Richard Kirk, a liar, a fool, or a useful tool?

The North County Times has once again allowed their greatest embarrassment, Richard Kirk, to publish a column that is not founded in fact. In it he falsely accuses the fine teachers of VUSD of using a work slow down last spring during negotiations. As every one knows who is a VUSD teacher or who reads the articles in the North County Times written last spring, there was no work slow down. The work action was what is called a 'work to rule.' Teachers in the district simply stopped working when they were no longer being paid to work.

I believe that Kirk gets his information directly from Jim Gibson. It has the mark of a Gibson tall tale. Gibson as we painfully are aware is a story teller. He loves to make up stuff that makes teachers into villains and usually makes himself look heroic. Apparently Kirk swallowed Gibson's tripe about the work action last spring without any examination or fact checking. Then he wrote this column.

Here is the URL of the Kirk column published by the North County Times:
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/kirk/article_50f1f441-78b5-563f-b4c9-bc8276d0c58c.html?mode=story


Below are the comments that I left after Kirk's column. I put my comments here as Gibson has an ally in ACE, the person at the North County Times that deletes comments not up to their very biased "standards." I assume my fact based comments will be deleted unlike Kirk's false narrative column which will stay.


Richard Kirk is a liar, a fool or a useful tool. There can be no other explanations for this column today. When a person writes for a reputable newspaper, there is a higher duty to get your facts right. Yet time and time again Kirk, does not.

There was no work “slow down” at any school in VUSD ever, not last spring, not in my thirty year association with the district. That is correct. It never happened at any school in Vista Unified not last spring and not ever. When Kirk says that there was a work ‘slow down’, he is in error (deliberately?) as is usual for him and his columns.

Making things up, creating straw men to tear down seems to give Kirk his raison d'etre judging by the ‘columns’ he makes up for this newspaper.

The only "work action" that VUSD teachers took last spring was to decide to only work the number of hours that the teachers were actually being paid to work each day. For three days, the teachers of the district stopped working and went home when the district stopped paying them. Wow, how novel for workers to stop working when their paid day is done, NOT! Unless, of course, the worker is a public school teacher.

This spring work action by VUSD teachers that Kirk falsely called a “slow down” lasted for less than one week. That’s right less than one week. Big deal, workers for three days went home when they stopped being paid to work. Well I guess that is a big deal for Kirk. Gee I wonder how many hours Kirk works at his job for free with no compensation of any kind like the typical VUSD teacher does each and every school day?

Last spring during the very brief 'work action,' VUSD teachers ran around like crazy trying desperately to cram their nine or ten hour normal working day into only the hours they were actually being paid for. This work action was no work “slow down”. If anything it was a “speed up.”

The average teacher in VUSD works more than an hour each and every day of the week for free with no pay--elementary teachers even more so. That amounts to at least six and in some case up to twenty or more hours of uncompensated time that every VUSD classroom teachers works every single week. That’s close to one extra work day done for free each week. For many teachers the hours add up to a gift to the VUSD community and its children of two or three extra work days per week. (The paid hours for a work day in VUSD are seven and a half hours per day.)

Yet another example of VUSD teachers incredible generosity with THEIR OWN TIME was recently in evidence before the start of the new school year. For the two weeks before the recent school year started, virtually every teacher in every school in the district was in their class room preparing for the new school year, all without pay of any kind. No overtime, no daily pay, no hourly pay--all this time yet another gift to their future students, the parents of those students, and the greater VUSD community.

Richard Kirk could have checked his facts. There are North County Times articles from that period correctly describing the VUSD "work action." He could have called the Vista Teachers Association office and asked for a description of the work action if he felt confused. He could even have called local teachers. But apparently to do Kirk's job at the North County Times requires no research, no checking of facts by himself or others, nothing needed but bile and the willingness to make stuff up. Pathetic.