ANTI blogger, "Plain Truth" also posted the following the article announcing that a new dual magnet high school was to be opened at Washington Middle School.
Plain Truth's plain lie: "The union came to the board and said they didn't want the magnet high schools because it was too much like a charter school. The union board just followed orders."
Hundreds of good union members and other community members worked for TWO DECADES to get a third high school in our district. We would have taken any high school, in fact we did, there is RIGHT now a dual MAGNET high school being completed on Melrose.
Did you read this article?
The MAGNET high school HAS ALREADY opened in a temporary location. Hopefully in January the permanent site will be ready. It would have been built and full of students FIVE years ago if Gibson had not opposed the CHEAP, LEVEL and GRADED fifty acre Kawano site.
Next Plain Truth's plain lie was:
"The last bond, Prop O, had a provision to open the new high school in September 2002 on land already owned by the district. The union board members voted to swap the magnets for Vista Focus Academy."
The district owned no land of fifty or more acres needed for the third high school. We had a chance to own the cheap level Kawano 50 acre property, but Gibson's nixed that.
Vista Focus Academy was for 8th grade students who did not qualify for high school. It was located on land next to Washington middle school owned by the district. The site was maybe seven or eight acres in size at most.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
ANTI attacks on VUSD, a short history
North County Times, ANTI public education "Plain Truth" blamed the considerable loss of income and benefits suffered by the good teachers in our district on union activity. Ridiculous! Obviously the VTA has been the one thing that has kept this district from slipping into utter disaster. "Plain Truth" is however correct that the teachers of VUSD have lost a lot. He is just wrong has to who caused the problem. Below I have outlined a short history of the ANTI attacks on public education in VUSD that have cost our good students and teachers so much for so long.
A SHORT HISTORY OF ANTI ATTACKS ON PUBLIC EDUCATION IN VUSD
Delays caused by a small group of ANTI public education folks from our district caused the delay of much needed school bonds resulting in escalating land and labor costs. Further delays by the two person ANTI minority on our school board and the ridiculous super majority of four out of five votes needed to acquire land allowed the ANTI board members to waste taxpayer money and escalate costs after a school bond was finally passed. This and the next two posts give a brief history of last two decades in VUSD.
But the reasons have to do with a small but very vocal minority in our district who are ANTI public education. Our ANTI friends managed to "defeat" three needed school bonds which could have built our desperately needed new schools as early as the 1980s for millions in taxpayer's saving over the cost of these same schools that were built in the last five years. There was empty land available and labor and construction costs were cheaper. Our ANTI friends, without conscience, make no apologies for this waste.
Sadly our ANTI friends defeated this bond, Prop K, even though almost 60% of the VUSD electorate voted for it. The ridiculous need for 2/3rd approval in California thwarted the clear will of the majority.
Then the ANTIs "defeated" school bond, Prop L, even though the heroes in our community VUSD community gave it nearly 63% approval. They followed up with a “stealth campaign” and our ANTI friends electing an ANTI board majority in 1992. The 1992 board majority’s antics caused such chaos that VUSD became a NATIONAL laughing stock.
That 1992-94 ANTI board made the front page of New York Times, LATimes and San Francisco Chronicle. The good people of VUSD recalled that board in 1994.
We attempted another bond in 1999 that received the needed 2/3 vote in every single precinct on Election Day but "lost" because of a few hundred ANTI absentee ballots.
The parents of two thousand of our students in the highest performing schools left our district following the 1999 bond defeat.
Finally in March 2002 the good folks of VUSD passed school bond, Prop O allowing the building of new schools. But our ANTI friends were not done with their petty attacks on public education. The two ANTI board members (Gibson and Guffanti) publicly opposed the purchase of cheap, already graded, land at Strawberry Hill for our new high school. Four of five board member votes were needed to purchase the land. Two ANTIs were enough to stop it. Finding and funding the building of the third HS cost the district a delay of five years and tens of millions of dollars for additional costs of land and labor at that site.
The lost of two thousand students and the income they generate by state per pupil spending along with the greatly increased costs of land and labor have drained our district of the resources to better pay our hard working teachers.
Thankfully our ANTI friends are a diminishing minority whose evil influences on our school district have nearly ended.
Only one ANTI board member is left on our district board, Jim Gibson. While Gibson still has the power to create controversy, to mislead the gullible, to waste board time and lengthen meetings, he cannot, without his henchman, Guffanti--defeated last November--, any longer block school construction and waste tens of millions of additional tax payer dollars.
Our VUSD district is back on track. We again focus on educating students instead of fighting political battles with folks who do not believe in public education or "government schools" as they term our good district schools.
Thank God.
A SHORT HISTORY OF ANTI ATTACKS ON PUBLIC EDUCATION IN VUSD
Delays caused by a small group of ANTI public education folks from our district caused the delay of much needed school bonds resulting in escalating land and labor costs. Further delays by the two person ANTI minority on our school board and the ridiculous super majority of four out of five votes needed to acquire land allowed the ANTI board members to waste taxpayer money and escalate costs after a school bond was finally passed. This and the next two posts give a brief history of last two decades in VUSD.
But the reasons have to do with a small but very vocal minority in our district who are ANTI public education. Our ANTI friends managed to "defeat" three needed school bonds which could have built our desperately needed new schools as early as the 1980s for millions in taxpayer's saving over the cost of these same schools that were built in the last five years. There was empty land available and labor and construction costs were cheaper. Our ANTI friends, without conscience, make no apologies for this waste.
Sadly our ANTI friends defeated this bond, Prop K, even though almost 60% of the VUSD electorate voted for it. The ridiculous need for 2/3rd approval in California thwarted the clear will of the majority.
Then the ANTIs "defeated" school bond, Prop L, even though the heroes in our community VUSD community gave it nearly 63% approval. They followed up with a “stealth campaign” and our ANTI friends electing an ANTI board majority in 1992. The 1992 board majority’s antics caused such chaos that VUSD became a NATIONAL laughing stock.
That 1992-94 ANTI board made the front page of New York Times, LATimes and San Francisco Chronicle. The good people of VUSD recalled that board in 1994.
We attempted another bond in 1999 that received the needed 2/3 vote in every single precinct on Election Day but "lost" because of a few hundred ANTI absentee ballots.
The parents of two thousand of our students in the highest performing schools left our district following the 1999 bond defeat.
Finally in March 2002 the good folks of VUSD passed school bond, Prop O allowing the building of new schools. But our ANTI friends were not done with their petty attacks on public education. The two ANTI board members (Gibson and Guffanti) publicly opposed the purchase of cheap, already graded, land at Strawberry Hill for our new high school. Four of five board member votes were needed to purchase the land. Two ANTIs were enough to stop it. Finding and funding the building of the third HS cost the district a delay of five years and tens of millions of dollars for additional costs of land and labor at that site.
The lost of two thousand students and the income they generate by state per pupil spending along with the greatly increased costs of land and labor have drained our district of the resources to better pay our hard working teachers.
Thankfully our ANTI friends are a diminishing minority whose evil influences on our school district have nearly ended.
Only one ANTI board member is left on our district board, Jim Gibson. While Gibson still has the power to create controversy, to mislead the gullible, to waste board time and lengthen meetings, he cannot, without his henchman, Guffanti--defeated last November--, any longer block school construction and waste tens of millions of additional tax payer dollars.
Our VUSD district is back on track. We again focus on educating students instead of fighting political battles with folks who do not believe in public education or "government schools" as they term our good district schools.
Thank God.
Richard Kirk, North County Times, Krazed Kolumnist
The North County Times continues its downward spiral into irrelevancy and no editorial standards by allowing Richard Kirk to publish a virtually completely fact free editorial laced with false and malicious slander. "Union Muscles in Vista"
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/kirk/article_633f063e-a1bd-5e2e-9dab-adba3ba060f4.html
Kirk lies, slanders and gross propagandistic inaccuracies are printed in red, reality is printed in blue:
(1)Kirk lie: "officials of the Vista Teachers Association, who seem to have the local school board on a short leash."
THE TRUTH: Yeah right Kirk, the union has the school board on a short lease.
No current contract. No raises in several years. A medical plan that constantly raises its deductibles and takes more and more out of teacher salaries flat lined salaries each year. A dental plan that has not raised its reimbursement in TEN YEARS. VUSD teachers get covered with the same amount of dental dollars today that they did TEN YEARS ago. A VUSD teacher can barely get one tooth crown covered in a year with nothing left for dental cleaning or other dental procedures. The same is true for optical services.
In two decades, VUSD teacher salaries going from the third highest unified district salaries to the average VUSD salary being one of the lowest in the county. Last year alone total VUSD teacher salaries dropped by more than 2%--the highest in the county.
The VUSD teachers taking a PAY CUT this year (2009-2010) to save class size reduction. So all the teachers in the district give back more than one half of one percent of their pay so children can learn better in smaller classes. Sounds pretty evil to me.
The hiring of Dr. Joyce Bales without any consultation or input of any kind from the VTA. Dr. Joyce Bales has had ONLY support from the ANTI crowd in VUSD who wrote dozens of blogs and letters to the editor supporting her positions on her expensive reading program. As far as I know no PRO public education person every wrote anything in support of Bales.
Bales went out of her way to support our kooky ANTI board member Stephen Guffanti in his 'jihad' against the RBVHS varsity baseball coach. She went to the secret illegal meeting called by Guffanti to trash the coach.
Bales would never have been interviewed let alone hired if the VTA ran the school board.
The extension of Dr. Joyce Bales contract just before last November's election in which every supporter of Bales was defeated in a near record numbers. It was a clean sweep.
If VTA has the board members on a short lease explain the above FACTS Kirk? Oh that's right an evil bomb thrower like you does not deal in facts. Kind of like showing a vampire a cross, you cringe and run away when facts are present.
(2) Kirk Lie: "when a cost-saving vote to do away with class-size reduction was immediately followed by a flurry of union-inspired actions that resulted in an apparently illegal meeting of three union-responsive board members"
The TRUTH about this meeting can be found in a North County Times article.
As I posted after Kirks opinion piece:
This error filled piece is a new low for Kirk and a sad commentary of the loss of all editorial standards at the North County Times.
There was no "apparently illegal meeting" of any school board members as reported in this newspaper. The following article in the North County Times CORRECTLY notes that there was NO ILLEGAL MEETING.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/03/06/news/coastal/vista/zafeb0db720418fa8882575710068a8e6.txt
If you want real scandal, note that the developer opposed to the new high school gave $5000 to Stephen Guffanti campaign in 2006 when Guffant was NOT running for re-election. Guffanti turned around and gave the EXACT same amount of money to the Jim Gibson who was his political ally. Gibson WAS running for re-election in 2006. This double transaction was hidden from the public until AFTER the election was held and was not reported in the North County Times until January 2007 over two months after the election. One can only wonder why the $5000 was not given directly to Jim Gibson. A good San Diego DA or other legal entity might want to explore illegal campaign money laundering in order to deceive the electorate in this matter.
Anyone who wants to read how Jaka, Chunka, and Herrera ended up in the same place at the same time is invited to read the entirely innocent explanation in Elizabeth Jaka's own words at:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/
under the title:
"Secret Illegal Meeting, NOT. Jaka Answers."
(3)Kirk Lie: "the money and effort that goes into the district's school board elections ---- clout whose real dollar-value is obscured by an organizational machine that's deft at minimizing its electoral footprints."
The truth: The VTA as never made a secret about the school board candidates that it endorses. By going through a long deliberate, unbiased and fair interview and recommendation process that includes a vote by the governing body of the VTA the Representative Assembly, we in the VTA have picked incredibly good and competent candidates.
Second truth Guffanti was so nasty, so intemperate and so unfair to school site council supporters and to the RBVHS Coach Fleetes that a HUGE number of parents throughtout the district including student athletes at RBVHS voluntarily joined in the campaign to retire Guffanti and put in place a new trustee who would put the interest of students in VUSD ahead of the political agenda that seemed to drive all of the actions of Guffanti.
(4)Kirk's lie: the salary paid by the district to the President of Vista's Teachers Association-not for teaching but for doing union business
Truth: The VTA president gets absolutely NO MONEY for doing union activities especially political activities. If she did she would not only be fired by the district but she would likely be prosecuted as well. All political activities goes through the Political Action Committee of which she is not and can not be a member. In addition she must record her activities on a daily basis in order to be paid by the district. Here is what I posted in response to anther frequently blogged lie by our ANTI friends:
"Samuel" the acronym for one of the ANTI's most virulent and most fact challenged posters at the North County Times website posted this outright lie when he said:
NCTimes blogger, "Samuel", posted this lie: " The District keeps asking for a breakdown of the union president’s time but those requests are ignored."
As Samuel knows the VTA president submits a MONTHLY report of her DAILY activities, day by day, hour by hour.
There has been NO MONTH EVER that this requirement has ever been ignored. If the president ignored this job requirement, she would NOT BE PAID in fact she could be fired for insubordination.
Geez, how much more can our ANTI friends make up?
(5)Kirk wrote: "As Jill Parvin noted in an Aug. 6 presentation to the board, this union subsidy is occurring..."
Interesting Note: Funny Jill Parvin was mentioned in this article, she is the ONLY person to ever be allowed to publish a letter to the editor and a forum piece in the same week (three days apart) in violation of long standing North County Times editorial standards (oops, sorry for the oxymoron).
What is it about being anti-public education that so appeals to the North County Times editorial staff that two anti public education advocates are given special exceptions to publish on the NCTimes editorial pages.
Parvin pieces violate NCTimes published standards due to timing. Kirk violates all traditional newspaper standards with a piece full of inaccurate information, nasty insinuations, and out right lies.
(6)Blog Editor Note: Following is Kirk's greatest lie and slander in his 'hit piece' which could and should easily have been fact checked and eliminated by the editor of the opinion section of the North County Times if there were any editorial integrity left at that place:
The LIE: it seems that this $30,000-plus per anum gift to the VTA president is not just improper but also illegal
THE TRUTH: The VTA president has a shared contract with the district. Half is paid by the union, half by the district. Most large school districts have a similar contract with their union president. The contract is shared because of the large percentage of hours the union president is working on school district personnel matters saving the district substantial money over creating a special high cost administration position.
Shared contract have passed legal scrutiny not only in VUSD but across California for decades. VUSD has a hired lawyer (the county counsel) whose job it is to screen contract changes for legality. Shared contracts passed the test here and elsewhere in our state.
(7)In 1985, the longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers, Al Shanker, made this statement: "When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children."
THE TRUTH: This statement is the standard out of context guilt by association crap that our ANTI friends are so good at.
Al Shanker is NOT a VTA member, NEVER was.
Al Shanker is NOT a CTA member NEVER was.
Al Shanker is NOT a NEA member NEVER was.
However Al Shanker was the president of a RIVAL national teacher group to the NEA and its affiliates CTA and VTA.
His comment was made OVER TWENTY years ago in answer to some vicious and libelous comment made to him by an ANTI. His out of context comment has been used on every ANTI public education website, ANTI public education column and ANTI public education radio and TV program virtually every time these evil folks decide to attack the good folks who provide FACT BASED free public education to all children in the United States from K through 12th grade. That Kirk would use this old out of context quote that Stephen Guffanti and other ANTI submitters have used many times before in the North County Times shows how very thin his evidence of selfish union action is.
(8)Kirks Lie: it's hard to deny that unions are doing much better than the pupils whose interests they purport to serve ---- by serving themselves.
The teachers of this district have sacrificed a great amount of time and effort in saving this district from the disrupting influence of the ANTI public education crowd who for two decades 'defeated' school bonds for desperately needed schools in our district.
Teachers gave TENS OF THOUSANDS of hours of free volunteer time after a hard day of school teaching for each of the three defeated bonds and the for Prop O the bond that finally passed.
Teachers gave those hours knowing that new schools cost money out of the general fund that provides teacher salaries, knowing that when a bond passed there would be less future money for salary increases and to maintain medical, dental and optical benefits.
If we did not do that for the children who did we do it for?
http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/columnists/kirk/article_633f063e-a1bd-5e2e-9dab-adba3ba060f4.html
Kirk lies, slanders and gross propagandistic inaccuracies are printed in red, reality is printed in blue:
(1)Kirk lie: "officials of the Vista Teachers Association, who seem to have the local school board on a short leash."
THE TRUTH: Yeah right Kirk, the union has the school board on a short lease.
