Five false facts about the 1994 school board recall

LIE (1) The New York Times devoted a front page story to the 1992-94 VUSD school board because VUSD teachers were chanting and disrupting board meetings. There are tapes of those board meeting available at VUSD district office. There was no chanting. I attended those meetings. I will give $100 to the favorite charity of anyone who can find one instance of chanting teachers disrupting any board meeting during the 1992-1994 time. The real reasons that the national media covered that VUSD Board majority had to do with inserting creationism into the public school curriculum, weakening the teaching of real science, and denying life saving information to our students in our VUSD sex ed classes. Read more below*

LIE (2) The VTA organized the 1992-1994 recall. The truth is that the VTA did not join the recall of the 92-94 board until months after a broad based community group launched it. There was a lot of discussion and disagreement at the Executive Board and Rep Assembly meetings about the VTA becoming politically involved. The disagreements had to do with was it right for the VTA to have a role in local elections for the first time ever and what happens if we do get involved and the recall fails. The first time the idea of joining the recall was brought to the Executive Board in March of 2002, it was voted down. Executive Board and Rep Assembly minutes are on file at the VTA office which prove we joined late and only after much disagreement and discussion.

LIE (3) The VTA led the 1992-94 recall to get more salary. No, the VTA joining the recall was about sex ed. The Executive Board only recommended that the VTA join the existing recall when the 92-94 extremist board voted to remove life saving information from our VUSD sex education courses. Executive Board and Rep Assembly Minutes on file at the VTA office prove the issue was sex ed, not salary. Salary was never mentioned in the discussion either at Ex.Bd. or Rep Assembly. (Note: as a former science teacher I am disappointed to mention that the insertion of creation into our VUSD curriculum by that board received no support as a reason to join the existing recall movement.)

LIE (4) The recall was organized the Novemeber 1992 election night that the 92-94 majority won. Therefore the recall was unfair since the new board majority had done nothing to deserve a recall. The truth is that no one I know heard any talk of organizing a recall that night. If a few sour grape folks did say the word recall, so what? After every election there are a few angry people. This anger goes nowhere unless an opening is provided. The 92-94 board provided lots of openings and lots of national headlines that embarrassed VUSD and the City of Vista. Those actions and those headlines are why the recall was successful. It could not have been successful no matter when the subject was first broached without those extremist's actions by the 1992-94 board. By the way no ANTI or any ANTI media mouth piece has ever provided any evidence of the recall being organized that night other than it happened "somewhere" because we "just know" it did.

LIE (5) The 1992-94 recall was part of a "part of a national campaign against Christian conservatives on school boards". The real truth about VUSD school board members is that the vast majority of them in the eighty year history of VUSD were Christians. I know, I know there were a couple of Jews elected over the years. One has to wonder if electing Sandi Carter and Barbara Donovan was the conspiracy against Christians that our ANTI friends and their media lap dogs like Jim Trageser were talking about?

Read these charges as written by the number one media mouth piece for the movement, Jim Trageser here:

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/08/10/opinion/trageser/z354f6144e8d0282d8825749f0060debd.txt

Read my comments at the time here:
http://vistaschools.blogspot.com/2008/09/jim-trageser-editorial-nctimes-reply.html

*Read articles in New York Times archives below:

* http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&n=10&srcht=s&query=creationism+Vista&srchst=nyt&submit.x=13&submit.y=7&submit=sub&hdlquery=&bylquery=&daterange=full&mon1=01&day1=01&year1=1981&mon2=01&day2=26&year2=2010

New York Times headlines about VUSD from 1992 to 1994 includes the following:
1.A School Board in California Makes Room for Creationism
2.Political Proving Ground For the Christian Right
3.A City Pulls Its School Board Back to the Center
4.TELEVISION REVIEW; Exploring the Crusade Of the Anti-Darwinians

Read more about that 92-94 VUSD board's actions at the Los Angeles Times Archives:
http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/vista-ca-schools

