Our old friend VWdog tells the truth, a half truth and a whooper: Instead of new schools being built,existing schools in VUSD could have been expanded

VWdog, who is nearly the last ANTI public education foe still posting at the North County Times, has published another post with a mixture of truth, half truths and falsehoods.
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_83dcab61-5552-5f31-b53b-4418b263e408.html?mode=comments

I believe his Whooper is the most important part of his post to be addressed. That whooper alleges that VUSD could simply have expanded existing schools and did not need to pass a bond to build new schools.

Because he has posted this same Big Lie on many other occasions it appears to be a part of the mythology of lies that our ANTI friends are using among themselves and are telling to others. We must be ready to counter their Big Lie with what truly happened here.

In the 1980's and 1990's, our school district had three bond failures. The result of those failures was that our district schools became among the most crowded in the state based on student density per acre of campus. Every VUSD school parking lot and every school play ground was filled with trailers used as classrooms because the stick and mortar classrooms were already full. Still there was not enough space for our students.

The VUSD School Board had only two options to deal with our SEVERELY overcrowded schools either Year Round School or double sessions. Our board chose YRE.

Only after the fourth bond was successful were we able to end YRE.

There is absolutely no truth to VWdog and our other ANTI friends claim that we did not need to pass a bond, even Jim Gibson saw the need to build new schools. He voted to put our fourth and final bond (Prop O) on the ballot. The residents of this district saw the need for new schools. They passed the bond by more than two thirds in 2002. Our community and even our most 'conservative' school board member both saw the need for a school bond to build new schools in 2002.

Below is more of my response to VWdog this morning.

THE TRUTH in VWdog's post: "The City is a TOTALLY different entity all together" (from the school district).

Yes, that is true. The City of Vista and Vista Unified School District are completely separate government entities. They have different funding sources, different boundaries, and different founding dates. VUSD is far older having been started in the 1930's. The City of Vista is much more recent having been incorporated in 1963. VUSD boundaries encompass a far larger area than the City of Vista. In fact VUSD includes about one third of the eastern half of the City of Oceanside. Very confusing to folks who live their and vote for Oceanside City Council members, but Vista Unified School District Board members. They do not vote for Oceanside School District board members at all.

THE HALF TRUTH: "the (school district has) authority to pass bonds to build new schools and to tax the local citizens within their District to pay for those bonds"

VUSD school board members have the power to call for a bond election to raise money to build schools or a parcel tax to pay for other district expenses. Only the residents of VUSD have the ability to pass that bond or parcel tax. Up until recently (2002?) both a school bond and a parcel tax required a 2/3rds majority to pass. Now only the parcel tax still requires a two thirds vote, a bond can pass if at least four of five board members put it on the ballot and it gets 55% of the vote.

THE BLATANT: "they built a bunch of new schools rather than enlarging existing schools"

VWdog has pushed this deception before. He is well aware that every school in our district was enlarged to its maximum. the parking lots and playgrounds were covered in temporary trailers to house students after the first of the school boards four bond attempts failed to get two thirds. Finally with two more failures there was no room left on any campus to put more trailers yet VUSD had too many students for its classrooms. The boards only two choices were double sessions or Year Round School. YRE is like "hot bunking" by sailors in submarines. Not enough bunks means when one sailor awakes for duty another climbs into his bunk. Same concept for YRE. Students went to school two months had one month off. During their month off the next "track" of students came into those classrooms. Some students had to change classrooms each month they were in school. There were roving teachers who went from classroom to classroom during the day using classrooms for their own students during a time a different teacher in the classroom had a prep period.

VUSD was among the most overcrowded school districts in the state. Finally in 2002 the voters passed a school bond with 2/3rds vote. Schools were built. YRE ended. Every thing was rosy except the Great Recession hit. The Great Recession has lowered ADA in districts across the state including VUSD and the Oceanside district.

VWdog claims he knew this in advance. I wish he had told the rest of us. Then we all could have gotten rich selling short on the stock market.