No current contract. No raises in several years. A medical plan that constantly raises its deductibles and takes more and more out of teacher salaries flat lined salaries each year. A dental plan that has not raised its reimbursement in TEN YEARS. VUSD teachers get covered with the same amount of dental dollars today that they did TEN YEARS ago. A VUSD teacher can barely get one tooth crown covered in a year with nothing left for dental cleaning or other dental procedures. The same is true for optical services.
In two decades, VUSD teacher salaries going from the third highest unified district salaries to the average VUSD salary being one of the lowest in the county. Last year alone total VUSD teacher salaries dropped by more than 2%--the highest in the county.
The VUSD teachers taking a PAY CUT this year (2009-2010) to save class size reduction. So all the teachers in the district give back more than one half of one percent of their pay so children can learn better in smaller classes. Sounds pretty evil to me.
The hiring of Dr. Joyce Bales without any consultation or input of any kind from the VTA. Dr. Joyce Bales has had ONLY support from the ANTI crowd in VUSD who wrote dozens of blogs and letters to the editor supporting her positions on her expensive reading program. As far as I know no PRO public education person every wrote anything in support of Bales.
Bales went out of her way to support our kooky ANTI board member Stephen Guffanti in his 'jihad' against the RBVHS varsity baseball coach. She went to the secret illegal meeting called by Guffanti to trash the coach.
Bales would never have been interviewed let alone hired if the VTA ran the school board.
The extension of Dr. Joyce Bales contract just before last November's election in which every supporter of Bales was defeated in a near record numbers. It was a clean sweep.
If VTA has the board members on a short lease explain the above FACTS Kirk? Oh that's right an evil bomb thrower like you does not deal in facts. Kind of like showing a vampire a cross, you cringe and run away when facts are present.
(2) Kirk Lie: "when a cost-saving vote to do away with class-size reduction was immediately followed by a flurry of union-inspired actions that resulted in an apparently illegal meeting of three union-responsive board members"
The TRUTH about this meeting can be found in a North County Times article.
As I posted after Kirks opinion piece:
This error filled piece is a new low for Kirk and a sad commentary of the loss of all editorial standards at the North County Times.
There was no "apparently illegal meeting" of any school board members as reported in this newspaper. The following article in the North County Times CORRECTLY notes that there was NO ILLEGAL MEETING.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/03/06/news/coastal/vista/zafeb0db720418fa8882575710068a8e6.txt
If you want real scandal, note that the developer opposed to the new high school gave $5000 to Stephen Guffanti campaign in 2006 when Guffant was NOT running for re-election. Guffanti turned around and gave the EXACT same amount of money to the Jim Gibson who was his political ally. Gibson WAS running for re-election in 2006. This double transaction was hidden from the public until AFTER the election was held and was not reported in the North County Times until January 2007 over two months after the election. One can only wonder why the $5000 was not given directly to Jim Gibson. A good San Diego DA or other legal entity might want to explore illegal campaign money laundering in order to deceive the electorate in this matter.
Anyone who wants to read how Jaka, Chunka, and Herrera ended up in the same place at the same time is invited to read the entirely innocent explanation in Elizabeth Jaka's own words at:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/
under the title:
"Secret Illegal Meeting, NOT. Jaka Answers."
(3)Kirk Lie: "the money and effort that goes into the district's school board elections ---- clout whose real dollar-value is obscured by an organizational machine that's deft at minimizing its electoral footprints."
The truth: The VTA as never made a secret about the school board candidates that it endorses. By going through a long deliberate, unbiased and fair interview and recommendation process that includes a vote by the governing body of the VTA the Representative Assembly, we in the VTA have picked incredibly good and competent candidates.
Second truth Guffanti was so nasty, so intemperate and so unfair to school site council supporters and to the RBVHS Coach Fleetes that a HUGE number of parents throughtout the district including student athletes at RBVHS voluntarily joined in the campaign to retire Guffanti and put in place a new trustee who would put the interest of students in VUSD ahead of the political agenda that seemed to drive all of the actions of Guffanti.
(4)Kirk's lie: the salary paid by the district to the President of Vista's Teachers Association-not for teaching but for doing union business
Truth: The VTA president gets absolutely NO MONEY for doing union activities especially political activities. If she did she would not only be fired by the district but she would likely be prosecuted as well. All political activities goes through the Political Action Committee of which she is not and can not be a member. In addition she must record her activities on a daily basis in order to be paid by the district. Here is what I posted in response to anther frequently blogged lie by our ANTI friends:
"Samuel" the acronym for one of the ANTI's most virulent and most fact challenged posters at the North County Times website posted this outright lie when he said:
NCTimes blogger, "Samuel", posted this lie: " The District keeps asking for a breakdown of the union president’s time but those requests are ignored."
As Samuel knows the VTA president submits a MONTHLY report of her DAILY activities, day by day, hour by hour.
There has been NO MONTH EVER that this requirement has ever been ignored. If the president ignored this job requirement, she would NOT BE PAID in fact she could be fired for insubordination.
Geez, how much more can our ANTI friends make up?
(5)Kirk wrote: "As Jill Parvin noted in an Aug. 6 presentation to the board, this union subsidy is occurring..."
Interesting Note: Funny Jill Parvin was mentioned in this article, she is the ONLY person to ever be allowed to publish a letter to the editor and a forum piece in the same week (three days apart) in violation of long standing North County Times editorial standards (oops, sorry for the oxymoron).
What is it about being anti-public education that so appeals to the North County Times editorial staff that two anti public education advocates are given special exceptions to publish on the NCTimes editorial pages.
Parvin pieces violate NCTimes published standards due to timing. Kirk violates all traditional newspaper standards with a piece full of inaccurate information, nasty insinuations, and out right lies.
(6)Blog Editor Note: Following is Kirk's greatest lie and slander in his 'hit piece' which could and should easily have been fact checked and eliminated by the editor of the opinion section of the North County Times if there were any editorial integrity left at that place:
The LIE: it seems that this $30,000-plus per anum gift to the VTA president is not just improper but also illegal
THE TRUTH: The VTA president has a shared contract with the district. Half is paid by the union, half by the district. Most large school districts have a similar contract with their union president. The contract is shared because of the large percentage of hours the union president is working on school district personnel matters saving the district substantial money over creating a special high cost administration position.
Shared contract have passed legal scrutiny not only in VUSD but across California for decades. VUSD has a hired lawyer (the county counsel) whose job it is to screen contract changes for legality. Shared contracts passed the test here and elsewhere in our state.
(7)In 1985, the longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers, Al Shanker, made this statement: "When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children."
THE TRUTH: This statement is the standard out of context guilt by association crap that our ANTI friends are so good at.
Al Shanker is NOT a VTA member, NEVER was.
Al Shanker is NOT a CTA member NEVER was.
Al Shanker is NOT a NEA member NEVER was.
However Al Shanker was the president of a RIVAL national teacher group to the NEA and its affiliates CTA and VTA.
His comment was made OVER TWENTY years ago in answer to some vicious and libelous comment made to him by an ANTI. His out of context comment has been used on every ANTI public education website, ANTI public education column and ANTI public education radio and TV program virtually every time these evil folks decide to attack the good folks who provide FACT BASED free public education to all children in the United States from K through 12th grade. That Kirk would use this old out of context quote that Stephen Guffanti and other ANTI submitters have used many times before in the North County Times shows how very thin his evidence of selfish union action is.
(8)Kirks Lie: it's hard to deny that unions are doing much better than the pupils whose interests they purport to serve ---- by serving themselves.
The teachers of this district have sacrificed a great amount of time and effort in saving this district from the disrupting influence of the ANTI public education crowd who for two decades 'defeated' school bonds for desperately needed schools in our district.
Teachers gave TENS OF THOUSANDS of hours of free volunteer time after a hard day of school teaching for each of the three defeated bonds and the for Prop O the bond that finally passed.
Teachers gave those hours knowing that new schools cost money out of the general fund that provides teacher salaries, knowing that when a bond passed there would be less future money for salary increases and to maintain medical, dental and optical benefits.
If we did not do that for the children who did we do it for?
Private School educate better than public schools?
After the article mentioned in the previous post our ANTI friends immediately made unsubstantiated claims about private schools being better than public schools.
Not true, of course, as anyone who looks at the literature knows.
Public school students do every bit as well as private schools, charter schools, home schooling children, etc on standardized math, science and reading tests. Evem better if you let public schools select which students that will attend their schools and which students will take the tests as private schools do. Of if you let public school pick and choose which tests they will give their students as private schools do. Give us those same advantages that the private schools have and we will not only do as well we will clean their clocks.
Our teachers are smarter, better educated and work far harder than any private school "high school graduate, maybe" private school teacher.
I have dealt with and tried to help the victims of some of the extremophile private religious schools in Vista when these poor victims re-enter public schools for a real education. (I say this as outraged Christian who spent more than twenty years as a Sunday School teacher and more than five years as a director of a Christian scouting group that had hundreds of children in attendence each Wednesday night and as a Church Board member as well. I AM ANGRY at the terrible education many of our local children are getting at local religious schools and in their home school teaching curriculums).
Here is what I blogged in responce to one member of our ANTI education crowd:
"Private schools educate better than public schools" Oh really?
Like the private religious school in Vista that has a "science" teacher who tells his student victims that "there was no such thing as dinosaurs. They were just bones of large animals put together in fanciful ways by scientists."
If this newspaper blog would allow me I would give you the name of the school, the teacher, and the student victim who came to my class the following year after the having a nut case fanatic as a "science" teacher at this "wonderful" private school. (Blog Editor's Note: It is the Missouri Synod, Lutheran Church school located near Vista High School. I believe it is on the corner of San Clemente and Bobier.)
I showed the boy a picture of complete dinosaur skeletons with the bones perfectly in place, half in and half out of the rock, from Dinosaur National Monument in Vernal, Utah. The bones had been there without being moved by the scientist since the day the dinosaurs died. The scientist only cleaned off the top half of the bones so that the viewing public could see what the dinosaur bones looked like in situ (in place, unmoved).
Glad I could help that one boy but what about the hundreds of other victims at that Vista private "school"? Who will give them the correct picture?
Not true, of course, as anyone who looks at the literature knows.
Public school students do every bit as well as private schools, charter schools, home schooling children, etc on standardized math, science and reading tests. Evem better if you let public schools select which students that will attend their schools and which students will take the tests as private schools do. Of if you let public school pick and choose which tests they will give their students as private schools do. Give us those same advantages that the private schools have and we will not only do as well we will clean their clocks.
Our teachers are smarter, better educated and work far harder than any private school "high school graduate, maybe" private school teacher.
I have dealt with and tried to help the victims of some of the extremophile private religious schools in Vista when these poor victims re-enter public schools for a real education. (I say this as outraged Christian who spent more than twenty years as a Sunday School teacher and more than five years as a director of a Christian scouting group that had hundreds of children in attendence each Wednesday night and as a Church Board member as well. I AM ANGRY at the terrible education many of our local children are getting at local religious schools and in their home school teaching curriculums).
Here is what I blogged in responce to one member of our ANTI education crowd:
"Private schools educate better than public schools" Oh really?
Like the private religious school in Vista that has a "science" teacher who tells his student victims that "there was no such thing as dinosaurs. They were just bones of large animals put together in fanciful ways by scientists."
If this newspaper blog would allow me I would give you the name of the school, the teacher, and the student victim who came to my class the following year after the having a nut case fanatic as a "science" teacher at this "wonderful" private school. (Blog Editor's Note: It is the Missouri Synod, Lutheran Church school located near Vista High School. I believe it is on the corner of San Clemente and Bobier.)
I showed the boy a picture of complete dinosaur skeletons with the bones perfectly in place, half in and half out of the rock, from Dinosaur National Monument in Vernal, Utah. The bones had been there without being moved by the scientist since the day the dinosaurs died. The scientist only cleaned off the top half of the bones so that the viewing public could see what the dinosaur bones looked like in situ (in place, unmoved).
Glad I could help that one boy but what about the hundreds of other victims at that Vista private "school"? Who will give them the correct picture?
Another day, Another Teacher Bashing from North County Times
What is it about our friends at the North County Times that they dislike teachers and education so much?
Today our North County Times friends directed a good reporter to write a bad story regarding an increasing staff at North County schools while the number of students is falling. Could it be a union conspiracy? Could evil union members be padding the payroll?
Sounds bad when written that way. But NCTimes failed to mention that this increase costs the local taxpayers NOTHING. That's right. NO extra money for the extra staff. Some money for increased K-3 staff for class size reduction came from state money, other money needed to hire additional NON-teaching staff necessary when new schools were built, came out of finite pot of money that school districts have thus reducing salaries for all already employed staff.
Here is the URL for the latest North County Times hit piece against the good teachers and school staff that sacrifice so much for our North County students.
http://nctimes.com/news/local/oceanside/article_ad9428ea-7c67-50f3-8189-e1baa43aabbd.html?mode=story
My posts after reading the article:
Don't you wonder who "suggested" the topic of this article? Which of the virulent anti-middle class, anti- union editorial troika "thought" it was a "good idea" to write an article focusing on increased staff. Obviously to give the PHONY impression to the easily fooled that increased staff meant increased taxpayer cost. (Actually the more staff, the less in the district budget to pay other staff members).
Don't you wonder why the main topic of this article is increased staff/fewer students instead of the far better more important story having to do with increased learning with smaller class sizes and uncomplaining teachers who have accepted lower salary and a steady drop in San Diego County school district salary rankings as staff size increases?
Here is another great story, why aren't the teachers complaining? Why aren't they going on strike as their salary rank drops? Shouldn't there be an article about how local teachers are great human beings willing to give up salary to help their students?
As this article mentions the number one reason for more teachers is K-3 Class Size Reduction. CSR is a GOOD THING. In VUSD K-3 teachers had 32 students per class before the state funded class size reduction. Class size reduction took that down to twenty per classroom. Which means that for those grades one third more teachers were hired and students get far more individual attention.
Smaller class sizes, with all things being equal, give students a greater chance to succeed. Study after study shows that students who cannot read well by end of grade three have a far greater chance of becoming high school dropouts. K-3 are the MOST critical grades for creating success for our students.
In VUSD all teachers in the district gave up a full day of pay (a buy back day) which amounts to several hundred dollars per teacher in order to preserve class size reduction for one more year because teachers know class size reduction is incredibly important.
Another huge reason for more staff in VUSD is the huge increase in NON-teaching staff needed when our district converted from year around school where one school was used to house a school and a half full of students to finally passing a school bond (Prop O) which build MANY new schools that each needed a full complement of school secretaries custodians etc. to staff. NON teaching classified staff went up by at least a third.
We, the VUSD teachers aka the certified staff, knew building new schools meant increased costs over the year round system. We knew that money would come from future salary and benefits. Still we organized and we worked to pass the bond. The members of the Vista Teachers Association has been heroic and self sacrificing while the editorial staff of this newspaper writes scathingly critical and fact free attacks on the good teachers of VUSD.
The money to hire the additional NON teaching staff came from our teacher salaries which have fallen in rank in San Diego County from third highest unified district to one of the lowest salaries in the county. Why isn't this drop in relative salary rankings worth a mention in this article? Why doesn’t this paper’s editorial ever mention that all teachers in VUSD gave up a FULL day of pay to preserve class size reduction? Why is the focus of this article on more staff instead of the sacrifices that the teachers and other staff members have made to allow for this? District money is FINITE. More employees does not mean a bigger COST to district taxpayers, it means less in salary and benefits for all the others already employed. Gladly given up to help our students.
Today our North County Times friends directed a good reporter to write a bad story regarding an increasing staff at North County schools while the number of students is falling. Could it be a union conspiracy? Could evil union members be padding the payroll?
Sounds bad when written that way. But NCTimes failed to mention that this increase costs the local taxpayers NOTHING. That's right. NO extra money for the extra staff. Some money for increased K-3 staff for class size reduction came from state money, other money needed to hire additional NON-teaching staff necessary when new schools were built, came out of finite pot of money that school districts have thus reducing salaries for all already employed staff.
Here is the URL for the latest North County Times hit piece against the good teachers and school staff that sacrifice so much for our North County students.
http://nctimes.com/news/local/oceanside/article_ad9428ea-7c67-50f3-8189-e1baa43aabbd.html?mode=story
My posts after reading the article:
Don't you wonder who "suggested" the topic of this article? Which of the virulent anti-middle class, anti- union editorial troika "thought" it was a "good idea" to write an article focusing on increased staff. Obviously to give the PHONY impression to the easily fooled that increased staff meant increased taxpayer cost. (Actually the more staff, the less in the district budget to pay other staff members).