A few headlines about the 1992- 94 VUSD school board majority found at the Los Angeles Times site above:
1. New Vision for Vista Schools: After Recall of Religious Conservatives on School Board, Moderates Are Casting Off Many of Its Policies.
2. Bibles and the Board--a Skirmish Brews : Education: A new religious fundamentalist majority of school trustees in the San Diego County community of Vista raises fears about its agenda.
3. Christian Bloc Ousted From Board : Education: Two members of Vista school panel are recalled after seeking to impose a religiously oriented approach to teaching students about sex.
4. School Board's Creationist Trend Causes Stir in Vista : Education: Members to vote on forbidding 'dogmatic' teaching of science. Test of Christian right's strength seen.
5. Vista Schools OK Sex Education Program With Religious Theme
6. Vista Board OKs Teaching of Creationism

"Teachers ran VUSD into the ground financially!" ANTIs scream.

The same teachers who have not had a contract in three years are controlling the VUSD school district and the VUSD school board. The same teachers who are among the lowest paid in San Diego County, actually control the entire VUSD. Wow. Those teachers must be awfully dumb to pay themselves so poorly when they have the financial reins of the school district in their hands.

As far as financially ruining the district, the greatest loss of taxpayer money in history was the 50 million dollars lost because Jim Gibson and Stephen Guffanti stubbornly refused to allow the district to build Mission Vista High School in 2002 at the cheap level Kawano site.

At that time the projected cost of Mission Vista High School was between 50 and 54 million. Construction could have started in 2002 with completion projected for 2005.

Today the cost of Mission Vista High School is 100 million. The start of construction was delayed until spring 2007 with completion projected for the fall of 2010. Why did this happen? Jim Gibson and Dr. Stephen Guffanti refused to be the state required fourth vote to acquire the cheap level Kawano property. This property was identified as the last best large parcel left in the district. No other cheap level 50+ acre parcel was available. But Jim Gibson and Dr. Stephen Guffanti refused to allow the district access to this property. In addition they did all they could to delay Mission Vista High School from being built at the second best site, the Melrose parcel owned by David Arnold's company.

Because of Gibson and Guffanti obstructionism the start of construction at MVHS was delayed from summer of 2002 to the spring of 2007--almost five years of delay. The cost increased almost fifty million dollars. But it was not Gibson and Guffanti who caused financial difficulties in VUSD. No, according to our ANTI friends, it was the Vista Teacher's Association.

Read the comments of one ANTI public education blogger, Blob who posted this silly accusation about the good teachers of Vista ruining the district financially at 4:12pm here:

http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/vista/article_aa64ab84-4b91-5e85-bc19-2affb12386ec.html?mode=comments

This is a ridiculous charge on its face. Current financial problems in all California school districts have to do with reduction in funding from the State of California which on average provides 60% of funds for California school districts.

In some districts even a greater share of district funding comes from the state. In the rural school district where I was the superintendent, the state of California share of our funds was over 90%.

In what universe did the local Vista teachers gain control of the actions of the state legislature that passed budgets with deep deep cuts to statewide K-12 funding. These deep State of California cuts have driven the discussion regarding the need for reductions in employee salary, layoffs, and furlough day at VUSD and at many other statewide and local school districts. VUSD is one of those districts.

Articles in the the North County Times newspaper indicate large prospective fiscal cuts and furlough days in the Escondido Union School District, the Poway Unified School District, in Temecula school district, in Lake Elsinore, in the Oceanside School District among other local districts. Wow! those Vista Teachers really get around. They not only control decisions of Republican state legislators in Sacramento that cut K-12 education funding, they control a whole lot of the other local school districts around them as well.

How does the VTA select school board candidates to recommend?

The selection process is open to all school board candidates. The process and questions are exactly the same for all candidates. The scoring is exactly the same. Once the VTA interview team has interviewed all candidates willing to be interviewed, the team meets and compares scores. The candidates with the highest scores are recommended to the Representative Assembly (RA). Candidates who refused the interview are never recommended as their score on the interview questions becomes essentially zero.

The interview team then attends the next RA meeting and explains its recommendation and the scores to the RA members. The RA then and only then may or may not chose to recommend to the VUSD community the same candidates. The RA may pick different candidates. The RA is the governing board of the VTA. The RA is made up of elected Representatives from each site in VUSD.

