Ancient news about the 1994 recall, Representative Assembly minutes prove our angry friends have lied about the VTA's part in it.

Now for some ancient news, our angry friend have repeatedly falsely accused the VTA of organizing the 1994 recall on the same November night in 1992 when the three member extremist board was elected. We all knew that to be false. Just one more made up story from the camp of our angry friends.

It was one thing to know that they were lying yet again and re-writing history yet again. It is another to have proof of their lies in hand.

I now have copies of VTA Executive Board and Representative Assembly minutes from 1993-94. The orininals are on file at the Vista Teachers Association office. The minutes of those meetings show that the first mention of the recall by anyone at the VTA happened a full one year and two months after the election.

The record of this very first mention of the already on-going community based recall was in the January 24, 1994, Representative Assembly minutes. This FIRST mention of the community recall was the last item in those minutes. It was mentioned in item VII Information and future action.

The items says:

Recall in Vista. Discussion. Recall drive has started to recall Joyce Lee, John Tyndall, and Diedre Holliday.* What role should teachers play? It's up to individual conscience. Politial activity cannot affect your job.** You are protected by state law.

Of the 1025 certificated employees of this district,only about 450 live inside the district. Some VTA members will work for recall. Some will work against. No money has been spent by the VTA or VTA/PAC for or against.

Recall petitions can be present at schools. They may be signed during duty free lunch or before or after school duty hours. Anyone can wear a button for or against the recall during duty hours.***

School board members phone numbers can be found at the front of the VTA directory if you wish to oppose the recall. Letha McWey's, leader of the recall, phone number is XXX-XXXX , if you wish to support the recall.



This first VTA mention of the existing COMMUNITY inspired recall took no position on the recall, the mention was merely to warn any VTA members who might have gotten involved with the recall to make sure all their personal activities involving recall happened at times that they were not on duty. It is clear from the notes that during the discussion, there were VTA members at the Representative Assembly who OPPOSED the recall. At that time, I was one of those members who opposed the recall.

This first mention of the community recall shows conclusively that in January of 1994 more than a year after the election that the official position of the Representative Assembly, the governing body of the VTA, was studied neutrality. For our angry friends to say anything else is a lie. But it is a lie that some have come to believe.

Here is what Jim Trageser who writes editorials for the North County Times as written about that meeting that he did not attend and the official VTA notes that he clearly did not ask to read. He wrote in the North County Time on August 10, 2008: "In the early 1990s, the VTA was one of the main organizers of a recall drive against two Vista Unified School District board members." On January 24, 2010, he wrote in the North County Times, "Clearly, Tyndall and Lee had had no time to do anything when recall organizers began planning, seeing as they hadn't even been sworn in yet."

Jim Trageser has toned down since he wrote those two editorials, largely thanks to "The Madision Middle School Miracle" that occurred this spring. "The Miracle" happened when Madison teachers invited Jim to their school and to his credit he went. He listened to what they had to say. I do not know what they said to him but ever since he has stopped his baseless, unjustified attacks on the Vista Teachers Association. His change in tone is not quite a Paul on the Road To Damascus epiphany, but it is close. MadisonMiddle School, we are in your debt. We also salute Jim Trageser for being willing to listen and willing to change his mind when counter facts are presented.

However, the point is that people still do care about the 1994 Recall and the factually incorrect stories our angry friends tell do influence uniformed people. We must be ready to counter incorrect information when ever we hear it. Otherwise the story of the those who hate fact based public education will prevail.

As I remember that January 1994 Representative Assembly meeting, the agenda item was discussed because some teacher at some site who did not like the extremists had done something with the recall at his school and gotten in trouble. VTA leadership put the item on the agenda of the meeting to warn anyone else to be careful to only engage in political activity during non-duty hours.

Everything changed two months later. In March of 1994 the extremists majority on the VUSD school board voted to replace a FACT based, state approved, VUSD sex education curriculum with one that was not state approved called Sex Respect. Sex Respect was an abstinence only curriculum with all mention of birth control and other life saving materials taken out. It contains racist diagrams of a black boy trying to talk a white girl into sex. It had silly slogans that the children would have howled at. One I remember was "Pet your dog, not your date."

The ACLU had notified the board that they would be sued if they adopted Sex Respect, the extremist did anyway. According to a Logan Jenkins March 24, 1994 editorial in the Escondido Times Advocate, "Maybe (Deidre) Holliday is correct and the cost of defending Sex Respect will not be huge. But we don't think so." Jenkins adds, "After all the tantrums are over and everyone has gone to sleep, Vista is left with a corrusive residue of unadulterated hate. One wonders how far things must go before Holliday and her supporters pack up and go to private Christian Schools. If the political agenda is to Balkanize the education system, it's working."****

The adoption of Sex Respect which took fact based life saving information out of our classrooms was the action that galvanized the Vista Teacher's Association into joining the community recall effort. At a Special Representative Assembly Meeting convened at 4:13pm on April 4, 1994 the Vista Teachers Association governing body, the Representative Assembly voted to join the recall. This action happened with only a little over two months left to finish gathering enough signatures to qualify the recall for the November 1994 ballot. Barbara Mitchell made the motion. Paul Metivier seconded the motion. There were Representatives from both high schools, all three middle schools, eleven elementary schools, Sierra Vista, and Vista Academy. Two of the Representatives voted no, one abstained; everyone else, including me, voted in favor of the motion.

I changed my mind about supporting the recall because the extremists were reaching into our classroom and taking potentially life saving and life changing, vitally needed information away from our children. Teachers are in the information business, especially when that information can save a life. I would not be a part of information denial.

As a side note, one of our angry friends who was running for VUSD school board in 1996 (Rob Walter) told me regarding sex education that "information once given can never be taken back." (He lost.) Clearly our angry friends have a very different relationship with information and facts than fact based public school teachers do.


I know, I know who cares now. Except that our angry friends are such liars on the North County Times blogs about this issue and so many others. It is nice to have factual information in hand to refute them.
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*At that time in January VTA membership were so unaware of the recall and uniformed that the secretary of the Representative Assembly and the rest of us thought that all three extremists were being recalled when actually only two were. The third Deidre Holliday's term was set to expire in November, so there was no need to recall her in November.

**This referred to political activity conducted during non duty hours. At the time as far as most of us knew, we could be fired for being involved in a recall. There had never been one here. We had no idea of the consequences for teachers 'foolish' enough to join in.

***The law allowing buttons during duty hours has since been changed by 'union haters'. It is no longer legal to wear a political button in class. At the time we also could use district mail and district mail boxes to send union materials. A George W. Bush Labor Relations Board ruling took that right away from unions as well. All part of the massive effort to transfer middle class wealth to the super rich by revoking all the rights of the unions to mobilize and defend the middle class.

****Our angry friends and their allies often accuse the Vista Teachers Association's recall of splitting the district. As anyone can read and as Logan Jenkins noted at the time, it was the agenda of the extremists that had already split the district. VUSD was attacked by extremists with an extremist agenda. That attack lead to any and all divisions that may still be present in our fine district.