try to plan for the future. If on the other hand, there had been an terrible earthquake in the North County resulting in a PPH hospital collapse, he would then undoubtedly write a scathing fact challenged article about how stupid the PPH board was for not making the hospital earthquake safe.
With a yellow journalist like Trageser, there is no winning. Heads he condemns you, tails he condemns you. If the real facts are against his condemnation of you, then he just makes up some facts. No problem.
Since Trageser works at the North County Times, he has no need to worry that an editor will force him to justify his phony facts or charges when he condemns someone or some institution. Trageser loves unsubstantiated inflammatory rhetoric and he works at the right place where he can use it without fear of job repercussions.
Don't want to take my word for it, here is what Bruce G. Krider, chairman of the Palomar Pomerado Health Board of Directors had to say about Jim Trageser's style of writing:
"Trageser needs to base his opinions on facts and report them in a fair and unbiased way"--Bruce G. Krider, PPH chairman of the board
Here is my second favorite quote from the Forum by Bruce Krider:
"Trageser is right about one thing, though. He has literally no experience regarding hospitals. He is a features writer, giving opinions on music, books and culture. That makes him pretty unqualified..."
He also writes that Trageser's opinion is, "so far afield from common sense, it is hard to fathom." Grider follows up with, "Readers deserve better."
I could not have said it better than Bruce G. Krider. Let me second everything Krider wrote about Trageser and say that it goes double for Trageser's pointedly partisan and factually wrong columns about our fine VUSD schools and wonderful VUSD teachers.
Read the rest of the Trageser spanking by Krider here:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/article_b09cdbf5-421e-5346-a55e-a8e952f05d0f.html
In 2008 Jim Trageser wrote another hit piece about the good teachers of VUSD in which he makes five factually incorrect statements regarding the recall of the 1992-94 extremist board majority. See those statements in my next post or read them for yourself here:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/08/10/opinion/trageser/z354f6144e8d0282d8825749f0060debd.txt
At the following URL you can find my comments about those five lies written at the time:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2008/09/jim-trageser-editorial-nctimes-reply.html
The good teachers of VUSD have been among his favorite targets for his style of inflammatory phony fact rants against 'evil' strawmen that he creates from his own imaginary facts. See:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2010/02/jim-trageser-caught-in-lie-refuses-to.html
In a recent column Trageser attacked the Palomar Pomerado Hospital Board for trying to build a state of the art hospital in the North County that will not collapse in an earthquake.
Typical Trageser, he complains loudly when people with real responsibilities try to plan for the future. If on the other hand, there had been an terrible earthquake in the North County resulting in a PPH hospital collapse, he would then undoubtedly write a scathing fact challenged article about how stupid the PPH board was for not making the hospital earthquake safe.
With a yellow journalist like Trageser, there is no winning. Heads he condemns you, tails he condemns you. If the real facts are against his condemnation of you, then he just makes up some facts. No problem.
Since Trageser works at the North County Times, he has no need to worry that an editor will force him to justify his phony facts or charges when he condemns someone or some institution. Trageser loves unsubstantiated inflammatory rhetoric and he works at the right place where he can use it without fear of job repercussions.
Don't want to take my word for it, here is what Bruce G. Krider, chairman of the Palomar Pomerado Health Board of Directors had to say about Jim Trageser's style of writing:
"Trageser needs to base his opinions on facts and report them in a fair and unbiased way"--Bruce G. Krider, PPH chairman of the board
Here is my second favorite quote from the Forum by Bruce Krider:
"Trageser is right about one thing, though. He has literally no experience regarding hospitals. He is a features writer, giving opinions on music, books and culture. That makes him pretty unqualified..."
He also writes that Trageser's opinion is, "so far afield from common sense, it is hard to fathom." Grider follows up with, "Readers deserve better."
I could not have said it better than Bruce G. Krider. Let me second everything Krider wrote about Trageser and say that it goes double for Trageser's pointedly partisan and factually wrong columns about our fine VUSD schools and wonderful VUSD teachers.
Read the rest of the Trageser spanking by Krider here:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/article_b09cdbf5-421e-5346-a55e-a8e952f05d0f.html
In 2008 Jim Trageser wrote another hit piece about the good teachers of VUSD in which he makes five factually incorrect statements regarding the recall of the 1992-94 extremist board majority. See those statements in my next post or read them for yourself here:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/08/10/opinion/trageser/z354f6144e8d0282d8825749f0060debd.txt
At the following URL you can find my comments about those five lies written at the time:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2008/09/jim-trageser-editorial-nctimes-reply.html
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