Fallbrook Union High School District, Chula Vista Elementary School District and National School District were rated the worst in bond transparency

School Construction Bonds Need More Oversight, Taxpayers Association Says
Debbie L. Sklar
July 28, 2017

Fewer independent oversight committees at school districts in the county are maintaining high transparency standards in their construction bond programs than last year, the San Diego Taxpayers Education Foundation reported Friday...
The Fallbrook Union High School District, Chula Vista Elementary School District and National School District were rated the worst. The National School District was criticized in the report for having no information online about its 2016 bond measure... Read more HERE

Sound familiar? Completely false allegations made in an effort to banish woman from California school

At an elementary school in Irvine, California, two attorneys (parents of a boy at the school) tried to put an innocent woman in jail, and ended up in jail themselves.  See first story below.

Sadly, not all false allegations are so clearly exposed.

School districts are hotbeds of abuse and hostility among adults.

Chula Vista Elementary School District wanted to get rid of me when I refused to be silent about rampant wrongdoing.  "You must forget the past," said Assistant Superintendent Rick Werlin.

Werlin demanded again and again that I return to work without any investigation having been done regarding my allegations.   He spoke on behalf of Superintendent Libia Gil and a school board that consisted of Cheryl Cox, Pam Smith, Bertha Lopez--yes, the Bertha Lopez who pled guilty to corruption charges, Patrick Judd--yes, the one found liable in court for shocking sexual harassment of an employee, and Larry Cunningham.  In a bid to protect abusive teachers, CTA leaders, including Jim Groth, refused to require that the district obey the law and the contract.  

Many school district employees function as "honor brigades" to silence discussion of problems.  See second story below.

How Two California Parents Ended Up in Jail Over After-School Spat

By MICHAEL MENDELSOHN, HARRY PHILLIPS and SUNNY ANTRIM 

ABC News

Jan 15, 2015

...A Mysterious Call to Police Over an ‘Erratic Driver’

A year went by as Peters and the Easters battled in court. Then, on Feb. 16, 2011, the Irvine Police Department received a call around 1:15 p.m. on a school day, reporting an erratic driver at the Plaza Vista School. The person on the phone said his name was “Vijay Chandrasekhar,” and he was concerned about the welfare of his child, who he said attended the school.

A man tells the dispatcher, “I’m concerned one of the parent volunteers there may be under the influence or using drugs... I just had to go over to the school and I saw a car driving very erratically.”

The caller gave a description of the car, a white PT Cruiser, and said the volunteer’s first name was “Kelli.” Officer Charles Shaver with the Irvine PD was dispatched to the school and found the car in the parking lot.

“The caller that indicated the erratic driving also said there was a potential that the driver put drugs or pills behind her seat,” Shaver said, “So, I went to the driver’s side and looked in the window... There was a large bag of marijuana that was protruding out of the seat pocket, behind the driver’s seat.”

‘Please Put the Drugs Away ... They’re Not Mine’

Officer Shaver went into the school to find the PT Cruiser’s owner, and discovered it belonged to Kelli Peters.

Peters said when the officer first came in, she panicked, thinking something had happened to her husband. But it then became clear the officer was inquiring about her.

“And he said, ‘Somebody said, after they saw you driving erratically, that you put drugs in the backseat of your car,’ and I was like, ‘there’s no way… they’re lying to you,'" Peters said.

Shaver said Peters began crying hysterically as the police searched her car and pulled out a large bag of marijuana, a bag of Percocet and a bag of Vicodin. She begged police to believe that the drugs didn’t belong to her.

"They put it up on top of the police car for everybody to see, which was really hard, because I kept thinking ‘my daughter’s getting out any minute.’ ... And I’m just thinking the whole world is looking at this right now … no one’s ever going to get this image out of their head,” Peters said. “I said, ‘Please put the drugs away. You’re going to find out they’re not mine and you’re going ruin my life anyway.’”

Peters was further questioned and given a sobriety test, which she passed. When Officer Shaver asked if there was anyone she knew who would go after her, Peters told him, “Jill Easter.”

Police searched Peters’ home and conducted DNA tests on her and her family. The results showed zero evidence of the Peters family’s DNA on the drugs found in Kelli Peters’ car.

She was not charged with drug possession and police opened an investigation into the drug planting. They traced the call made to the Irvine Police Department to a hotel business center in Newport Beach, California, about 11 miles from Irvine. They watched the hotel surveillance cameras from the date and time the call came in and saw Kent Easter walking into the hotel. Kent worked for a law firm located next door to the hotel where the call was placed. 

