Teachers Voice Opposition to Camarillo Unification

While some residents are excited about the idea of bringing all local campuses into a unified school district, teachers here are giving the topic a cool reception.

In an informal survey of about 70 of Adolfo Camarillo High School’s 100 teachers and 10 other employees, 96% said they opposed the unification effort being explored by Pleasant Valley School District, an elementary school system.

Citing concerns ranging from weakened course offerings to lower salaries and less generous benefits, 86% of teachers said they would leave their award-winning high school in order to stay with their present employer--the Oxnard Union High School District--if Camarillo High were brought under Pleasant Valley’s control.

Pleasant Valley school officials have been studying the merits of unification since the summer, when parents presented a petition asking for a formal review. Proponents believe that unification would guarantee more local control of tax dollars and a better curriculum.

“There was a growing concern that the community didn’t know where we, as a staff, stood on unification,” said Camarillo High English teacher and parent Athol W. Wong, who circulated the survey.

“I hope the members of the Pleasant Valley school board will carefully consider the positive and negative impacts of unification,” she added. “My hope is they will not move forward at this time. I think Adolfo Camarillo High School will suffer. The students will suffer. And I think the taxpayers will suffer.”

Wong circulated the survey informally among Camarillo teachers earlier this month without the involvement of the teachers’ union. She took it to Pleasant Valley trustee Val Rains, who has urged careful consideration of unification.

Proponents of unification dismissed the results because Wong included a letter with the survey saying, in part, that Pleasant Valley’s salary and benefits are less generous than Oxnard Union’s. While that information is true now, teacher contracts would automatically be renegotiated if unification were to occur.

“Personally, I discount the study as being a little bit less than meaningless,” said Pleasant Valley trustee Ron Speakman, a unification advocate. “I don’t know if [the teachers] don’t like unification or if they don’t like what they know of unification. I think they don’t like what they have been fed.”

Camarillo teachers were not “a group of unintelligent people easily swayed by propaganda,” Wong said.

Although conducted in a rush, the survey also pointed teachers to the Pleasant Valley web site, which contains the full text of a detailed unification study.

Anonymous teacher comments revealed the depth of their knowledge on the issue.

One teacher fretted that Oxnard Union’s minority population would continue to soar if Camarillo students left the district, writing “OUHSD represents the world; Camarillo a fraction thereof. NOT GOOD!”

Another wrote: “If ACHS becomes part of [Pleasant Valley], I see a mass exodus of veteran teachers that are responsible for this high school being a Distinguished and Blue Ribbon School. I doubt PVSD, with its comparatively low pay scale, will be able to replace those teachers with quality ones.”

Several teachers also referred to Pleasant Valley’s salaries being lower than the Oxnard district, which is the only school district in Ventura County to offer lifetime medical benefits to retirees.

“I hope I am never forced to leave ACHS due to this proposal. I love my school and my students,” one teacher wrote. “But if I have to, to protect my retirement, I will.”

Even if the survey results are accurate, they are not the whole picture, Speakman said.

“It sounds like they are concerned about their pocketbooks--as well they should be--but my primary concern involves the education of students,” he said. “I’m more concerned with what the parents and the children want to do, not the teachers. If the parents come out and say, ‘We don’t want to unify,’ we won’t. So far, that’s not what I’m hearing.”

Jan Henry, president of the Oxnard teachers’ union, said her colleagues’ concerns run deeper than their wallets. The Oxnard Federation of Teachers took a formal stand against unification at an executive board meeting Thursday.

Camarillo High Principal Terry Tackett, who steered the school through the process of winning a prestigious national Blue Ribbon award, also said Thursday that he opposes the move.

“Teachers have misgivings about an elementary school district running a high school,” Henry said. “The [unified] district would be less financially sound over the long term. . . . We’re on the cutting edge of instruction here [in Oxnard]. There is a long history of infrastructure that got us where we are.”

Oxnard Union Supt. William G. Studt said he is heartened to see that qualified teachers want to stay put.

“It didn’t come as any sort of surprise to me,” he said. “Over the course of the last few months, I’ve had a lot of teachers call me or come by to talk because they were concerned about the unification issue. I guess they wanted to come forward with their views on the matter.”

The survey results came out as Pleasant Valley trustees are considering creation of a task force to study unification.

At their meeting Thursday night, trustees decided to hold off on the task force idea for two weeks.

By late in the evening, they were still debating the superintendent’s recommendation to hire an attorney to protect the district’s interest in the unification process.

So far, the Pleasant Valley school board has not taken a stance on unification.

FYI

Those interested in viewing the Pleasant Valley unification study can click on the “What’s New” section of the district’s home page at www.pvsd.k12.ca.us