"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.