Police also discovered that drugs found in Peters’ car showed the Easters’ DNA on them. Cell phone records, prosecutors said, also showed that the Easters’ phones pinged a tower near Peters’ home the night before the drugs were planted...


Story #2:

Meet the honor brigade, an organized campaign to silence debate on Islam
Asra Q. Nomani
Washington Post
Jan. 16, 2015

“You have shamed the community,” a fellow Muslim in Morgantown, W.Va., said to me as we sat in a Panera Bread in 2004. “Stop writing.”
Then 38, I had just written an essay for The Washington Post’s Outlook section arguing that women should be allowed to pray in the main halls of mosques, rather than in segregated spaces, as most mosques in America are arranged. An American Muslim born in India, I grew up in a tolerant but conservative family. In my hometown mosque, I had disobeyed the rules and prayed in the men’s area, about 20 feet behind the men gathered for Ramadan prayers.
Later, an all-male tribunal tried to ban me. An elder suggested having men surround me at the mosque so that I would be “scared off.” Now the man across the table was telling me to shut up.

“I won’t stop writing,” I said. It was the first time a fellow Muslim had pressed me to refrain from criticizing the way our faith was practiced. But in the past decade, such attempts at censorship have become more common. This is largely because of the rising power and influence of the “ghairat brigade,” an honor corps that tries to silence debate on extremist ideology in order to protect the image of Islam. It meets even sound critiques with hideous, disproportionate responses.
The campaign began, at least in its modern form, 10 years ago in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, when the Organization of Islamic Cooperation — a mini-United Nations comprising the world’s 56 countries with large Muslim populations, plus the Palestinian Authority — tasked then-Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu with combating Islamophobia and projecting the “true values of Islam.” During the past decade, a loose honor brigade has sprung up, in part funded and supported by the OIC through annual conferences, reports and communiques. It’s made up of politicians, diplomats, writers, academics, bloggers and activists.

In 2007, as part of this playbook, the OIC launched the Islamophobia Observatory, a watchdog group based in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia...

Asra Q. Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is the author of “Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam.”

Chula Vista Elementary School District put Richard Werlin in charge of investigation complaints about his own behavior

See CVESD accuses Maura Larkins of refusing to come to work.  Maura Larkins refused to come to work after severe harassment by rogue teachers at Castle Park Elementary, saying she would not return until an investigation had been done.  CVESD filed the charge of "insubordination" weeks AFTER Maura Larkins filed a lawsuit against the district; thus, the effort to fire her was a violation of Labor Code 1105.2.

The district put Richard Werlin in charge of investigating complaints about his own actions. 

Not surprisingly, no investigation was ever done--by Werlin or anyone else--regarding events at Castle Park Elementary.

Werlin demanded that Larkins report to his office without any guarantee of protection from Werlin's unpredictable behavior.

Results for Nov. 4, 2014 election CVESD and Sweetwater Union High School District

SWEETWATER UNION High School Trustee Area No. 1
Vote for: 1
ARTURO SOLIS 3060 45.42% [winner]
 BURT GROSSMAN 2628 39.01%
JEROME O. TORRES 1049 15.57%

SWEETWATER UNION High School Trustee Area No. 2
Vote for: 1
 KEVIN J. PIKE 3587 27.32% [winner]
ADRIAN ARANCIBIA 3121 23.77%
KEVIN O'NEILL 2257 17.19%
DANA TOOGOOD 2095 15.95%
BERTHA J. LOPEZ 2071 15.77%

SWEETWATER UNION High School Trustee Area No. 3
Vote for: 1
FRANK A. TARANTINO 3124 35.05% [winner]
RICHARD F. ARROYO 2017 22.63%
JIM CARTMILL 21.34%
CHRIS SHILLING 20.98%

SWEETWATER UNION High School Trustee Area No. 4
Vote for: 1
 NICHOLAS SEGURA 36.50% [winner]
DERRICK W. ROACH 26.69%
FELIPE NUNO 19.81%
TINO MARTINEZ 10.96%
VALLEY P. COLEMAN 6.04%

 SWEETWATER UNION High School Trustee Area No. 5
Vote for: 1
 PAULA HALL 40.88%  [winner]
WILLIAM MCLEROY 25.41%
MARCELINO MARTINEZ 19.71%
THOMAS 'TOM' SCHAAF 14.00%

CHULA VISTA ELEMENTARY SEAT NO. 1		Precincts: 171 Counted: 171 Percentage: 100.0%
Vote for: 1
FRANCISCO TAMAYO	10922	36.74%
BARBARA MAJCHRZAK	8304	27.94%
GEORGE CAMERON	6170	20.76%
HECTOR R. GASTELUM	4330	14.57%