Don't you wonder why the main topic of this article is increased staff/fewer students instead of the far better more important story having to do with increased learning with smaller class sizes and uncomplaining teachers who have accepted lower salary and a steady drop in San Diego County school district salary rankings as staff size increases?
Here is another great story, why aren't the teachers complaining? Why aren't they going on strike as their salary rank drops? Shouldn't there be an article about how local teachers are great human beings willing to give up salary to help their students?
As this article mentions the number one reason for more teachers is K-3 Class Size Reduction. CSR is a GOOD THING. In VUSD K-3 teachers had 32 students per class before the state funded class size reduction. Class size reduction took that down to twenty per classroom. Which means that for those grades one third more teachers were hired and students get far more individual attention.
Smaller class sizes, with all things being equal, give students a greater chance to succeed. Study after study shows that students who cannot read well by end of grade three have a far greater chance of becoming high school dropouts. K-3 are the MOST critical grades for creating success for our students.
In VUSD all teachers in the district gave up a full day of pay (a buy back day) which amounts to several hundred dollars per teacher in order to preserve class size reduction for one more year because teachers know class size reduction is incredibly important.
Another huge reason for more staff in VUSD is the huge increase in NON-teaching staff needed when our district converted from year around school where one school was used to house a school and a half full of students to finally passing a school bond (Prop O) which build MANY new schools that each needed a full complement of school secretaries custodians etc. to staff. NON teaching classified staff went up by at least a third.
We, the VUSD teachers aka the certified staff, knew building new schools meant increased costs over the year round system. We knew that money would come from future salary and benefits. Still we organized and we worked to pass the bond. The members of the Vista Teachers Association has been heroic and self sacrificing while the editorial staff of this newspaper writes scathingly critical and fact free attacks on the good teachers of VUSD.
The money to hire the additional NON teaching staff came from our teacher salaries which have fallen in rank in San Diego County from third highest unified district to one of the lowest salaries in the county. Why isn't this drop in relative salary rankings worth a mention in this article? Why doesn’t this paper’s editorial ever mention that all teachers in VUSD gave up a FULL day of pay to preserve class size reduction? Why is the focus of this article on more staff instead of the sacrifices that the teachers and other staff members have made to allow for this? District money is FINITE. More employees does not mean a bigger COST to district taxpayers, it means less in salary and benefits for all the others already employed. Gladly given up to help our students.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Too Much VUSD Testing?
Theme Skills Tests, a test too far?
In the North County Times recently was an article by Stacy Brandt entitled,
“REGION: Testing improvements attributed to teachers, increase of data.”
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/oceanside/article_cc88423e-15a4-5eb6-8755-71f8722880f7.html?mode=story
Stacy Brandt wrote something which sounds good to the public and benefits district’s administration’s need for data but is NOT likely to be in the best interests of our students in VUSD. Below printed in red is the part of the article I question:
Teachers are becoming more familiar with what students are expected to know in each grade level, which has also helped to bring up test scores, said Sally Bennett-Schmidt, assessment coordinator with the San Diego County Office of Education. State education officials rewrote the tests in 2003 to align them closer to academic standards that were adopted a few years before.
Technology has also made it easier for teachers and administrators to receive and understand test scores more quickly, Bennett-Schmidt said. This means struggling students can get help sooner.
For example, teachers in the Vista Unified School District can use the results to benchmark tests quarterly to figure out which students need help on a particular topic and give those students extra attention. Principals can also use the data to decide which students should get more intensive, one-on-one help.
We can all agree that assessment is a good. Without testing it would be far more difficult to analyze the effectiveness of various teaching strategies. But we need balance in all things including testing.
Student testing comes at a price. For every hour of testing more than one hour of instruction is lost. The time lost beyond the time taking test is lost due to need for practice for test and give students instructions for taking the test.
Teaching time is finite.
Two or even three days are lost each time students must take a standardized, bubble in, test.
In addition is what I call the Ennui Factor. The more standardized bubble in tests students take the less “special” the test is and the less ‘focus’ the students have. The students are bored by taking these kinds of tests. A greater and greater percentage of students do not see the point in making an effort on the test. These bored and over tested students just randomly bubble in rather than make an effort. I have known students who made patterns for amusement with the filled in bubbles without even looking at the questions. We do not want students so tired of bubble in tests that by the time the California Standards Test in the Spring rolls around that they no longer care about trying to do their best. Our poor Spanish speaking students must also take a CELD Test. Just too many bubble in tests.
There is a further penalty regarding teacher effectiveness that has cost that is real but difficult to quantify. It is the intangible loss of quality as teachers must devote ever more teacher preparation time to the Scan Tron machine (when it works) and to uploading the results via their computers to Edusoft. This prep time lost is quality time that teachers need to evaluate how the lessons of the day are going, decide if and what changes are needed to increase effectiveness, correct daily work, quizzes and tests. These are the tasks that allow teacher to pinpoint students and concepts that need more work and to increase the teacher's effectiveness as a conveyor of knowledge. When decisions to increase student testing are made the costs must be calculated into the decision or at some point, increased testing actually decreases student performance.
This teacher time penalty is much worse for the poor first and second grade teachers whose students do not have the hand coordination to bubble in the test answers themselves. These poor teachers must transfer by hand all student answers to test bubble in answer sheets. Teachers are given NO help to do this laborious job. Such a system begs for errors in transcription as teachers become tired.
Besides what is the point? All teachers constantly are monitoring their students by grading quizzes and correcting daily class work. The results of the giant bubble in test are not a surprise to teachers and are not necessary for teachers to know who and what needs re-teaching. Teachers already have a multitude of ways to monitor students. Bubble in testing is really only useful for district administration to monitor schools, individual teachers and students. There is benefit for district administration but really little or none for teachers and students. However the reality is the less the district admin needs for their admin purposes the better for student learning.
We have may have reached the point of lowered student achievement because of too much testing—Testing Overkill—at least as far as K-6 is concerned. Recently the district has required that teachers increase the number of district required tests from three Benchmark Tests one each time their is a report card. This is actually six benchmark tests, three in language arts and three in math. Now with the additional requirement of the Theme Skills Tests, there are at least three more bubble in tests during the school year, making a total of nine for every student.
Most teachers would agree that Benchmark Tests are important if for nothing else than giving students practice for the bubble California Standards Test required by the state. Each of the six Benchmark Tests must be scanned into the scantron machine and then uploaded into Edusoft for the district administration to monitor. These are time consuming processes. This extra work must be done by the classroom teacher as the district provides no paid help for these extra jobs.
By requiring even three or possibly four more Theme Skill Tests in addition to the Bench Mark tests that also need to be scanned and uploaded by overworked teachers, the district administration has crossed a line from effective testing with real benefits for students to overkill with likely reductions in real learning for our students.
No Child Left Behind requires test scores to improve. This newTheme Skill Test requirement is likely to mean test scores will drop not rise. Let’s hope district administration will re-think this new requirement. Over testing is as detrimental to better student test scores as overbaking is to a cake.
NOTE: Scantron has a fairly high error rate. In my experience poorly maintained machines and tests that are bubbled in less than perfectly can result in an error rate as high as 2 to 4%.
I used scantron for all my chapter tests when I taught science. On several occasions I checked the scantron scoring by hand scoring tests after running them through the scantron and found that the machine had marked more incorrect than were actually incorrect on as many as one in every three or four tests. Part of the fault was the student had not marked bubbles as darkly as needed but for some of the scantron answer sheets I saw NOTHING wrong with the way in which the student had marked the answer, yet the machine still marked the correct answer as wrong.
I made up for the problem by running all tests twice and by readjusting my grading curve to reflect the scantron error rate.
No one should rely on the scantron test results to be error free.
In the North County Times recently was an article by Stacy Brandt entitled,
“REGION: Testing improvements attributed to teachers, increase of data.”
http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/oceanside/article_cc88423e-15a4-5eb6-8755-71f8722880f7.html?mode=story
Stacy Brandt wrote something which sounds good to the public and benefits district’s administration’s need for data but is NOT likely to be in the best interests of our students in VUSD. Below printed in red is the part of the article I question:
Teachers are becoming more familiar with what students are expected to know in each grade level, which has also helped to bring up test scores, said Sally Bennett-Schmidt, assessment coordinator with the San Diego County Office of Education. State education officials rewrote the tests in 2003 to align them closer to academic standards that were adopted a few years before.
Technology has also made it easier for teachers and administrators to receive and understand test scores more quickly, Bennett-Schmidt said. This means struggling students can get help sooner.
For example, teachers in the Vista Unified School District can use the results to benchmark tests quarterly to figure out which students need help on a particular topic and give those students extra attention. Principals can also use the data to decide which students should get more intensive, one-on-one help.
We can all agree that assessment is a good. Without testing it would be far more difficult to analyze the effectiveness of various teaching strategies. But we need balance in all things including testing.
Student testing comes at a price. For every hour of testing more than one hour of instruction is lost. The time lost beyond the time taking test is lost due to need for practice for test and give students instructions for taking the test.
Teaching time is finite.
Two or even three days are lost each time students must take a standardized, bubble in, test.
In addition is what I call the Ennui Factor. The more standardized bubble in tests students take the less “special” the test is and the less ‘focus’ the students have. The students are bored by taking these kinds of tests. A greater and greater percentage of students do not see the point in making an effort on the test. These bored and over tested students just randomly bubble in rather than make an effort. I have known students who made patterns for amusement with the filled in bubbles without even looking at the questions. We do not want students so tired of bubble in tests that by the time the California Standards Test in the Spring rolls around that they no longer care about trying to do their best. Our poor Spanish speaking students must also take a CELD Test. Just too many bubble in tests.
There is a further penalty regarding teacher effectiveness that has cost that is real but difficult to quantify. It is the intangible loss of quality as teachers must devote ever more teacher preparation time to the Scan Tron machine (when it works) and to uploading the results via their computers to Edusoft. This prep time lost is quality time that teachers need to evaluate how the lessons of the day are going, decide if and what changes are needed to increase effectiveness, correct daily work, quizzes and tests. These are the tasks that allow teacher to pinpoint students and concepts that need more work and to increase the teacher's effectiveness as a conveyor of knowledge. When decisions to increase student testing are made the costs must be calculated into the decision or at some point, increased testing actually decreases student performance.
This teacher time penalty is much worse for the poor first and second grade teachers whose students do not have the hand coordination to bubble in the test answers themselves. These poor teachers must transfer by hand all student answers to test bubble in answer sheets. Teachers are given NO help to do this laborious job. Such a system begs for errors in transcription as teachers become tired.
Besides what is the point? All teachers constantly are monitoring their students by grading quizzes and correcting daily class work. The results of the giant bubble in test are not a surprise to teachers and are not necessary for teachers to know who and what needs re-teaching. Teachers already have a multitude of ways to monitor students. Bubble in testing is really only useful for district administration to monitor schools, individual teachers and students. There is benefit for district administration but really little or none for teachers and students. However the reality is the less the district admin needs for their admin purposes the better for student learning.
We have may have reached the point of lowered student achievement because of too much testing—Testing Overkill—at least as far as K-6 is concerned. Recently the district has required that teachers increase the number of district required tests from three Benchmark Tests one each time their is a report card. This is actually six benchmark tests, three in language arts and three in math. Now with the additional requirement of the Theme Skills Tests, there are at least three more bubble in tests during the school year, making a total of nine for every student.
Most teachers would agree that Benchmark Tests are important if for nothing else than giving students practice for the bubble California Standards Test required by the state. Each of the six Benchmark Tests must be scanned into the scantron machine and then uploaded into Edusoft for the district administration to monitor. These are time consuming processes. This extra work must be done by the classroom teacher as the district provides no paid help for these extra jobs.
By requiring even three or possibly four more Theme Skill Tests in addition to the Bench Mark tests that also need to be scanned and uploaded by overworked teachers, the district administration has crossed a line from effective testing with real benefits for students to overkill with likely reductions in real learning for our students.
No Child Left Behind requires test scores to improve. This newTheme Skill Test requirement is likely to mean test scores will drop not rise. Let’s hope district administration will re-think this new requirement. Over testing is as detrimental to better student test scores as overbaking is to a cake.
NOTE: Scantron has a fairly high error rate. In my experience poorly maintained machines and tests that are bubbled in less than perfectly can result in an error rate as high as 2 to 4%.
I used scantron for all my chapter tests when I taught science. On several occasions I checked the scantron scoring by hand scoring tests after running them through the scantron and found that the machine had marked more incorrect than were actually incorrect on as many as one in every three or four tests. Part of the fault was the student had not marked bubbles as darkly as needed but for some of the scantron answer sheets I saw NOTHING wrong with the way in which the student had marked the answer, yet the machine still marked the correct answer as wrong.
I made up for the problem by running all tests twice and by readjusting my grading curve to reflect the scantron error rate.
No one should rely on the scantron test results to be error free.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Secret, Illegal Meeting? NOT! Jaka answers.
Our ANTI friends are disorganized. They are a diminishing in number but they are still able to post lies and libel on the North County blogs. They have nothing but their illegal secret meeting conspiracy theories.
Below is a posting from last May that was taken down by the North County Times followed by the innocent explanation in Elizabeth Jaka's own words. Elizabeth wrote the explanation and sent it to the North County Times in May after the lie was posted. I received it shortly after but did not post it at that time.
The LIE is highlighted in RED. The true, factual and innocent explanation by Elizabeth Jaka is in BLUE. I with held name and phone number of the witness for privacy reasons. I was not requested to do so. The name and number were given to the North County Times.
Now Elizabeth Jaka in her own words:
I'm writing to let you know that the following blog needs to be removed from Mr. Gibson's editorial on Heroes:
VUSD Taxpayer May 21, 2009 7:52AM PST
Gibson's article should have been on the lack of ethics and character on the school board as exhibited by the three board members Herrera, Chunka and Jaka. They got caught violating state law and ethics 2 months ago when they held an illegal meeting at 1:30 in the morning at Board President Herrera's house 4 hours after the board meeting ended. Two Vista Teacher's Union reps also attended the "accidental" meeting and told them they had misvoted hours earlier at the school board meeting. Mrs. Herrera immediately called for another school board meeting where the three changed their vote. THis secret meeting is ILLEGAL in the state of California and is also unethical. It demonstrates the very opposite of what character is. But please remember that these three Vista Trustees have received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the Teacher's union. Rumor is that the illegal meetings still take place. Please explain to me why those three are still on the board. When it comes to setting examples, the trustess should be the first ones to lead us. As a taxpayer, I feel these three trustees, Herrera, Chunka and Jaka represent the labor unions and not me, the taxpayer.
HERE'S WHY:
1) No one was "caught" violating state law or ethics. The claim was looked into and found to be without merit.
2) I was not at Mrs. Herrera's house at 1:30 that morning, I was in Oceanside, near the airport, giving a friend a ride home from the meeting (this can be confirmed by (name and phone number with held for privacy reasons by blog editor). This is public information, given at the March 5/March 12 board meetings (although (name with held by blog editor)'s personal information was not given).
3) The board meeting in question ended at 12:45 a.m., not 9:30 as the blogger claims. This is documented in the board minutes here: http://www.vusd.k12.ca.us/board/Board%20Meetings/2009/02-26-2009.pdf. I didn't get off the site until after 1:00 because so many people wanted to express their dissatisfaction with what had taken place. I doubt that anyone else got out much before 1:00 either.
4) After I dropped (name withheld for privacy by blog editor) at her home, I went by Mrs. Herrera's house to check on her because she was not answering her phone, and I knew her husband was out of town. I knew she was extremely stressed (we all were) and I wanted to make sure she was okay. I was surprised to find her driveway was full of cars, and there were a number of people present. Until I walked in however, I did not realize that Mrs. Chunka was also present and that I would be the third board member. At that point, I started to leave, but Mrs. Herrera left the room, remedying any violation. This obviously cannot be proven, but it is also public information that was given at the March 5 AND March 12 board meetings.
5) No one told me I "misvoted" after I arrived. The bulk of the conversation that I recall was about Read Across America, and the fact that I knew I would be facing some unhappy people when I came to their rooms to read the next day and the following Monday. I stated as much at the board meeting on March 12. Frankly, I was not interested in discussing my vote, nor would I have wanted to talk about undoing what we'd just spent six grueling hours doing (plus another two hours in Closed Session).