The entire school board recommendation process is done out in the open. There are no closed door meetings or decisions. All members who wish to are encouraged to participate by running for Representative from their sites. Failing to get elected members are encouraged to share their views with their Reps. Members who are not elected to the RA may also attend the RA meetings and listen to and participate in all discussions; however, they are excluded from voting.

The Vista Teacher's Association has officially recommended school board candidates in each of the school board elections since 1994. The candidates that the VTA recommends have been candidates that support public education and who have enough community support to have a chance to win.

"VUSD is run by the union!" ANTIs charge

No just the opposite. This district is run by a four out of five person majority on our board that is pro fact based public education. The four majority board members support fact based science, history, and sex ed classes. Our opponents oppose all three.

Jim Gibson is the only board member who supports the ANTI public education position. His children were educated at private schools. He became locally infamous for his attempt to gain political notoriety with a Carrie Prejean Day. His opposition to building a full sized third high school in our district cost our VUSD taxpayers as much as 50 million dollars and five years of delay.

Since the 1994 election a majority of PRO fact based school board members have been elected every two years. The last time the ANTI fact based group in VUSD controlled our board was from 1992-1994 when they made national headlines for their anti fact based actions in the curricular areas of science, history and sex education. (See below)*

If the teacher's union runs the VUSD board as our ANTI friends charge, then our ANTI friends need to be able to explain the following inconvenient facts.
(1)The VUSD teachers have lost ground in both salary ranking in the county and in benefit coverage since 1994. While VUSD once paid the third highest salary and the best benefits of any unified school district in the county, VUSD current rank out of San Diego County districts is 32nd out of 37.
(2) Only five San Diego County school districts have a lower average teacher salary than VUSD.
(3)For the last three years the VUSD teachers have had no contract and no salary increase while those in surrounding districts got both.
(4) There is not one example of a school board action since 1994 that shows any teacher union bias.

*Read more about that 92-94 VUSD board's actions at the Los Angeles Times Archives:
http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/vista-ca-schools

A few headlines about the 1992- 94 VUSD school board majority found at the Los Angeles Times site above:
1. New Vision for Vista Schools: After Recall of Religious Conservatives on School Board, Moderates Are Casting Off Many of Its Policies.
2. Bibles and the Board--a Skirmish Brews : Education: A new religious fundamentalist majority of school trustees in the San Diego County community of Vista raises fears about its agenda.
3. Christian Bloc Ousted From Board : Education: Two members of Vista school panel are recalled after seeking to impose a religiously oriented approach to teaching students about sex.
4. School Board's Creationist Trend Causes Stir in Vista : Education: Members to vote on forbidding 'dogmatic' teaching of science. Test of Christian right's strength seen.
5. Vista Schools OK Sex Education Program With Religious Theme
6. Vista Board OKs Teaching of Creationism

or read about that 1992-94 board actions at the New York Times archives:
http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&n=10&srcht=s&query=creationism+Vista&srchst=nyt&submit.x=13&submit.y=7&submit=sub&hdlquery=&bylquery=&daterange=full&mon1=01&day1=01&year1=1981&mon2=01&day2=26&year2=2010

New York Times headlines about VUSD from 1992 to 1994 includes the following:
1.A School Board in California Makes Room for Creationism
2.Political Proving Ground For the Christian Right
3.A City Pulls Its School Board Back to the Center
4.TELEVISION REVIEW; Exploring the Crusade Of the Anti-Darwinians

Welcome to Vista Schools Recall 2010

This blog will be used to update and inform pro public education readers about the ongoing Vista Unified School District recall movement against Elizabeth Jaka, Angela Chunka and Steve Lily.

In our fine Vista Unified School District we have a small group of foks who oppose public education, fact based science, history and sex education curriculum and who are trying to recall three of our four most pro public education school board members.

The opposition who is running the recall cannot gain support by accurately reporting facts about our board members, our fine school district or our excellent teachers. In the past they have resorted to a campaign of lies and distortions in order to defeat three needed school bonds and electing a board majority in 1992 that brought nation wide ridicule to VUSD.

I will list the most outrageous made up facts of our ANTI public education opposition and correct it with verifiable information with web addresses from newspapers and official local and state websites.