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.