How would "VUSD Taxpayer" know what was discussed? He/she was clearly not there since all the statements of "fact" in the blog are incorrect.
6) Mrs. Herrera did NOT immediately call another meeting. The March 5 and March 12 meetings had been set for some time. On March 11, Mrs. Herrera did call for a special meeting to follow the regular meeting on March 12, so that we could vote on the issue one more time. This was a confirmation of the previous vote.
7) I changed my vote on March 5/12 only because the finance department came forward with an alternative to cutting Class Size Reduction. I had been to the finance office on February 27 to ask them to keep looking for other options. Mrs. Chunka did not change her vote. This is also public information, and can be found in the minutes for the March 5 meeting: http://www.vusd.k12.ca.us/board/Board%20Meetings/2009/03-05-2009.pdf On March 12, we voted to cut a buy-back day instead.
8) Although the unions did spend quite a bit of money on our campaigns, we did not receive 10s of thousands of dollars in contributions from them. They spent the money as they saw fit. That may seem like quibbling, but it's important to me. It's just as important to note that David Arnold, who tried to stop construction of our high schools, spent more than $63K on Guffanti's campaign in 2004. Although that is documented, I never see mention of it.
9) There are no secret, illegal meetings taking place. We showed poor judgment in being in the same place at the same time, and we have all publicly apologized for that, twice. Stating "Rumor is that the illegal meetings still take place" is libelous.
Below is a posting from last May that was taken down by the North County Times followed by the innocent explanation in Elizabeth Jaka's own words. Elizabeth wrote the explanation and sent it to the North County Times in May after the lie was posted. I received it shortly after but did not post it at that time.
The LIE is highlighted in RED. The true, factual and innocent explanation by Elizabeth Jaka is in BLUE. I with held name and phone number of the witness for privacy reasons. I was not requested to do so. The name and number were given to the North County Times.
Now Elizabeth Jaka in her own words:
I'm writing to let you know that the following blog needs to be removed from Mr. Gibson's editorial on Heroes:
VUSD Taxpayer May 21, 2009 7:52AM PST
Gibson's article should have been on the lack of ethics and character on the school board as exhibited by the three board members Herrera, Chunka and Jaka. They got caught violating state law and ethics 2 months ago when they held an illegal meeting at 1:30 in the morning at Board President Herrera's house 4 hours after the board meeting ended. Two Vista Teacher's Union reps also attended the "accidental" meeting and told them they had misvoted hours earlier at the school board meeting. Mrs. Herrera immediately called for another school board meeting where the three changed their vote. THis secret meeting is ILLEGAL in the state of California and is also unethical. It demonstrates the very opposite of what character is. But please remember that these three Vista Trustees have received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the Teacher's union. Rumor is that the illegal meetings still take place. Please explain to me why those three are still on the board. When it comes to setting examples, the trustess should be the first ones to lead us. As a taxpayer, I feel these three trustees, Herrera, Chunka and Jaka represent the labor unions and not me, the taxpayer.
HERE'S WHY:
1) No one was "caught" violating state law or ethics. The claim was looked into and found to be without merit.
2) I was not at Mrs. Herrera's house at 1:30 that morning, I was in Oceanside, near the airport, giving a friend a ride home from the meeting (this can be confirmed by (name and phone number with held for privacy reasons by blog editor). This is public information, given at the March 5/March 12 board meetings (although (name with held by blog editor)'s personal information was not given).
3) The board meeting in question ended at 12:45 a.m., not 9:30 as the blogger claims. This is documented in the board minutes here: http://www.vusd.k12.ca.us/board/Board%20Meetings/2009/02-26-2009.pdf. I didn't get off the site until after 1:00 because so many people wanted to express their dissatisfaction with what had taken place. I doubt that anyone else got out much before 1:00 either.
4) After I dropped (name withheld for privacy by blog editor) at her home, I went by Mrs. Herrera's house to check on her because she was not answering her phone, and I knew her husband was out of town. I knew she was extremely stressed (we all were) and I wanted to make sure she was okay. I was surprised to find her driveway was full of cars, and there were a number of people present. Until I walked in however, I did not realize that Mrs. Chunka was also present and that I would be the third board member. At that point, I started to leave, but Mrs. Herrera left the room, remedying any violation. This obviously cannot be proven, but it is also public information that was given at the March 5 AND March 12 board meetings.
5) No one told me I "misvoted" after I arrived. The bulk of the conversation that I recall was about Read Across America, and the fact that I knew I would be facing some unhappy people when I came to their rooms to read the next day and the following Monday. I stated as much at the board meeting on March 12. Frankly, I was not interested in discussing my vote, nor would I have wanted to talk about undoing what we'd just spent six grueling hours doing (plus another two hours in Closed Session).
How would "VUSD Taxpayer" know what was discussed? He/she was clearly not there since all the statements of "fact" in the blog are incorrect.
6) Mrs. Herrera did NOT immediately call another meeting. The March 5 and March 12 meetings had been set for some time. On March 11, Mrs. Herrera did call for a special meeting to follow the regular meeting on March 12, so that we could vote on the issue one more time. This was a confirmation of the previous vote.
7) I changed my vote on March 5/12 only because the finance department came forward with an alternative to cutting Class Size Reduction. I had been to the finance office on February 27 to ask them to keep looking for other options. Mrs. Chunka did not change her vote. This is also public information, and can be found in the minutes for the March 5 meeting: http://www.vusd.k12.ca.us/board/Board%20Meetings/2009/03-05-2009.pdf On March 12, we voted to cut a buy-back day instead.
8) Although the unions did spend quite a bit of money on our campaigns, we did not receive 10s of thousands of dollars in contributions from them. They spent the money as they saw fit. That may seem like quibbling, but it's important to me. It's just as important to note that David Arnold, who tried to stop construction of our high schools, spent more than $63K on Guffanti's campaign in 2004. Although that is documented, I never see mention of it.
9) There are no secret, illegal meetings taking place. We showed poor judgment in being in the same place at the same time, and we have all publicly apologized for that, twice. Stating "Rumor is that the illegal meetings still take place" is libelous.
Blog Editor Note: I do not think any one showed poor judgment. There is NOTHING for Elizabeth or any one else to feel guilty about. Inadvertent path crossing by friends does not need to be apologized for. Had there been a plan for the three friends to meet, there still would have been nothing illegal or nefarious about such a meeting. In America friends are allowed to visit each other. Even had they planned to meet to discuss school business, the meeting is still not illegal under the Brown Act or any other state or federal law as long as the same discussion is held publicly at the next meeting. This is the conclusion of the North County Times reporter and his sources in the following article:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/03/06/news/coastal/vista/zafeb0db720418fa8882575710068a8e6.txt
If we did not live in a district with paranoid and nutty ANTI education zealots, no one would have cared.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Baby sitters make more money than classroom teachers
Teaching is about a life time of service and sacrifice.
Public school teaching has always been less financially lucrative than virtually any other job that takes the same amount of education to qualify for. In fact teachers make less money, than babysitters do. Baby sitters usually get at least two dollars per child per hour. Most classroom teachers have about 32 students per class per hour multiply that 32 times seven hours a day times 180 days and you get about $80,640.
A baby sitter with no requirement to teach anything to her charges, no minimum educational requirements and in her very first year of babysitting can make more money than the average public school teacher who has 60 units of college credit and twenty years in her classroom.
Even according to disputed and significantly inflated statistics in the anti-teacher Sacramento Bee, the average public school teacher in California made $65,808 in 2008. The VUSD average was less, $63,443.
This SacBee teacher average pay distortion is still less than what a baby sitter would get for babysitting 32 children seven hours a day for 180 days. The SacBee average "teacher" salary included much better paying non-teaching, credentialed positions in the average.
http://www.sacbee.com/1098/story/995141.html?appSession=80478235118357
Teachers are among the finest people I have known in my life. They are a few of the true shining lights in our society. Long hours, horrible working conditions, constant threats to their persons and their careers; yet they seldom complain even as they are viciously attacked by con men on the radio like John and Ken KFI AM640, in print (the North County Times editorial page) and on Fake News on cable TV.
Public school teaching has always been less financially lucrative than virtually any other job that takes the same amount of education to qualify for. In fact teachers make less money, than babysitters do. Baby sitters usually get at least two dollars per child per hour. Most classroom teachers have about 32 students per class per hour multiply that 32 times seven hours a day times 180 days and you get about $80,640.
A baby sitter with no requirement to teach anything to her charges, no minimum educational requirements and in her very first year of babysitting can make more money than the average public school teacher who has 60 units of college credit and twenty years in her classroom.
Even according to disputed and significantly inflated statistics in the anti-teacher Sacramento Bee, the average public school teacher in California made $65,808 in 2008. The VUSD average was less, $63,443.
This SacBee teacher average pay distortion is still less than what a baby sitter would get for babysitting 32 children seven hours a day for 180 days. The SacBee average "teacher" salary included much better paying non-teaching, credentialed positions in the average.
http://www.sacbee.com/1098/story/995141.html?appSession=80478235118357
Teachers are among the finest people I have known in my life. They are a few of the true shining lights in our society. Long hours, horrible working conditions, constant threats to their persons and their careers; yet they seldom complain even as they are viciously attacked by con men on the radio like John and Ken KFI AM640, in print (the North County Times editorial page) and on Fake News on cable TV.
KFI AM 640 John and Ken, a Bully and a Coward, Daily Rant about 1A through 1F
Props 1A through 1E will likely fail on Tuesday chiefly thanks to the lack of free speech on the KFI AM 640 radio hosts, John and Ken. They have spent at least four hours a day for months bad mouthing 1A through 1F in particular and public employees particularly school teachers in general.
No opposing viewpoints are allowed without being shouted down while those who attempt such a feat are presenting their view and then mocked after the caller is arbitrarily clicked off the air by John.
John and Ken could allow a pro 1A through 1E spokesman to control the microphone for just one hour a week of their twenty plus hours of rants per week. But they will not. Bullies and cowards always fear the well informed and those who can defend themselves. Being in a fair fight or even one that has any fairness at all terrifies bullies and cowards like John and Ken.
It certainly is not free speech or equal access when John yells down a well informed caller who supports 1A through 1E.
Polls show that John and Ken have been all too successful in their campaign of distortion and misinformation. Governor Schwarzenegger, himself, has publicly wondered allow if these two now run our state. Of course Schwarzenegger loved it when John and Ken spent the better part of six months trashing Gray Davis and making it possible for Schwarzenegger to be elected governor after the recall of Davis. John and Ken were just as unfair and un-American then as they are now.
Why should two unelected radio hosts have the uncontested power to dominate our elections?
After the election on Tuesday, John and Ken will continue to make millions spewing the distortions their advertisers desire of them. On the other hand public school teachers, those who do not get laid off, will take salary cuts next year of between $1500 and $4000. Those are the amounts that seven days of pay (plus the one lost already) will take from lowest to highest salaried teachers in VUSD. Teachers in other districts will loose slightly more as most teachers make more in salary then our VUSD teachers who are among the lowest paid in San Diego County.
Seven days of pay is exactly what Governor Schwarzenegger says he will cut when 1A through 1F fail.
Teachers will soldier on. They will teach. They will take children of poverty who have no access to printed material and often do not have anyone in their household who speaks English and turn those children into educated productive English speaking American citizens.They will do their jobs whether appreciated or not, whether fairly compensated or not, whether they are unfairly vilified or not. Why? Because public school teachers are good people. Teaching attracts the caring, the compassionate, and the unselfish. Thank goodness for now there are enough of those fine people today to fill our classrooms. I hope there will be next year as well.
You can read about the "anti-tax" rally they engineered here:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/05/16/news/californian/riverside/z15d6b5ab0a89e0e0882575b700672eaa.txt
Here is the title and a few key sentences and paragraphs from the article:
CORONA: Thousands attend anti-tax rally
Radio hosts call for defeat of ballot propositions
CORONA ---- Bombastic radio talk show hosts "John and Ken" lit the fuse.
And thousands of Southern California residents provided the "boom," turning the normally laid-back setting of Tom's Farms, a pastoral roadside attraction/farmers market on the outskirts of Corona, into a raucous staging ground for an anti-tax rally on Saturday afternoon.
The rally, a companion piece to the anti-tax KFI AM 640 hosts' live broadcast, featured hundreds of colorful signs, "Don't Tread on Me" flags and life-size effigies of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ripped to pieces by a industrial shredder.
----------
At one point during the rally, the crowd, cheered on by the radio show hosts, chanted in unison: "Liars, thieves and whores! Liars, thieves and whores! Liars, thieves and whores!"
------------
The focus of the crowd's ire was the state's politicians ---- both sides of the aisle ---- big business, big oil, state worker's unions, teacher's unions and, in somewhat of a stretch, the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team.
-----------
"We're going to beat the propositions and we're going to beat the Lakers!" shouted the pair, whose full names are John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou.
-----------
Danielle Marrujo, a Temecula resident, attended the rally with her 14-year-old son Devin.
Taped to Marrujo's chest was a picture of Gov. Schwarzenegger with a red bar crossed through his face.
"He lied to us," Marrujo said, explaining why she singled out Schwarzenegger for criticism. "He's raising our taxes."
In the last few months, Marrujo said her life in Temecula ---- she's lived in the city for six years ---- has started to unravel.
"I'm losing everything, my home ... my husband has been laid off. I realize (the governor) can't control everything. It's not all his fault. It's everybody's fault, all the political parties," she said. "If not for my parents, me and my family would be homeless."
---------------
Debbie Adams said the issue is personal for her because she is an English teacher who is trying to help put her daughter through college. Just recently, her daughter's state grant money was cut by 15 percent.
"Where am I going to get that 15 percent?" she asked.
-----------------
One wonders how much more Debbie Adams salary and her daughter's state grant will be cut when 1A through 1F fail on Tuesday. Adams demonstrated the power of unelected demagogues to convince the gullible to act against their own and our state's best interest.
Here are some selected comments following the article. I especially like the first one by googy for his creative spelling of "colleges." Perhaps he could have used the service on one. All that are highlighted in red are by our ANTI friends. The one in blue is not. Note the ANTI pitiful attempt at "humor" in the second post by Dummocrat.
googy May 17, 2009 7:00AM PST
One thing I agree with the Republicans is to get rid of the public school system and social grants to collages.
Dummocrat May 17, 2009 9:37AM PST
Hee, haw. Janeane Garafolo is RIGHT! You tea baggers are just a bunch of red neck racists. What all of you selfish right-wing homophobes need to do is just SHUT UP and pay your taxes...all of them. This is what we call SPREADING THE WEALTH. You bigots at Tom's Farms should just leave Arnold Schwarzennegger alone! He is related to that magnificent liberal lion, Ted Kennedy, and the Kennedy family doesn't need any more pain right now. If you really want to know how to vote correctly this Tuesday, vote YES, YES, YES, YES, and YES on Props 1A through 1E. Vote NO on 1F...we shouldn't be creating hardships for our hard working Democrat leaders in Sacramento. Don't you know that they work hard for their paychecks too?!?! Come on Kalifornians...open up your hearts by opening up your wallets. Vote YES on 1A - 1E and let's all save the teacher unions and public employee unions from paycuts and layoffs. After all, government is the ONLY THING that works well in Kalifornia. Heh, heh.Hee, haw!
Will Adam May 17, 2009 11:12AM PST
First thing is get rid of all of the spend happy DEMOCRATS in the state legislature. You can't blame the GOP for this, since spending bills only require a simple majority and the DEMOCRATS haven't seen a spending increase or new program they didn't like.
Next would make sure no state aid goes to any illegal. And for the state to work with the Federal government to turn over for deportation any illegal(no what country they come from) they come across from emergency room visits, kids at school and have the police verfiy the citizenship from all traffic stops.
Next is the needed is to get rid of the entitlements from any program, and take away the auto pilot of all programs and make everything a general fund. The next thing to do is get rid of Prop 98 for education and the teachers union's. With very few exceptions, the teachers are not taking a hit in pay. Instead of taking a 10-15% pay cut so most teachers who are being laid off won't. But again they and the prision guard union is about nothing but greed. I would cut the prision guard's pay by aleast 25%.
One of the easiest approaches would be after the above isto freeze the budget at 2005 level and leave it there and only increase it when revenue increase. It's not that hard, but the democrats claim it is. If they hadn't been so spend happy we wouldn't be in this mess.
