Orange Board Under Spotlight

For 12 years, I have been following the travails of Orange Unified School District, including mismanagement, time-consuming litigation against and by district employees and other problems.

The frightening downward spiral of Orange Unified is being enthusiastically engineered by its board, who are individually and collectively working to undermine our schools. Board members caustically disregard the concerns and suggestions of the parents who crowd the board meetings to speak, as well as the needs of those with no voice--the students. Instead, personal, political and religious agendas are replacing programs made to enhance and expand young horizons.

Parents wanting religious and academic training can choose private religious schools or religious activities away from school. We are allowed that freedom and choice. As parents, we have been vocal about the education that we need in the schools--it falls on deaf ears. We are vocal about new and innovative programs needed to further our children’s education; we are handed a political agenda. We are vocal about the lowest teacher salaries paid in Orange County and the subsequent exodus of teachers to other districts; we are chastised. At no time does Orange Unified School District put children first.

My two children attend Chapman Hills Elementary School and I have been an active and vocal member of PTA for six years. It is reprehensible to limit the scope of education, making our children less prepared for a competitive world. As their voice, we demand the best in education, not personal agendas and vendettas.

SUSAN KNIGHT

Orange

* The Times’ reporting of late looks more like a witch hunt than an in-depth knowledge of the issues at stake in the Orange Unified School District. Not once in any of The Times’ articles have I heard the terms Goals 2000 and Healthy Start associated with the Heart to Heart program at Lampson Elementary. The basic hue and cry of The Times’ staff has been “free” money for the poor while denying the strings attached to these federal and state grants.

This move by the board of trustees is not, as some have argued, just another example of politically motivated conservatives misusing their influence to deny the needs of the underprivileged and cut off services. To make these arguments is to perpetuate ignorance in this debate. This controversy is not about need. No one would deny that there are significant needs among students in the average American classroom.

This controversy involves a much more significant debate. At its core is the turmoil that results each time a conservative local school board confronts the reality of top-down reform of public education as prescribed by federal legislation such as Goals 2000 and implemented through state grants such as Healthy Start via our local educators.

Many local school districts, like OUSD, are just now coming face to face with reforms designed to dramatically alter the role of the public schools. No longer does federal law recognize the basic function of the public school as instruction in academics. Federal law outlines a much different reality. The only way for The Times to shed some much-needed light on the local debate is to recognize that the Heart to Heart program is a federally mandated Goals 2000 program that usurps the local school board’s and parents’ authority and control.

VIVIAN FLOTH

Westminster

* The Times carried an editorial Aug. 29 headlined, “Ideology Shouldn’t Run Schools.” On that note, I agree. However, where has The Times [been] over the past 20 years as liberal leadership in Sacramento and Washington in concert with the California Teachers Assn. (CTA), a labor union, led the decline of education in California? Where was the questioning press as dropout rates increased, school violence increased, lower test scores continued and home schooling and private school enrollment increased? Was more money always the correct answer?

During this 20 years, curriculum and school policies have changed to deny America’s proud history, deny discipline to teachers and transfer school policy from the classroom to Sacramento and Washington, D.C.

During this growth period of labor union activity in the CTA, the decline of education began. Denied also were God and moral standards that were a basic foundation of education from the Founding Fathers of the United States.

Recently, in the Orange Unified School District (OUSD), a coalition of parents and citizens took stock of this continued decline in education and decided to do something about it. Using volunteers and concerned citizens, trustees not elected by the self-serving educational unions were elected. Now, with a 4-3 majority of citizens not suitable to the liberal press and the education unions, this aroused group of citizens is being attacked as “a politically active religious conservative group.”

It’s a fact a major decline in public education has occurred. It is also obvious to any clear thinker that the past group(s) of OUSD trustees elected by the educational unions have reigned over this period of declining educational output. Now it is the time for change. Only time will tell how successful this new majority will be. Hopefully, The Times will report the facts and editorialize on the changes that occur. Certainly no one can desire credit for presiding over the general decline in public education in California.

TOM STEELE

Orange

* I’m a grandmother whose four daughters attended Villa Park High School in Orange. Three of my grandchildren currently attend district elementary schools. And I’m getting sick and tired of the school board trying to demonize our teachers in the media. As any parent who has ever bothered to attend an open house or back-to-school night can attest, our teachers are excellent, decent, hard-working educational professionals and they do a good job of teaching our kids. That’s why all of my girls went to college and why one of them last year earned a scholarship to Stanford.

I’ll be curious to see if Max Reissmueller’s home-taught child can compete half as well in the real world as our proud graduates of Orange schools!

BETTY MURPHY

Orange