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.
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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
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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
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