I believe that would be a great start.
Clarity May 17, 2009 12:21PM PST
The village idiots have found leaders in John and Ken - two rabid rabble-rousing radio personalities saturating the airwaves with head-on-astick anger, hate and intolerance. They hate taxes, politicians, illegal immigrants for entertainment and ratings. It's easy to assemble a mob but it doesn't solve problems. The problems will get worse when the propositions fail and public services are cut drastically.
Hound Dog May 17, 2009 3:00PM PST
The T bag rallies are legal,loud, and in someways, pointless. There is a lot of anger in our Country,some of it well founded, some of it politically motivated. The signs being carried were anti tax, anti schwaenegger anti Democrat,anti Obama,pretty much anti everything government.. The crowed was whipped up by John and Ken who pushed all the buttons they knew would rouse the group. Tea Parties are fine, but I think folks need to help come up with real answers to real problems. No new taxes sounds good but it is only a slogan. No one wants to pay taxes. Personally I'm interested in the manner in which our taxes are being spent.I was asking the same questions during the Bush Administration but not a Tea bagger was evident at that time. No easy answers on that question either. Complainig is easy and therapeutic,solutions are hard and not always popular. I'm hoping that people who are motivated to carry signs and protest will also, through their elected officials, find "real" answers. The original Tea bag prostest in Boston harbor was aginst tax without reprsentation. This one seems to be against taxation with representation.
No opposing viewpoints are allowed without being shouted down while those who attempt such a feat are presenting their view and then mocked after the caller is arbitrarily clicked off the air by John.
John and Ken could allow a pro 1A through 1E spokesman to control the microphone for just one hour a week of their twenty plus hours of rants per week. But they will not. Bullies and cowards always fear the well informed and those who can defend themselves. Being in a fair fight or even one that has any fairness at all terrifies bullies and cowards like John and Ken.
It certainly is not free speech or equal access when John yells down a well informed caller who supports 1A through 1E.
Polls show that John and Ken have been all too successful in their campaign of distortion and misinformation. Governor Schwarzenegger, himself, has publicly wondered allow if these two now run our state. Of course Schwarzenegger loved it when John and Ken spent the better part of six months trashing Gray Davis and making it possible for Schwarzenegger to be elected governor after the recall of Davis. John and Ken were just as unfair and un-American then as they are now.
Why should two unelected radio hosts have the uncontested power to dominate our elections?
After the election on Tuesday, John and Ken will continue to make millions spewing the distortions their advertisers desire of them. On the other hand public school teachers, those who do not get laid off, will take salary cuts next year of between $1500 and $4000. Those are the amounts that seven days of pay (plus the one lost already) will take from lowest to highest salaried teachers in VUSD. Teachers in other districts will loose slightly more as most teachers make more in salary then our VUSD teachers who are among the lowest paid in San Diego County.
Seven days of pay is exactly what Governor Schwarzenegger says he will cut when 1A through 1F fail.
Teachers will soldier on. They will teach. They will take children of poverty who have no access to printed material and often do not have anyone in their household who speaks English and turn those children into educated productive English speaking American citizens.They will do their jobs whether appreciated or not, whether fairly compensated or not, whether they are unfairly vilified or not. Why? Because public school teachers are good people. Teaching attracts the caring, the compassionate, and the unselfish. Thank goodness for now there are enough of those fine people today to fill our classrooms. I hope there will be next year as well.
You can read about the "anti-tax" rally they engineered here:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/05/16/news/californian/riverside/z15d6b5ab0a89e0e0882575b700672eaa.txt
Here is the title and a few key sentences and paragraphs from the article:
CORONA: Thousands attend anti-tax rally
Radio hosts call for defeat of ballot propositions
CORONA ---- Bombastic radio talk show hosts "John and Ken" lit the fuse.
And thousands of Southern California residents provided the "boom," turning the normally laid-back setting of Tom's Farms, a pastoral roadside attraction/farmers market on the outskirts of Corona, into a raucous staging ground for an anti-tax rally on Saturday afternoon.
The rally, a companion piece to the anti-tax KFI AM 640 hosts' live broadcast, featured hundreds of colorful signs, "Don't Tread on Me" flags and life-size effigies of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ripped to pieces by a industrial shredder.
----------
At one point during the rally, the crowd, cheered on by the radio show hosts, chanted in unison: "Liars, thieves and whores! Liars, thieves and whores! Liars, thieves and whores!"
------------
The focus of the crowd's ire was the state's politicians ---- both sides of the aisle ---- big business, big oil, state worker's unions, teacher's unions and, in somewhat of a stretch, the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team.
-----------
"We're going to beat the propositions and we're going to beat the Lakers!" shouted the pair, whose full names are John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou.
-----------
Danielle Marrujo, a Temecula resident, attended the rally with her 14-year-old son Devin.
Taped to Marrujo's chest was a picture of Gov. Schwarzenegger with a red bar crossed through his face.
"He lied to us," Marrujo said, explaining why she singled out Schwarzenegger for criticism. "He's raising our taxes."
In the last few months, Marrujo said her life in Temecula ---- she's lived in the city for six years ---- has started to unravel.
"I'm losing everything, my home ... my husband has been laid off. I realize (the governor) can't control everything. It's not all his fault. It's everybody's fault, all the political parties," she said. "If not for my parents, me and my family would be homeless."
---------------
Debbie Adams said the issue is personal for her because she is an English teacher who is trying to help put her daughter through college. Just recently, her daughter's state grant money was cut by 15 percent.
"Where am I going to get that 15 percent?" she asked.
-----------------
One wonders how much more Debbie Adams salary and her daughter's state grant will be cut when 1A through 1F fail on Tuesday. Adams demonstrated the power of unelected demagogues to convince the gullible to act against their own and our state's best interest.
Here are some selected comments following the article. I especially like the first one by googy for his creative spelling of "colleges." Perhaps he could have used the service on one. All that are highlighted in red are by our ANTI friends. The one in blue is not. Note the ANTI pitiful attempt at "humor" in the second post by Dummocrat.
googy May 17, 2009 7:00AM PST
One thing I agree with the Republicans is to get rid of the public school system and social grants to collages.
Dummocrat May 17, 2009 9:37AM PST
Hee, haw. Janeane Garafolo is RIGHT! You tea baggers are just a bunch of red neck racists. What all of you selfish right-wing homophobes need to do is just SHUT UP and pay your taxes...all of them. This is what we call SPREADING THE WEALTH. You bigots at Tom's Farms should just leave Arnold Schwarzennegger alone! He is related to that magnificent liberal lion, Ted Kennedy, and the Kennedy family doesn't need any more pain right now. If you really want to know how to vote correctly this Tuesday, vote YES, YES, YES, YES, and YES on Props 1A through 1E. Vote NO on 1F...we shouldn't be creating hardships for our hard working Democrat leaders in Sacramento. Don't you know that they work hard for their paychecks too?!?! Come on Kalifornians...open up your hearts by opening up your wallets. Vote YES on 1A - 1E and let's all save the teacher unions and public employee unions from paycuts and layoffs. After all, government is the ONLY THING that works well in Kalifornia. Heh, heh.Hee, haw!
Will Adam May 17, 2009 11:12AM PST
First thing is get rid of all of the spend happy DEMOCRATS in the state legislature. You can't blame the GOP for this, since spending bills only require a simple majority and the DEMOCRATS haven't seen a spending increase or new program they didn't like.
Next would make sure no state aid goes to any illegal. And for the state to work with the Federal government to turn over for deportation any illegal(no what country they come from) they come across from emergency room visits, kids at school and have the police verfiy the citizenship from all traffic stops.
Next is the needed is to get rid of the entitlements from any program, and take away the auto pilot of all programs and make everything a general fund. The next thing to do is get rid of Prop 98 for education and the teachers union's. With very few exceptions, the teachers are not taking a hit in pay. Instead of taking a 10-15% pay cut so most teachers who are being laid off won't. But again they and the prision guard union is about nothing but greed. I would cut the prision guard's pay by aleast 25%.
One of the easiest approaches would be after the above isto freeze the budget at 2005 level and leave it there and only increase it when revenue increase. It's not that hard, but the democrats claim it is. If they hadn't been so spend happy we wouldn't be in this mess.
I believe that would be a great start.
Clarity May 17, 2009 12:21PM PST
The village idiots have found leaders in John and Ken - two rabid rabble-rousing radio personalities saturating the airwaves with head-on-astick anger, hate and intolerance. They hate taxes, politicians, illegal immigrants for entertainment and ratings. It's easy to assemble a mob but it doesn't solve problems. The problems will get worse when the propositions fail and public services are cut drastically.
Hound Dog May 17, 2009 3:00PM PST
The T bag rallies are legal,loud, and in someways, pointless. There is a lot of anger in our Country,some of it well founded, some of it politically motivated. The signs being carried were anti tax, anti schwaenegger anti Democrat,anti Obama,pretty much anti everything government.. The crowed was whipped up by John and Ken who pushed all the buttons they knew would rouse the group. Tea Parties are fine, but I think folks need to help come up with real answers to real problems. No new taxes sounds good but it is only a slogan. No one wants to pay taxes. Personally I'm interested in the manner in which our taxes are being spent.I was asking the same questions during the Bush Administration but not a Tea bagger was evident at that time. No easy answers on that question either. Complainig is easy and therapeutic,solutions are hard and not always popular. I'm hoping that people who are motivated to carry signs and protest will also, through their elected officials, find "real" answers. The original Tea bag prostest in Boston harbor was aginst tax without reprsentation. This one seems to be against taxation with representation.
Friday, May 15, 2009
VUSD Hero, Elizabeth Jaka, Pushes to Open Third HS
Elizabeth Jaka continues her outstanding reign of service to the students and taxpayers of VUSD by suggesting that the new high school open temporarily at Washington Middle School where there is extra room behind the school. The first few hundred students will start next September. Otherwise VUSD students would have to wait an additional year for their new third high school.
Here is the article in the NCTimes reporting her brilliant suggestion.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/05/15/news/coastal/vista/z8916a8369d444e3a882575b7001af393.txt#tp_newCommentAnchor
This is what the North County Times reported Elizabeth saying about getting the high school opened:
"We have put it off, put it off, put it off and promised and promised," Trustee Elizabeth Jaka said before the vote about the delays the school has already seen. Not opening the school this year would cause the district to lose credibility, she said, and be unfair to the students who have signed up for it.
Thank you, Elizabeth!
Let's get this high school started. The VUSD community has suffered through three previous failed bond issues from 1985 through 1999, the one in 1999 failed by only a few hundred votes. Any one of those bonds would have had our third high school built more than a decade ago and on cheaper more centrally located land. Too bad our ANTI friends did not support those bonds. Think of the taxpayer money that could have been saved if the third high school had been built when construction and land costs were so much less.
Finally in 2002, the VUSD community passed Prop O and money was available to build that third high school. Sadly our two ANTI board members Jim Gibson and Stephen Guffanti refused to be the necessary fourth vote for VUSD to acquire the only graded level site that was large enough for a high school and still available inside our district boundaries.
The VUSD community thought we would get a new high school right away, but no. Our Gibson and Guffanti, who are more interested in non-VUSD issues like Prop 8 and Carrie Prejean, refused to be the fourth necessary vote. That site was the Jay Kawano property behind Strawberry Hill. It would have cost only one million dollars.
Instead we are five years later at a much more expensive site to buy (17.7 million) that was neither level or graded and has required many, many millions more dollars of tax payer money for grading and site preparation.
What could have been a fifty or sixty million dollar high school in 2002 will now cost taxpayers of VUSD at least a 100 million dollars.
Let's elect more school board members like Elizabeth Jaka, Angela Chunka, Carol Herrera, and Steve Lilly who have broad community support and believe in using VUSD taxpayer bond money to build a new high school as quickly and cheaply as possible.
Too bad all four were not on the school board in 2002 or we would have had the votes for building a much cheaper high school that could have been built by September 2005. That wonderful opportunity was denied to the taxpayers and students in VUSD by two minority voting members (Gibson and Guffanti) either of who could have volunteered to be the necessary fourth vote.
I wonder if Gibson and Guffanti would have refused to be the needed fourth vote if any of their school age children or their supporter's children actually attended VUSD schools.
Thank goodness Guffanti after the last election is no longer on our school board.
Jim Gibson can do less damage to the taxpayer now that he is only one vote. But he has demonstrated that he can still damage VUSD reputation by stirring controversy on non education matters like his request for a Carrie Prejean Day. Sad that extremists like Gibson and Guffanti with other than education agendas were ever elected to our VUSD board.
Here is the article in the NCTimes reporting her brilliant suggestion.
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/05/15/news/coastal/vista/z8916a8369d444e3a882575b7001af393.txt#tp_newCommentAnchor
This is what the North County Times reported Elizabeth saying about getting the high school opened:
"We have put it off, put it off, put it off and promised and promised," Trustee Elizabeth Jaka said before the vote about the delays the school has already seen. Not opening the school this year would cause the district to lose credibility, she said, and be unfair to the students who have signed up for it.
Thank you, Elizabeth!
Let's get this high school started. The VUSD community has suffered through three previous failed bond issues from 1985 through 1999, the one in 1999 failed by only a few hundred votes. Any one of those bonds would have had our third high school built more than a decade ago and on cheaper more centrally located land. Too bad our ANTI friends did not support those bonds. Think of the taxpayer money that could have been saved if the third high school had been built when construction and land costs were so much less.
Finally in 2002, the VUSD community passed Prop O and money was available to build that third high school. Sadly our two ANTI board members Jim Gibson and Stephen Guffanti refused to be the necessary fourth vote for VUSD to acquire the only graded level site that was large enough for a high school and still available inside our district boundaries.
The VUSD community thought we would get a new high school right away, but no. Our Gibson and Guffanti, who are more interested in non-VUSD issues like Prop 8 and Carrie Prejean, refused to be the fourth necessary vote. That site was the Jay Kawano property behind Strawberry Hill. It would have cost only one million dollars.
Instead we are five years later at a much more expensive site to buy (17.7 million) that was neither level or graded and has required many, many millions more dollars of tax payer money for grading and site preparation.
What could have been a fifty or sixty million dollar high school in 2002 will now cost taxpayers of VUSD at least a 100 million dollars.
Let's elect more school board members like Elizabeth Jaka, Angela Chunka, Carol Herrera, and Steve Lilly who have broad community support and believe in using VUSD taxpayer bond money to build a new high school as quickly and cheaply as possible.
Too bad all four were not on the school board in 2002 or we would have had the votes for building a much cheaper high school that could have been built by September 2005. That wonderful opportunity was denied to the taxpayers and students in VUSD by two minority voting members (Gibson and Guffanti) either of who could have volunteered to be the necessary fourth vote.
I wonder if Gibson and Guffanti would have refused to be the needed fourth vote if any of their school age children or their supporter's children actually attended VUSD schools.
Thank goodness Guffanti after the last election is no longer on our school board.
Jim Gibson can do less damage to the taxpayer now that he is only one vote. But he has demonstrated that he can still damage VUSD reputation by stirring controversy on non education matters like his request for a Carrie Prejean Day. Sad that extremists like Gibson and Guffanti with other than education agendas were ever elected to our VUSD board.
Gibson's Political Grandstand on Prejean generates huge crowds
Our lone ANTI board member Jim Gibson managed to generate a lot of attention for himself with his request to declare June 1, Carrie Prejean Day.
Hundreds came to the VUSD school board meeting last night.
Read more about it in the NCTimes here:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/05/14/news/coastal/vista/z3b24cd1550963a8a882575b7001c52ec.txt
Too bad Jim Gibson did not use his flair for making political headlines into the cause of getting the third high school built. Imagine if Jim Gibson had made getting that his goal in the the 2002 school board election instead of campaigning against the cheap level fifty acre one million dollar Jay Kawano site with his fear and smear campaign calling it a 10,000 car mega school.
He got a lot of political donations but cost VUSD millions of dollars. Now instead of having a fifty million dollar high school slated to be finished by September 2005 we have at least a 100 million dollar high school at a much worst, much more hilly site that will not be opened until at least January of 2010.
Hundreds came to the VUSD school board meeting last night.
Read more about it in the NCTimes here:
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2009/05/14/news/coastal/vista/z3b24cd1550963a8a882575b7001c52ec.txt
Too bad Jim Gibson did not use his flair for making political headlines into the cause of getting the third high school built. Imagine if Jim Gibson had made getting that his goal in the the 2002 school board election instead of campaigning against the cheap level fifty acre one million dollar Jay Kawano site with his fear and smear campaign calling it a 10,000 car mega school.