CHULA VISTA ELEMENTARY SEAT NO. 3		Precincts: 171 Counted: 171 Percentage: 100.0%
Vote for: 1
LESLIE RAY BUNKER	17992	61.20%
RUDY RAMIREZ	11407	38.80%

CHULA VISTA ELEMENTARY SEAT NO. 5		Precincts: 171 Counted: 171 Percentage: 100.0%
Vote for: 1
EDUARDO REYES	17687	60.29%
JOSHUA R. SMITH	7511	25.60%
WILLARD HOWARD	4137	14.10%

from San Diego Registrar of Voters

A fair bargain for Chula Vista teachers as well as the kids

I'd like to see Chula Vista teachers get all the money they're asking for. But I'd also like to see them agree to an effective teacher evaluation system.

Why won't they do that?

The current evaluation system is a joke. Most principals rarely, if ever, observe classrooms. Just about everybody gets a good evaluation. If someone gets something worse or better than that, it's usually due to politics, not to actual performance.

Unfortunately, the teachers union is hostile to using student test scores to evaluate teachers.

They want pay without any guarantee of performance.

Why won't the teachers union offer an evaluation process of their own if they think that standardized tests are unreliable indicators of teacher performance? If the district had a good system of unbiased observations, by people from outside the school, and, preferably, from outside the district, then teachers would have something to balance any unfair ratings that result from student test scores.

Here's why you don't want principals to evaluate their own staff:

"The local administrators know who they are evaluating and are often influenced by personal bias," Danielson said. "What it also means is that they might have set the standards too low."...

In Scarsdale, regarded as one of the best school systems in the country, no teacher has been rated "highly effective" in classroom observations. It is the only district in the Lower Hudson Valley with that strict an evaluation. In Pleasantville, 99 percent of the teachers are rated as "highly effective" in the same category... --Teacher evaluations: Subjective data skew state results Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy
September 13, 2014

Why don't teachers want effective evaluations? I think it's because if everyone knew which teachers were really performing, it might undermine the authority of powerful teachers who actually aren't that good at their jobs.

Chula Vista Educators should agree to effective teacher evaluations at the same time that they demand more pay.



See all posts on evaluating teachers. Update Sept. 16, 2014:

THE BIG FUSS ABOUT CURRICULUM FOR COMMON CORE

You might have thought that the teachers union would champion the right of teachers to be flexible in designing lessons. You'd be wrong, at least regarding CVESD since Manuel Yvellez and his pals took over Chula Vista Educators.

Lots of CVESD teachers have been demanding that they be provided specific lessons to teach because they don't know how to teach the concepts that Common Core requires them to teach. They don't want to make their own lesson plans?

I know for a fact that there are lots of manipulatives available in CVESD classrooms, unless teachers have stuffed them into storage closets. I was always amazed that my fellow teachers at CVESD tended to eschew the use of expensive math and science materials provided for hands-on learning. These materials are exactly what teachers need to use to teach Common Core.

I found this interesting passage in a story by Mario Koran in today's Voice of San Diego:

To a certain degree, teachers at traditional public schools can tailor their lessons to their class or school. But compared with charters, theirs is more of a top-down model.

Tom Donahue, executive director of Old Town Academy, told me last year that he doesn’t have any problem recruiting talented teachers.

“Good teachers want to write their own scripts,” he said.

Are some Chula Vista teachers sacrificing the well-being of students to their own political goals--and careers?

KPBS has published a story (first story below) about a highly political issue--standardized testing--without mentioning the fact that the featured teacher, Carla Kriss, has been on the Chula Vista Educators' bargaining team since 2008.   I'm guessing that Ms. Kriss failed to mention this fact to the reporter. 

It sounds to me like Ms. Kriss and some of her fellow teachers are intentionally causing students like Abby Eten to become stressed during standardized tests. Why wouldn't the teacher simply smile and tell the child that there's no need for the child to worry, but just to do the best he (or she) can do?

One reason might be to get parents upset so they'll generate a stories favorable to the teachers' goals.

The teachers union is currently threatening to strike in Chula Vista Elementary School District.  One of the big issues for CVE is its opposition to Common Core and standardized testing.

Union politics is a family affair for Carla Kriss.  Her  husband Tim is a former vice-president of the Chula Vista Educators.

Shame on those who make children suffer needlessly to advance the cause of teachers who want to avoid responsibility for student test scores.  Abby Eten reports that she feels like a rubber band that is about to snap.  If the teacher won't ease up on Abby, then Abby's mother should tell her not to worry.

