Letter: Dixieland parent angry at closure (Feb. 26)
I can understand budget cuts, I can understand the need to trim excess spending to make the bottom line number in the positive rather in the negative. I can understand that the state is still in a crisis and apparently there doesn’t seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel anytime soon. But here is what I don’t understand:
How can any of the board members or the superintendent find it acceptable behavior on their part to not notify any parents about the possibility of their children school closing?
Why did the board as well as the superintendent deem it right for children to be the vehicle of administrating the news to their parents. This is how I found out about the possible closure of Dixieland School (which now has been voted to be closed). It pains me to think that the board and the superintendent would find this way of notifying parents acceptable.
I ask the board members and the superintendent this question: How would you feel if it was your child coming home from school on Friday telling you that you have to go to a meeting at the high school cafeteria on Tuesday because they want to close my school?
I immediately called every news station as well as attempted to call my board of education trustee to ask these questions; the board member never called me back (I went to school with this person at Dixieland Elementary). I contacted the assistant to the superintendent and asked questions, her response was they posted it in the paper and on their Web site, and they don’t send out memos regarding board meetings. Yet they sent me three notifications on where I could go to get the H1N1 virus shot for my children.
My reply to her was, if it was your child, and their school, wouldn’t you want to be notified? I asked her where did the school district’s portion of the $23.3 billion from California Lottery go since 1989, her reply was for me to ask Sacramento. I said, so MUSD doesn’t get a portion of the money, and she replied, yes, we get a portion of it; where it goes I do not know.
I then asked her: How can the school board propose to close a two-year distinguished-award-winning school as well as a school that maintains high standardized test score? Her reply was that she wasn’t going to answer any more of my questions, that I could ask them at the board meeting.
So who loses here the most? The superintendent, the board members, the faculty, the bus drivers, the kids.
The superintendent doesn’t lose, he just received an annual increase in his salary as well as $900 a month for gas, as well as his wife’s health benefits along with his. The board members don’t lose — well, not yet. I am sure that when they chose to make this decision they realized that they just put their names on the chopping block for re-election.
Administrators in the district received a pay raise and yet they are going to close a school and cut programs. Here is an insight: If you want the community to back you and say there is nothing else they could have done, maybe, just maybe, giving yourself a raise isn’t appropriate in this crisis.
I heard on the news the district’s spokesperson saying that the superintendent’s pay raise wouldn’t be a drop in the bucket to the budget cuts they have to make to close the deficit; well, I say to him, its a start. If the superintendent as well as the board had any integrity to their job and the future of children, instead of pay increases they should have voted on a pay decrease.
Our superintendent brings in over $175,000 a year. I am sure that he could have spared a few grand from his salary.
When unemployment is high, MUSD is going to increase the numbers by giving pink slips to teachers, and supportive staff. Their livelihoods lost. But remember, the superintendent still has a job. Who loses the most? I have the answer in black and white, Mr. Superintendent and board members … the kids lose big time
These kids are now going to leave a school that they love to attend and are motivated to succeed; they are going to leave teachers, custodians, bus drivers, librarians, secretaries that they love because of this. They are going to be bused to a different school and have to start all over again. They are going to have to deal with increased class sizes because of this, which I am sure will lower their achievement status. They lose.
After analyzing all of the data, I have came up with this conclusion. If the superintendent and the board members want to change the lives of so many people and yet their lives haven’t been changed from all of this, then why can’t they suffer as well.
I urge all Maderans to begin the effort of a recall of our superintendent as well as every board member. If your child or school hasn’t been touched by these latest budget cuts, do not believe that you are not going to be affected.
Remember these are the people that would rather give themselves raises versus putting that money into our kids.
This time it was Dixieland and other programs; what or which school will be next on the cutting block is left to be seen. Lets get a new breed of board members and superintendent who will be devoted to our children and take a pay cut versus a pay raise.
Gina Alcott,
Madera