He got a lot of political donations but cost VUSD millions of dollars. Now instead of having a fifty million dollar high school slated to be finished by September 2005 we have at least a 100 million dollar high school at a much worst, much more hilly site that will not be opened until at least January of 2010.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
$1500 to $3700 per teacher pay cut next year if Props 1A-1E fail
The governor announced today his "May revise" budget. These are announced every year to take into consideration new information as it comes up. Schwarzenegger announced two budgets. One for if Prop 1A through 1E* pass and one if they don't.
Right now 1A through 1E are failing at the polls. (1F may pass). The Republicans are running a massive campaign to defeat them. TODAY in the last three hours, I have had TWO different scripted robo calls at my home urging a NO vote on these props--each from the Republican party--one featured an Orange County supervisor reading the script.
KFI AM 640 radio station hosts John and Ken are daily using their four hours of afternoon drive time broadcast to defeat these propositions. No time is given to competing views. There is NO FAIRNESS DOCTRINE at KFI. I recommend boycotting John and Ken's advertisers. KFI claims to have one million listeners.
If they are not passed next Tuesday The governor May Revise budget says that he will cut 7.5 days out of the school year which will reduce our salaries by the percentage of those days out of our school year.
Read: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CALIFORNIA_BUDGET?SITE=CAPOR&SECTION=US&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Here are the two key sentences from the above article:
If voters reject the ballot measures next week, as polls indicate they are inclined to do, education will be cut by a total of $5.4 billion and the school year will be shortened by 7.5 days. Schwarzenegger said that will lead to teacher layoffs and larger class sizes.
VUSD teachers have already given up one day to maintain class size reduction in the K-3 classrooms for next year. We will give up 8.5 days of pay next year if 1A through 1F fail.
For VUSD teachers will lose between $1563 to $3750 from their yearly salary. Is it worth a few thousand dollars to you to help get these measures passed? Come volunteer to make phone calls. Call CTA San Marcos office today at 760 744-4108.
Here are the figures for salary reductions in the Vista Unified School District if Props 1A through 1E* fail:
Average VUSD teacher salary reduction: 8.5 divided by 185= 0.0459x $63,443 = $2912
Lowest paid teacher salary reduction: 8.5 divided by 185 =0.0459 x 34,043 = $1563
Highest paid teacher salary reduction: 8.5 divided by 185=0.0459 x 81,703 = $3750
Average, high, and low salaries are based on the state wide teacher salary information given by the Sacramento Bee at the following URL:
http://www.sacbee.com/1098/story/995141.html?appSession=80478235118357
Vista Unified Salary average, high and low are at this specific URL on the Sac Bee website:
http://www.sacbee.com/1098/story/995141.html?appSession=56186918375992&RecordID=&PageID=2&PrevPageID=1&cpipage=2&CPISortType=&CPIorderBy=
*Editor's Note: I recommend a NO on Prop 1F. This proposition gives the state no additional money. It's only purpose is to penalize middle class income state senators and assembly persons if the minority party millionaires decide to have another temper tantrum in Sacramento next year and refuse to pass a balanced budget.
The goal of the minority party in Sacramento in placing Prop 1F on the ballet is to force the lower wealth senators and assembly persons of the majority party to give in to their draconian demands or face personal financial ruin.
Right now 1A through 1E are failing at the polls. (1F may pass). The Republicans are running a massive campaign to defeat them. TODAY in the last three hours, I have had TWO different scripted robo calls at my home urging a NO vote on these props--each from the Republican party--one featured an Orange County supervisor reading the script.
KFI AM 640 radio station hosts John and Ken are daily using their four hours of afternoon drive time broadcast to defeat these propositions. No time is given to competing views. There is NO FAIRNESS DOCTRINE at KFI. I recommend boycotting John and Ken's advertisers. KFI claims to have one million listeners.
If they are not passed next Tuesday The governor May Revise budget says that he will cut 7.5 days out of the school year which will reduce our salaries by the percentage of those days out of our school year.
Read: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CALIFORNIA_BUDGET?SITE=CAPOR&SECTION=US&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
Here are the two key sentences from the above article:
If voters reject the ballot measures next week, as polls indicate they are inclined to do, education will be cut by a total of $5.4 billion and the school year will be shortened by 7.5 days. Schwarzenegger said that will lead to teacher layoffs and larger class sizes.
VUSD teachers have already given up one day to maintain class size reduction in the K-3 classrooms for next year. We will give up 8.5 days of pay next year if 1A through 1F fail.
For VUSD teachers will lose between $1563 to $3750 from their yearly salary. Is it worth a few thousand dollars to you to help get these measures passed? Come volunteer to make phone calls. Call CTA San Marcos office today at 760 744-4108.
Here are the figures for salary reductions in the Vista Unified School District if Props 1A through 1E* fail:
Average VUSD teacher salary reduction: 8.5 divided by 185= 0.0459x $63,443 = $2912
Lowest paid teacher salary reduction: 8.5 divided by 185 =0.0459 x 34,043 = $1563
Highest paid teacher salary reduction: 8.5 divided by 185=0.0459 x 81,703 = $3750
Average, high, and low salaries are based on the state wide teacher salary information given by the Sacramento Bee at the following URL:
http://www.sacbee.com/1098/story/995141.html?appSession=80478235118357
Vista Unified Salary average, high and low are at this specific URL on the Sac Bee website:
http://www.sacbee.com/1098/story/995141.html?appSession=56186918375992&RecordID=&PageID=2&PrevPageID=1&cpipage=2&CPISortType=&CPIorderBy=
*Editor's Note: I recommend a NO on Prop 1F. This proposition gives the state no additional money. It's only purpose is to penalize middle class income state senators and assembly persons if the minority party millionaires decide to have another temper tantrum in Sacramento next year and refuse to pass a balanced budget.
The goal of the minority party in Sacramento in placing Prop 1F on the ballet is to force the lower wealth senators and assembly persons of the majority party to give in to their draconian demands or face personal financial ruin.
Textbooks on line OK'ed by California Senate
The California State Senate has agreed to allow school districts to use state text book funds to purchase on-line testbooks.
The Senate Bill has to be approved by the California State Assembly and signed by the governor.
I believe it is likely to get both Assembly approval and the governor's signature. Everyone wants to appear high tech especially elected officials. I predict very little opposition.
Here are a few paragraphs from the article in the LATimes:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-school-books12-2009may12,0,3863262.story
Senate approves software as an alternative to textbooks
L.A. Unified supports the bill, which moves to the Assembly.
By Patrick McGreevy
May 12, 2009
Reporting from Sacramento -- California teenagers may be spared having to lug back-breaking loads of textbooks to school under a proposal that would make it easier for campuses to use electronic instructional material.
Allowing high schools greater freedom to spend state money on software to put textbooks on laptops and other electronic devices was backed by the Los Angeles Unified School District and approved Monday by the state Senate.
The Assembly will consider the proposal, drafted by state Sen. Elaine Alquist (D-Santa Clara). "Today's K-12 students represent the first generation to have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, video games, digital music players, video cameras, cellphones and all the other gadgets of the digital age," Alquist said after the 36-0 Senate vote.
"Today's students are no longer the students of blackboards and chalk."
California law limits how school districts can use state funds for instructional materials, requiring them to purchase enough textbooks for all students before spending money on electronic material.
As a result, some districts have purchased materials in both book form and software or have refrained from buying software, Alquist said.
SB 247 would allow districts to satisfy textbook requirements if they can provide each student with hardware and software that meet the same accessibility requirements that printed textbooks offer.
The rest of the article is at the URL listed above.
The Senate Bill has to be approved by the California State Assembly and signed by the governor.
I believe it is likely to get both Assembly approval and the governor's signature. Everyone wants to appear high tech especially elected officials. I predict very little opposition.
Here are a few paragraphs from the article in the LATimes:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-school-books12-2009may12,0,3863262.story
Senate approves software as an alternative to textbooks
L.A. Unified supports the bill, which moves to the Assembly.
By Patrick McGreevy
May 12, 2009
Reporting from Sacramento -- California teenagers may be spared having to lug back-breaking loads of textbooks to school under a proposal that would make it easier for campuses to use electronic instructional material.
Allowing high schools greater freedom to spend state money on software to put textbooks on laptops and other electronic devices was backed by the Los Angeles Unified School District and approved Monday by the state Senate.
The Assembly will consider the proposal, drafted by state Sen. Elaine Alquist (D-Santa Clara). "Today's K-12 students represent the first generation to have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, video games, digital music players, video cameras, cellphones and all the other gadgets of the digital age," Alquist said after the 36-0 Senate vote.
"Today's students are no longer the students of blackboards and chalk."
California law limits how school districts can use state funds for instructional materials, requiring them to purchase enough textbooks for all students before spending money on electronic material.
As a result, some districts have purchased materials in both book form and software or have refrained from buying software, Alquist said.
SB 247 would allow districts to satisfy textbook requirements if they can provide each student with hardware and software that meet the same accessibility requirements that printed textbooks offer.
The rest of the article is at the URL listed above.
Some legitimate teacher groups oppose Prop 1A
I finally saw the commercial with the teachers opposed to Prop 1A. yes indeed there are two legitimate teacher organizations that oppose Prop 1A. The California branch of the American Federation of Teachers--the second largest K-12 teacher association in California opposes Prop 1A and the California Faculty Association which represents college teachers in the CSU system also opposes Prop 1A.
CTA continues to support all the propositions including Prop 1A and Prop 1F.
I understand that the AFT opposes 1A because it limits the amount of money schools can be funded below what they are guaranteed by Prop 98. AFT believes that schools will get a better deal in court by suing the state to enforce Prop 98 then Prop 1A provides. CTA says maybe that is true but court cases take a VERY long time (years at least), are not a sure thing, and by the way,what do schools do in the meantime for funds? CTA thinks a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Who knows who is right. You decide.
I personally voted NO only on Prop 1F which penalizes working class legislators by denying them pay when wealthy, minority party, millionaires have a temper tantrum and hold up balancing the state budget.
CTA urges a yes vote on 1F. I believe they publicly urge a yes vote as part of a compromise to get school funding propositions on the ballet.
CTA continues to support all the propositions including Prop 1A and Prop 1F.
I understand that the AFT opposes 1A because it limits the amount of money schools can be funded below what they are guaranteed by Prop 98. AFT believes that schools will get a better deal in court by suing the state to enforce Prop 98 then Prop 1A provides. CTA says maybe that is true but court cases take a VERY long time (years at least), are not a sure thing, and by the way,what do schools do in the meantime for funds? CTA thinks a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Who knows who is right. You decide.
I personally voted NO only on Prop 1F which penalizes working class legislators by denying them pay when wealthy, minority party, millionaires have a temper tantrum and hold up balancing the state budget.
CTA urges a yes vote on 1F. I believe they publicly urge a yes vote as part of a compromise to get school funding propositions on the ballet.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
CDC says Swine flu is widespread across US
The three thousand plus confirmed cases in the United States greatly underestimates the total number or actual cases in the US according to CDC. Be aware any of your children could be ill even without traditional symptoms of fever. Be on the lookout for cough and nausea vomiting diarrhea.
Pregnant women (immune system suppressed by fetus) and those with asthma are at highest risk of death. Current death rate for swine flu based on Mexico City case studies is between 4 per thousand and possibly as high as 1 0r 2 per hundred. Death rate in US has been much lower so far.
Now 3,352 cases of new flu in US, CDC says
Wed May 13, 2009 11:21am EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE54B4V820090513?sp=true
CHICAGO (Reuters) - The United States now has 3,352 confirmed cases of the new H1N1 influenza across 45 states and Washington, D.C., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Wednesday.
The outbreak of swine flu has been mostly mild in the United States, with only three deaths, the CDC said in a statement.
CDC officials have said the virus is widespread across the country and testing is greatly underestimating the true number of cases.
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen, Editing by Sandra Maler)
Pregnant women (immune system suppressed by fetus) and those with asthma are at highest risk of death. Current death rate for swine flu based on Mexico City case studies is between 4 per thousand and possibly as high as 1 0r 2 per hundred. Death rate in US has been much lower so far.
Now 3,352 cases of new flu in US, CDC says
Wed May 13, 2009 11:21am EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE54B4V820090513?sp=true
CHICAGO (Reuters) - The United States now has 3,352 confirmed cases of the new H1N1 influenza across 45 states and Washington, D.C., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Wednesday.
The outbreak of swine flu has been mostly mild in the United States, with only three deaths, the CDC said in a statement.
CDC officials have said the virus is widespread across the country and testing is greatly underestimating the true number of cases.
(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen, Editing by Sandra Maler)
Many Swine Flu cases have no fever
Up to a third of swine flu cases in Mexico have no fever. Be aware that students sick with this new flu may not have traditional symptoms of flu.
Read:
May 13, 2009
Many Swine Flu Cases Have No Fever
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Many people suffering from swine influenza, even those who are severely ill, do not have fever, an odd feature of the new virus that could increase the difficulty of controlling the epidemic, said a leading American infectious-disease expert who examined cases in Mexico last week.
Fever is a hallmark of influenza, often rising abruptly to 104 degrees at the onset of illness. Because many infectious-disease experts consider fever the most important sign of the disease, the presence of fever is a critical part of screening patients.
But about a third of the patients at two hospitals in Mexico City where the American expert, Dr. Richard P. Wenzel, consulted for four days last week had no fever when screened, he said.
“It surprised me and my Mexican colleagues, because the textbooks say that in an influenza outbreak the predictive value of fever and cough is 90 percent,” Dr. Wenzel said by telephone from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, where he is chairman of the department of internal medicine.
The rest of the article is at this url:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/health/13fever.html
Read:
May 13, 2009
Many Swine Flu Cases Have No Fever
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Many people suffering from swine influenza, even those who are severely ill, do not have fever, an odd feature of the new virus that could increase the difficulty of controlling the epidemic, said a leading American infectious-disease expert who examined cases in Mexico last week.
Fever is a hallmark of influenza, often rising abruptly to 104 degrees at the onset of illness. Because many infectious-disease experts consider fever the most important sign of the disease, the presence of fever is a critical part of screening patients.
But about a third of the patients at two hospitals in Mexico City where the American expert, Dr. Richard P. Wenzel, consulted for four days last week had no fever when screened, he said.
“It surprised me and my Mexican colleagues, because the textbooks say that in an influenza outbreak the predictive value of fever and cough is 90 percent,” Dr. Wenzel said by telephone from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, where he is chairman of the department of internal medicine.
The rest of the article is at this url:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/health/13fever.html
Teacher Retirement Services--a 403b scam?
Just a few minutes ago, we received an unsolicited phone call here at our home from someone calling herself, Debbie. She said she was calling from "Teacher Retirement Services" and she had "The laws have changed and we would like to give you information on a new 403b plan."
She asked for the teacher in our house by name.
I asked her what herlast name was. I heard her say what I thought was "Astro" The teacher in our house on the other phone thought "debbie" said, "Matsua" .
The teacher in our house then asked, "what is your address?" She replied with one word, "Fallbrook" She did not provide an address.
The teacher in our house asked, "what your phone number?"
She replied, "Aren't you interested?"
I asked how she got our name. She replied, "the person I work for, gave me a list"
"Who is that person?" I asked
"Oh aren't you interested?" she evasively answered the question with her same question again.
"Maybe," I replied, "who is the person you work for?"
Click. She hung up with no reply at all
I cannot believe that a legitimate organization would refuse to give their phone number, address or name of their supervisor.
I further object to the way they contact us. They gave the aura of an official call from a government organization. I felt that was their clear intent. They never said we are an independent for profit organization selling 403b plans or anything similar to that. She very much seemed to be trying to confuse us with her opening remarks and with the name of the business that sounds surprisingly official.
Teacher Retirement Services representatives have called us at our home several times in the last month or so.
Last week the representative called asking for the teacher in our home by name and telling that teacher about 'the new laws and the 403b and said that she would be happy to meet with the teacher in our home at our home or at our school.' The teacher in our house said she was not interested.
About thirty minutes later, the same representative called our number again, this time to ask for me by name. I haven't work for the district in about ten years so she is working off an old list.
Unless I hear otherwise from this group, I will consider this group and their product a scam. I suggest you be deeply suspicious of them and any of their products as well.
While I was a teacher in VUSD, I often found post card like "junk mail" from Teacher's Retirement Services in my teacher's mail box and saw that every teacher at the school had them as well--clearly a violation of the use of school mailboxes for VUSD purposes only and not for commercial use.
When I called to complain about the illegitimate use of our mail boxes and their confusing name that sounded like an official State Teacher Retirement System (STRS), i was hung up on. The post cards continued to arrive in our school mail boxes once or twice a month until I retired--years later.
The first time I got their 'post card" in my box, I thought it looked official enough that it was from the State Teacher Retirement Services. I found out later that Teacher Retirement Services is not affiliated with STRS. I recommend that anyone contacted by this organization hang up and refuse to do business with them until this group identifies who they are and where they got our phone numbers from.
I googled Teacher Retirement System and the only response I got was a place in Scottsdale, Arizona
http://www.educatingeducators.com/index.cfm
If any one has additional information on Teacher Retirement Services, I would appreciate hearing from you.
She asked for the teacher in our house by name.
I asked her what herlast name was. I heard her say what I thought was "Astro" The teacher in our house on the other phone thought "debbie" said, "Matsua" .
The teacher in our house then asked, "what is your address?" She replied with one word, "Fallbrook" She did not provide an address.
The teacher in our house asked, "what your phone number?"
She replied, "Aren't you interested?"
I asked how she got our name. She replied, "the person I work for, gave me a list"
"Who is that person?" I asked
"Oh aren't you interested?" she evasively answered the question with her same question again.
"Maybe," I replied, "who is the person you work for?"
Click. She hung up with no reply at all
I cannot believe that a legitimate organization would refuse to give their phone number, address or name of their supervisor.
I further object to the way they contact us. They gave the aura of an official call from a government organization. I felt that was their clear intent. They never said we are an independent for profit organization selling 403b plans or anything similar to that. She very much seemed to be trying to confuse us with her opening remarks and with the name of the business that sounds surprisingly official.
Teacher Retirement Services representatives have called us at our home several times in the last month or so.
Last week the representative called asking for the teacher in our home by name and telling that teacher about 'the new laws and the 403b and said that she would be happy to meet with the teacher in our home at our home or at our school.' The teacher in our house said she was not interested.
About thirty minutes later, the same representative called our number again, this time to ask for me by name. I haven't work for the district in about ten years so she is working off an old list.
Unless I hear otherwise from this group, I will consider this group and their product a scam. I suggest you be deeply suspicious of them and any of their products as well.
While I was a teacher in VUSD, I often found post card like "junk mail" from Teacher's Retirement Services in my teacher's mail box and saw that every teacher at the school had them as well--clearly a violation of the use of school mailboxes for VUSD purposes only and not for commercial use.
When I called to complain about the illegitimate use of our mail boxes and their confusing name that sounded like an official State Teacher Retirement System (STRS), i was hung up on. The post cards continued to arrive in our school mail boxes once or twice a month until I retired--years later.
The first time I got their 'post card" in my box, I thought it looked official enough that it was from the State Teacher Retirement Services. I found out later that Teacher Retirement Services is not affiliated with STRS. I recommend that anyone contacted by this organization hang up and refuse to do business with them until this group identifies who they are and where they got our phone numbers from.
I googled Teacher Retirement System and the only response I got was a place in Scottsdale, Arizona
http://www.educatingeducators.com/index.cfm
If any one has additional information on Teacher Retirement Services, I would appreciate hearing from you.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Phony Teachers Group opposes 1A-1F
Editor Note written days after this was originally posted: I have now seen the commercial in question three times. The two organizations are real. One is the second largest teachers union in California--the American Federation of Teachers, the other is an association representing the faculty at California State Universities. In this case the ads are not some phony front group as I had earlier guessed. Read more about the two teachers group that oppose 1A and 1B on my blog at: http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/ click on: Some legitimate teacher groups oppose Prop 1A
The rest of this blog post is apparently wrong. There seems to be no phony teacher's group created just to oppose the passage of 1A and 1B. I will highlight the original post in red. I leave it up because our ANTI friends have often used the tactic of a phony group made up to oppose something they do no like. Move Foward America to try to mock and dilute the power of MoveOn.org., The Center for Consumer Freedom, a group funded by restaurants and food companies to oppose common sense health regulations, Competitive Enterprise Institute to promote oil and coal company pollution agendas and on and on. We should always be suspecious of organizations even with nice sounding names as too often now a days, they have been create to advance goals that harm average Americans and benefit a wealthy few.
My three apparently incorrect paragraphs are highlighted in red below, The references to the articles following are correct and the rest of the blog entry are correct as well.
Two close relatives have told me that they have seen ads on TV by some organization calling itself the American Faculty of Teachers. I googled the group and could not find it. The ads say that teachers oppose 1A through 1F. Yeah, right. We teachers really want the state to go from 15 billion in debt to twenty three billion if the propositions do not pass.
This commercial is of course made by a state wide group of ANTI-public education folks with funding from wealthy extremists who view FACT based public education as a danger to their prejudges and factually challenged worldview.
The ads are phony. Do not be fooled. Instead be outraged.
Call CTA San Marcos office and offer to help make phone calls to support 1A - 1F. The phone number of CTA San Marcos office is 760-744-4108
Time is running out. There will be massive education cuts (even more than we will have to have anyway) if 1A through 1F do not pass. Tens of thousands of teachers will laid off at minimum. Probably the school year will be cut by a week or two with salaries taken down as a percentage of those days divided by 180 school days times our teacher salaries. The consequences of failure of 1A through 1F will be the most catastrophic to schools since Prop 13 passed forty years ago.
Of course our ANTI friends say dire predictions are all phony, but in this case the dire warnings are real and imminent. The scale of the massive debt is so great that even if prison guard, state government worker and CHP person is laid off, the savings for the state are barely half of what will be needed to balance the budget (according to the LA Times). See:
Twenty three billion is truly a massive colossal number that will hurt us all in the state far more than a small tax increase would.
Read more at the following URLs:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cap13-2009apr13,0,3757188.column?page=2
From the Los Angeles Times
CAPITOL JOURNAL
Sharing the state's fiscal pain
Polls show voter skepticism about the measures.
But if they're rejected, the electorate had better be prepared for sharper cuts in other social services, as well as schools. There's already a projected $8-billion deficit for the next fiscal year. If Props. 1D and 1E fail, the hole will get nearly $1 billion deeper.
Most likely to be rejected is Prop. 1C, which would allow the state to borrow $5 billion against future lottery winnings. If the three props go down, the hole grows to $14 billion.
Another tax hike seems improbable.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-california-budget-crisis8-2009may08,0,7342537.story
From the Los Angeles Times
California could be broke by July, state official warns
Despite the budget fix enacted in February, the state is on track to come up $23 billion short of what it needs to get through the year, the Legislature's chief budget analyst says.
By Evan Halper and Eric Bailey
10:26 PM PDT, May 7, 2009
The rest of this blog post is apparently wrong. There seems to be no phony teacher's group created just to oppose the passage of 1A and 1B. I will highlight the original post in red. I leave it up because our ANTI friends have often used the tactic of a phony group made up to oppose something they do no like. Move Foward America to try to mock and dilute the power of MoveOn.org., The Center for Consumer Freedom, a group funded by restaurants and food companies to oppose common sense health regulations, Competitive Enterprise Institute to promote oil and coal company pollution agendas and on and on. We should always be suspecious of organizations even with nice sounding names as too often now a days, they have been create to advance goals that harm average Americans and benefit a wealthy few.
My three apparently incorrect paragraphs are highlighted in red below, The references to the articles following are correct and the rest of the blog entry are correct as well.
Two close relatives have told me that they have seen ads on TV by some organization calling itself the American Faculty of Teachers. I googled the group and could not find it. The ads say that teachers oppose 1A through 1F. Yeah, right. We teachers really want the state to go from 15 billion in debt to twenty three billion if the propositions do not pass.
This commercial is of course made by a state wide group of ANTI-public education folks with funding from wealthy extremists who view FACT based public education as a danger to their prejudges and factually challenged worldview.
The ads are phony. Do not be fooled. Instead be outraged.
Call CTA San Marcos office and offer to help make phone calls to support 1A - 1F. The phone number of CTA San Marcos office is 760-744-4108
Time is running out. There will be massive education cuts (even more than we will have to have anyway) if 1A through 1F do not pass. Tens of thousands of teachers will laid off at minimum. Probably the school year will be cut by a week or two with salaries taken down as a percentage of those days divided by 180 school days times our teacher salaries. The consequences of failure of 1A through 1F will be the most catastrophic to schools since Prop 13 passed forty years ago.
Of course our ANTI friends say dire predictions are all phony, but in this case the dire warnings are real and imminent. The scale of the massive debt is so great that even if prison guard, state government worker and CHP person is laid off, the savings for the state are barely half of what will be needed to balance the budget (according to the LA Times). See:
Twenty three billion is truly a massive colossal number that will hurt us all in the state far more than a small tax increase would.
Read more at the following URLs:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cap13-2009apr13,0,3757188.column?page=2
From the Los Angeles Times
CAPITOL JOURNAL
Sharing the state's fiscal pain
Polls show voter skepticism about the measures.
But if they're rejected, the electorate had better be prepared for sharper cuts in other social services, as well as schools. There's already a projected $8-billion deficit for the next fiscal year. If Props. 1D and 1E fail, the hole will get nearly $1 billion deeper.
Most likely to be rejected is Prop. 1C, which would allow the state to borrow $5 billion against future lottery winnings. If the three props go down, the hole grows to $14 billion.
Another tax hike seems improbable.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-california-budget-crisis8-2009may08,0,7342537.story
From the Los Angeles Times
California could be broke by July, state official warns
Despite the budget fix enacted in February, the state is on track to come up $23 billion short of what it needs to get through the year, the Legislature's chief budget analyst says.
By Evan Halper and Eric Bailey
10:26 PM PDT, May 7, 2009
Teacher Tenure--a problem?
Teacher tenure has become a hot button issue in our local newspaper blogs and in the Los Angeles Times which has been running a series of hit pieces targeting public education and school teachers.
Of course all California classroom teachers understand that there is NO TEACHER TENURE IN CALIFORNIA. See the California Education Code on line at:
You will find no mention of tenure. K-12 teachers in California can become permanent with due process rights but no K-12 teacher has tenure. Permanent teachers only have the right to a hearing before they are fired (non re elected) and to have evidence presented at that hearing against them. Probationary teachers have NO RIGHTS. They can be fired for no reason other than a principal's whim.
Before collective bargaining no teachers had safe jobs. No teacher had any right to a hearing or to hear evidence of why they were being fired. There were no standards of misconduct that would result in firing. At that time wearing the wrong clothing could be a firing offense for a teacher.
Both my in-laws were California public school teachers as was my father. All three had tales of horror from the time before collective bargaining and required procedures with evidence needed for firing a teacher.
When my father in law was a very young teacher, in his first or second year; he taught at a small high school--under one thousand students. At that high school he met and grew to know an older English teacher who he had a lot of respect for. She had been at the school for over twenty years and her students and former students loved her.
In my father in laws final year at the high school, the principal at the school decided to let that English teacher go at the end of the year because the principal's nephew had just graduated from teaching college and needed a job. His nephew wanted to be an English teacher (credentials then were general secondary and a teacher could teach any class they felt comfortable in).
The principal made no secret of why he let her go nor did he need to. At the time teacher's had no rights to a fair hearing or an agreed upon set of violation that a teacher could be fired for. My father in law decided, he did not want to stay at a school run by such a man and he left for a nearby district. Easier for him to do then the older English teacher, as he was young and had no family or home in the town.
The principal suffered no consequences from the firing of the English teacher other than having a young music teacher (my father in law) leave. Those kind of arbitrary and unfair hiring and firing practices were the rule not the exception before due process and collective bargaining.
At that time it was common for women teachers to be paid less than men teachers who were teaching the same subjects. The reason given was that men had to support families and for women salaries were for pocket change or frivolous unneeded spending.
It was also common for principal's to decide the salary of every teacher at the school and use criteria like this teacher had three children that one was single so the one with children was paid more.
Husbands and wives could not be hired to teach in the same school district because that was double dipping.
Teachers were only hire if they agreed to live and shop in the small towns where the school was located, so that the town's money stayed in the town.
At my father first job, hewas required to come to the school at the whim of the school board to set up chairs and tables for meetings of various community groups on the weekends or after school, whenever any community group wanted to use the school. He was expected to stay for the entire meeting and take down and put away the tables and chairs afterwards. All for no extra pay beyond his teacher's salary.
He vividly remembers a Saturday evening when a prominent local men's club decided they wanted a dinner at the school. My father had to go there before eating at home to set up, stay for the dinner and speeches and then take down the tables and chairs (from approximately 4 PM until 9PM). He was hungry the whole time he was there. He remembers looking longlily at the food, telling the guy in charge that he had not eaten and was hungry. But he was given no food and no chance to go get food anywhere else. All as part of his duties as teacher in that community and all for his standard teacher pay and no more. The idea in those days was the community paid a teacher's salary, therefore, his time belonged to the community whether that time was during the school day or not.
Want a more recent example? The son of some good (thirty plus) year friends of ours obtained a job as a probationary teacher at a middle school three years ago. The principal asked him to also coach several sports. His first year he agreed to every request. He felt too intimidated to say no as a new hire.
In his second year in January, his principal came to him and asked him to be the coach for the THIRD time in THAT year. He declined saying he just did not think he could coach again and do the kind of job he wanted to do as a teacher.
He was let go at the end of the year (non-re-elected). He can not prove that it was his refusal to coach the third sport in one year because under current California Educational Code no reason for non re-election need be given to probationary teachers. However, he felt the principal's positive attitude and comments toward him ended as soon as he refused to coach that third sport. This year he is a substitute teacher. He and his wife had planned last year that when he was re-rehired as permanent, they would try for their first child. He wasn't re-hired so there is no child on the way and our friends grandparenting days have been delayed. So many consequences for putting teaching first over coaching a third sport in one year.
There is now a major movement among our statewide ANTI friends here in California to allow school districts to fire experienced and better paid older teachers before younger teachers when budgets are reduced by this recession. There will likely be massive reductions in staff in virtually every district in the state if 1A through 1F fail. Read the one sided hatchet job by the LA Times here: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers3-2009may03,0,679507.story
Here is an article send to me by a supporter of PRO-public education. (I will not publish her name unless she gives me permission). The article is in an American Federation of Teachers publication.
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/spring2009/notebook.htm
American Educator - Spring 2009 - Notebook
Dispelling Myths about Teacher "Tenure"
Education Historian Diane Ravitch on Teachers' Unions
Since February 2007, two leading figures in education, Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch, have been debating public education-its strengths, weaknesses, improvement strategies, and more-in a blog called Bridging Differences. (A complete archive is available by clicking here) The following is excerpted with permission from Diane Ravitch's post on February 3, 2009.
RECENTLY, AN OLD FRIEND who is a businessman and philanthropist sent me a copy of a speech that he gave at Channel 13's Celebration of Teaching and Learning. For many years, he and his family have very generously supported a school for gifted children in one of New York City's poorest neighborhoods. The main conclusion of his speech was that the obstacle to educating all children well is the union, because the principal cannot hire and fire and assign teachers as he or she wants. He asked me what I thought of his ideas.
I responded that I was puzzled. The unions don't seem to cause low performance in the wealthy suburban districts that surround our city. They don't seem to be a problem for the nations that regularly register high scores on international tests. If getting rid of the unions were the solution to the problem of low performance, then why, I asked him, do the southern states-where unions are weak or nonexistent-continue to perform worse than states with strong unions? And how can we explain the strong union presence in Massachusetts, which is the nation's highest performing state on the National Assessment of Educational Progress? I suggested that low performance must be caused by something else other than teachers' unions. I have not yet received a reply, so I suppose he is thinking about it.
It actually doesn't seem to be all that hard to get rid of incompetent teachers. It appears that 40 percent of all those who enter teaching are gone within five years, according to research that I have seen. In every district, to my knowledge, teachers do not gain due process rights for three years (in some places, it takes five). During those three to five years, their supervisors have plenty of time and opportunity to evaluate them and tell them to leave teaching.
Then, when they have passed the three- or five-year mark, they have due process rights. They cannot be terminated without cause and due process. Although that is usually referred to as tenure, it really is not tenure. In higher education, tenure is an iron-clad guarantee of lifetime employment except for very egregious causes. Teachers do not have that. They have the right to due process. Many administrators would like to fire teachers without due process. I can't blame teachers for wanting protection from arbitrary administrators, especially now, when there are quite a few high-profile superintendents who like to grab headlines by threatening to fire teachers.
The right to form and join a union is one of the rights enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 23). I made several trips to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union before the end of the Cold War and met many teachers who were eager to belong to a union that would protect their interests. The state did not want unions or tolerated only faux-unions.
I read recently that membership in unions is now under 10 percent of the private-sector workforce. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich wrote in the Los Angeles Times not long ago that the unions helped our nation build a solid middle class. Now, in these difficult times, we may again see a turn to unionism, and for all the predictable reasons, having to do with protection from arbitrary and capricious management to economic security to the demand to have a voice in decisions about the workplace.
Here is another attack on experienced tenured teachers in today's LATimes:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers13-2009may13,0,3359575.story
From the Los Angeles Times
School board members acknowledge swifter firings are needed
Four L.A. Unified board members say state laws need to be changed to get rid of underperforming teachers. Support for such efforts has increased in the wake of a Times investigation.
By Jason Song
May 13, 2009
A majority of Los Angeles school board members said Tuesday that they believe state laws governing teacher discipline need to be revised to allow more swift and effective removal of substandard teachers and other employees, although they acknowledged that changes appear unlikely this year.
In a recent series of articles detailing the lengthy and arduous process of dismissing tenured teachers and other educators in California, The Times found that firing a permanent teacher can often take years of paperwork and hearings. Such instructors can appeal their dismissals to specially convened state boards, which have overturned firings more than a third of the time.
Of course all California classroom teachers understand that there is NO TEACHER TENURE IN CALIFORNIA. See the California Education Code on line at:
You will find no mention of tenure. K-12 teachers in California can become permanent with due process rights but no K-12 teacher has tenure. Permanent teachers only have the right to a hearing before they are fired (non re elected) and to have evidence presented at that hearing against them. Probationary teachers have NO RIGHTS. They can be fired for no reason other than a principal's whim.
Before collective bargaining no teachers had safe jobs. No teacher had any right to a hearing or to hear evidence of why they were being fired. There were no standards of misconduct that would result in firing. At that time wearing the wrong clothing could be a firing offense for a teacher.
Both my in-laws were California public school teachers as was my father. All three had tales of horror from the time before collective bargaining and required procedures with evidence needed for firing a teacher.
When my father in law was a very young teacher, in his first or second year; he taught at a small high school--under one thousand students. At that high school he met and grew to know an older English teacher who he had a lot of respect for. She had been at the school for over twenty years and her students and former students loved her.
In my father in laws final year at the high school, the principal at the school decided to let that English teacher go at the end of the year because the principal's nephew had just graduated from teaching college and needed a job. His nephew wanted to be an English teacher (credentials then were general secondary and a teacher could teach any class they felt comfortable in).
The principal made no secret of why he let her go nor did he need to. At the time teacher's had no rights to a fair hearing or an agreed upon set of violation that a teacher could be fired for. My father in law decided, he did not want to stay at a school run by such a man and he left for a nearby district. Easier for him to do then the older English teacher, as he was young and had no family or home in the town.
The principal suffered no consequences from the firing of the English teacher other than having a young music teacher (my father in law) leave. Those kind of arbitrary and unfair hiring and firing practices were the rule not the exception before due process and collective bargaining.
At that time it was common for women teachers to be paid less than men teachers who were teaching the same subjects. The reason given was that men had to support families and for women salaries were for pocket change or frivolous unneeded spending.
It was also common for principal's to decide the salary of every teacher at the school and use criteria like this teacher had three children that one was single so the one with children was paid more.
Husbands and wives could not be hired to teach in the same school district because that was double dipping.
Teachers were only hire if they agreed to live and shop in the small towns where the school was located, so that the town's money stayed in the town.
At my father first job, hewas required to come to the school at the whim of the school board to set up chairs and tables for meetings of various community groups on the weekends or after school, whenever any community group wanted to use the school. He was expected to stay for the entire meeting and take down and put away the tables and chairs afterwards. All for no extra pay beyond his teacher's salary.
He vividly remembers a Saturday evening when a prominent local men's club decided they wanted a dinner at the school. My father had to go there before eating at home to set up, stay for the dinner and speeches and then take down the tables and chairs (from approximately 4 PM until 9PM). He was hungry the whole time he was there. He remembers looking longlily at the food, telling the guy in charge that he had not eaten and was hungry. But he was given no food and no chance to go get food anywhere else. All as part of his duties as teacher in that community and all for his standard teacher pay and no more. The idea in those days was the community paid a teacher's salary, therefore, his time belonged to the community whether that time was during the school day or not.
Want a more recent example? The son of some good (thirty plus) year friends of ours obtained a job as a probationary teacher at a middle school three years ago. The principal asked him to also coach several sports. His first year he agreed to every request. He felt too intimidated to say no as a new hire.
In his second year in January, his principal came to him and asked him to be the coach for the THIRD time in THAT year. He declined saying he just did not think he could coach again and do the kind of job he wanted to do as a teacher.
He was let go at the end of the year (non-re-elected). He can not prove that it was his refusal to coach the third sport in one year because under current California Educational Code no reason for non re-election need be given to probationary teachers. However, he felt the principal's positive attitude and comments toward him ended as soon as he refused to coach that third sport. This year he is a substitute teacher. He and his wife had planned last year that when he was re-rehired as permanent, they would try for their first child. He wasn't re-hired so there is no child on the way and our friends grandparenting days have been delayed. So many consequences for putting teaching first over coaching a third sport in one year.
There is now a major movement among our statewide ANTI friends here in California to allow school districts to fire experienced and better paid older teachers before younger teachers when budgets are reduced by this recession. There will likely be massive reductions in staff in virtually every district in the state if 1A through 1F fail. Read the one sided hatchet job by the LA Times here: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers3-2009may03,0,679507.story
Here is an article send to me by a supporter of PRO-public education. (I will not publish her name unless she gives me permission). The article is in an American Federation of Teachers publication.
http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/spring2009/notebook.htm
American Educator - Spring 2009 - Notebook
Dispelling Myths about Teacher "Tenure"
Education Historian Diane Ravitch on Teachers' Unions
Since February 2007, two leading figures in education, Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch, have been debating public education-its strengths, weaknesses, improvement strategies, and more-in a blog called Bridging Differences. (A complete archive is available by clicking here) The following is excerpted with permission from Diane Ravitch's post on February 3, 2009.
RECENTLY, AN OLD FRIEND who is a businessman and philanthropist sent me a copy of a speech that he gave at Channel 13's Celebration of Teaching and Learning. For many years, he and his family have very generously supported a school for gifted children in one of New York City's poorest neighborhoods. The main conclusion of his speech was that the obstacle to educating all children well is the union, because the principal cannot hire and fire and assign teachers as he or she wants. He asked me what I thought of his ideas.
I responded that I was puzzled. The unions don't seem to cause low performance in the wealthy suburban districts that surround our city. They don't seem to be a problem for the nations that regularly register high scores on international tests. If getting rid of the unions were the solution to the problem of low performance, then why, I asked him, do the southern states-where unions are weak or nonexistent-continue to perform worse than states with strong unions? And how can we explain the strong union presence in Massachusetts, which is the nation's highest performing state on the National Assessment of Educational Progress? I suggested that low performance must be caused by something else other than teachers' unions. I have not yet received a reply, so I suppose he is thinking about it.
It actually doesn't seem to be all that hard to get rid of incompetent teachers. It appears that 40 percent of all those who enter teaching are gone within five years, according to research that I have seen. In every district, to my knowledge, teachers do not gain due process rights for three years (in some places, it takes five). During those three to five years, their supervisors have plenty of time and opportunity to evaluate them and tell them to leave teaching.
Then, when they have passed the three- or five-year mark, they have due process rights. They cannot be terminated without cause and due process. Although that is usually referred to as tenure, it really is not tenure. In higher education, tenure is an iron-clad guarantee of lifetime employment except for very egregious causes. Teachers do not have that. They have the right to due process. Many administrators would like to fire teachers without due process. I can't blame teachers for wanting protection from arbitrary administrators, especially now, when there are quite a few high-profile superintendents who like to grab headlines by threatening to fire teachers.
The right to form and join a union is one of the rights enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 23). I made several trips to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union before the end of the Cold War and met many teachers who were eager to belong to a union that would protect their interests. The state did not want unions or tolerated only faux-unions.
I read recently that membership in unions is now under 10 percent of the private-sector workforce. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich wrote in the Los Angeles Times not long ago that the unions helped our nation build a solid middle class. Now, in these difficult times, we may again see a turn to unionism, and for all the predictable reasons, having to do with protection from arbitrary and capricious management to economic security to the demand to have a voice in decisions about the workplace.
Here is another attack on experienced tenured teachers in today's LATimes:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-teachers13-2009may13,0,3359575.story
From the Los Angeles Times
School board members acknowledge swifter firings are needed
Four L.A. Unified board members say state laws need to be changed to get rid of underperforming teachers. Support for such efforts has increased in the wake of a Times investigation.
By Jason Song
May 13, 2009
A majority of Los Angeles school board members said Tuesday that they believe state laws governing teacher discipline need to be revised to allow more swift and effective removal of substandard teachers and other employees, although they acknowledged that changes appear unlikely this year.
In a recent series of articles detailing the lengthy and arduous process of dismissing tenured teachers and other educators in California, The Times found that firing a permanent teacher can often take years of paperwork and hearings. Such instructors can appeal their dismissals to specially convened state boards, which have overturned firings more than a third of the time.
Letha McWey, a VUSD Hero! Compare her life to an ANTI
I talked to someone a few days ago who knew Letha and was told that Letha was helping out at the high school with an anti-drunk driving campaign for our VUSD students.
I was reminded of all the wonderful volunteer work she has done for our district over the last twenty or twenty five years. I believe she has been PTA president at three different schools. She has organized countless fund raisers and other events to improve our schools. She helped in each of the bond campaigns. She helped to recall an extremist board that felt that did not want FACT based science, history or sex education for our children and whose actions lead VUSD to become infamous with headlines on the front page of the New York Times, LA Times, SF Chronicle and others around the country.
She also was willing to run for school board as a Pro-public education candidate and as we all know in VUSD that means suffering a lot of slings and arrows of outrageous charges and lies by our ANTI friends. They smeared up one way and down the other. Finally in a terrible tragedy for our district she lost her 2002 bid for re-elction and Jim Gibson retained his seat.
Had it been the other way around, VUSD would have had the needed FOUR votes to acquire Jay Kawano's land for our high school. The dual magnet high school would have been built at least four years ago. Such a shame for our district and our students who were forced into four more years of overcrowded high schools. I heard recently that Jay Kawano was kicking himself for not selling the land outright back in 2002 without an eminent domain proceeding as the one million he would have gotten from the district in 2002 was more than the land is worth today.
The tragedy of not obtaining the graded level Kawano property in 2002 has been one all the way around--for our students, for the bond money, even apparently for Kawano. Having Gibson instead of McWey on our board is a tragedy VUSD will live with for years. Imagine if we had the 17 million dollars in the value of the land and the twenty million dollars in cost rides and construction delays at Melrose site! We could completely finish and landscape Rancho Minerva as well as Maryland and other new school sites with money to spare. Instead the money is gone.
I consider Letha and the many other wonderful folks in our district who worked for years against incredible odds and with withering disappointments. * The people on the PRO-public education side work so hard to try to improve our community, our schools and our children's education.
Compare and contrast people like Letha to the name calling, truth challenged, anti-school bonds, anti-public education, anti-improvement folks who challenge us in VUSD at every turn. Gibson Guffanti, Anderson, Brunet, Piro, et. al. when was the last time you heard of any of them volunteering at one of our VUSD schools? Where were they during the three school bonds that failed before Prop O passed? Certainly I never saw or heard of them helping Prop O to pass.Where were they when VUSD had a chance to buy the one million dollar Jay Kawano high school site on Strawberry Hill? Why do they complain that VUSD was forced into the secondary non-level and far more expensive eighteen million dollar Melrose site? What do they do constructively with their time? Anything? Ever?
*Besides her school board seat lost in 2002, there was the 99 million dollar Prop LL school bond failure by a few hundred absentee votes. It garnered more than the required two thirds vote in EVERY precinct in VUSD making it appear to have won causing the defeat to be even more bitter. Within a year of losing that bond issue, TWO THOUSAND students left our four highest performing schools. A lot of really good folks gave up on VUSD and moved elsewhere when that bond failed. It was the second blow following the horrible national headlines generated by our ANTI controlled board from 1992-1994.
I was reminded of all the wonderful volunteer work she has done for our district over the last twenty or twenty five years. I believe she has been PTA president at three different schools. She has organized countless fund raisers and other events to improve our schools. She helped in each of the bond campaigns. She helped to recall an extremist board that felt that did not want FACT based science, history or sex education for our children and whose actions lead VUSD to become infamous with headlines on the front page of the New York Times, LA Times, SF Chronicle and others around the country.
She also was willing to run for school board as a Pro-public education candidate and as we all know in VUSD that means suffering a lot of slings and arrows of outrageous charges and lies by our ANTI friends. They smeared up one way and down the other. Finally in a terrible tragedy for our district she lost her 2002 bid for re-elction and Jim Gibson retained his seat.
Had it been the other way around, VUSD would have had the needed FOUR votes to acquire Jay Kawano's land for our high school. The dual magnet high school would have been built at least four years ago. Such a shame for our district and our students who were forced into four more years of overcrowded high schools. I heard recently that Jay Kawano was kicking himself for not selling the land outright back in 2002 without an eminent domain proceeding as the one million he would have gotten from the district in 2002 was more than the land is worth today.
The tragedy of not obtaining the graded level Kawano property in 2002 has been one all the way around--for our students, for the bond money, even apparently for Kawano. Having Gibson instead of McWey on our board is a tragedy VUSD will live with for years. Imagine if we had the 17 million dollars in the value of the land and the twenty million dollars in cost rides and construction delays at Melrose site! We could completely finish and landscape Rancho Minerva as well as Maryland and other new school sites with money to spare. Instead the money is gone.
I consider Letha and the many other wonderful folks in our district who worked for years against incredible odds and with withering disappointments. * The people on the PRO-public education side work so hard to try to improve our community, our schools and our children's education.
Compare and contrast people like Letha to the name calling, truth challenged, anti-school bonds, anti-public education, anti-improvement folks who challenge us in VUSD at every turn. Gibson Guffanti, Anderson, Brunet, Piro, et. al. when was the last time you heard of any of them volunteering at one of our VUSD schools? Where were they during the three school bonds that failed before Prop O passed? Certainly I never saw or heard of them helping Prop O to pass.Where were they when VUSD had a chance to buy the one million dollar Jay Kawano high school site on Strawberry Hill? Why do they complain that VUSD was forced into the secondary non-level and far more expensive eighteen million dollar Melrose site? What do they do constructively with their time? Anything? Ever?
*Besides her school board seat lost in 2002, there was the 99 million dollar Prop LL school bond failure by a few hundred absentee votes. It garnered more than the required two thirds vote in EVERY precinct in VUSD making it appear to have won causing the defeat to be even more bitter. Within a year of losing that bond issue, TWO THOUSAND students left our four highest performing schools. A lot of really good folks gave up on VUSD and moved elsewhere when that bond failed. It was the second blow following the horrible national headlines generated by our ANTI controlled board from 1992-1994.
ANTI site, "VUSD watch" is back
Our ANTI friends have their own blog spot now. So far it has only copies of articles from the North County Times without commentarty except making selected sentences in the article into bold face.
Notice they are making money on their site. They allow ads to be posted. As I understand each time we blog on their site, the site maker gets some money. I do not think it is much but I will limit my checking on their site to only once in a while.
This site does not contain ads. It never has. Should it become necessary to allow ads on this site, ALL proceeds will go to the election of PRO-public education candidates.
Notice they are making money on their site. They allow ads to be posted. As I understand each time we blog on their site, the site maker gets some money. I do not think it is much but I will limit my checking on their site to only once in a while.
This site does not contain ads. It never has. Should it become necessary to allow ads on this site, ALL proceeds will go to the election of PRO-public education candidates.
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