My students always enjoyed standardized tests; kids love a challenge when fear is not involved.  It's abusive to make children suffer so CVE can gain  political power.

Interestingly, the San Diego Union-Tribune has written a story that seems to say that teachers should have no right at all to demand changes from their employers (see second story below).  It's pretty hard to find unbiased reporting in San Diego!


FIRST STORY:

Chula Vista School District Failed To Accommodate Students With Learning Disabilities
by Matthew Bowler
KPBS
September 2, 2014

...Last spring, Chula Vista Elementary School District gave two big tests to its students, and they might have violated state mandates to make testing modifications for students with disabilities.

Testing dominates the school year now. Students like fourth grader Abby Eten feel the stress. Abby said she feels like a rubber band.

“If I keep on stretching it and stretching it, it's going to break,” she said.

Abby has more challenges than other fourth graders: She’s dyslexic. Abby’s mother, Justina Eten, said she’s always surprised by how smart her daughter is...

COMMENTS

skoolteacher

So Ms. Larkins and folks like her are so intent on looking down on and demonizing school teachers (why??) that she is willing to automatically blame one, some, any (??) for the byproducts of the testing cartels (fraud, illegal maneuvering, secrecy, FAILURE) and their lackeys in Congress. What a jerk!


mauralarkins

Dear "skoolteacher":

What a knee-jerk reacation! Certain teachers are fighting standardized tests because they don't want to be evaluated based on their students' progress.

So why don't they come up with an alternative evaluation system for teachers?

Because it would interfere with school politics and the current evaluation system, which is a joke. Most principals don't even both to do classroom observations.

Weak teachers need to be identified and helped. Change is needed, but some teachers are terrified of change.

I am blaming those teachers who intentionally make testing stressful for children in order to achieve political goals.

I don't doubt that there is fraud, illegal maneuvering and secrecy among testing companies, since those things exist in just about every human institution, including school districts and teacher unions.

Of course, I also blame teacher unions for refusing to accept any and all attempts to evaluate teachers effectively.

I don't think weak teachers should be fired, but they do need to be helped. It would be a lot cheaper and more effective if highly-competent teachers were given responsibility for that. The current custom is to pay obscenely-expensive outside vendors to come in and rule the roost for a few years with their supposedly magnificent education programs until everyone realizes they aren't making real improvements.  Here's a recent example of that phenomenon: http://www.latimes.com/local/e...

Politics plays too big a role in selecting teacher leaders. It would be nice if we had a good evaluation system so that teachers who really know what they're doing in the classroom  could be given leadership roles more often. SECOND STORY:



Here's the San Diego Union-Tribune story:

Teachers using students as pawns in Chula Vista

By U-T San Diego Editorial Board

Sept. 3, 2014

Some teachers in the Chula Vista Elementary School District evidently believe that the best way to get a better contract offer from district management is to punish their young students. The tactic should be unacceptable to parents of all 29,000 students at the 45 schools in the district.

Teachers at an unknown number of Chula Vista schools last month began sending letters to parents saying the teachers would not offer any extracurricular or after-school activities until they receive “a new and fair contract.” Rather, the teachers say they will only do what they are specifically contracted to do — seven hours per day — and nothing more...


COMMENTS

Maura Larkins · Top Commenter · UCLA

How else are teachers going to pressure the district? The slowdown is actually a way to avoid a strike, to avoid hurting kids.

Learning about economics and politics firsthand might benefit kids more than a field trip. Most of these kids will be struggling for their own economic survival someday.

That said, I do have a problem with teachers who intentionally inflict pain and stress on their students just because the teachers don't like the new standardized tests.

Some teachers make kids miserable so the parents will oppose standardized tests.

The motivation? These teachers don't want to be evaluated based on student test scores.

In fact, these teachers don't want to be effectively evaluated at all. Why? It would undermine school politics, the lifeblood of the teachers union.

The current system of principal evaluations is a joke. Most principals don't even bother to do classroom observations. The evaluations are usually political. I don't think weak teachers should be fired, but they should be helped.

The current fight in CVESD is just as much about teacher evaluations as it is about money.

Why don’t Manuel Yvellez and his cronies come up with an effective teacher evaluation system, and then use that as a bargaining chip?

Manuel Yvellez

It is rather the District and their spokesperson the UT that is hiding behind children in this dispute. I don't see the Superintendent or his UT supporters volunteering their time to coach a team after school or run a dance class or one the many other after school programs. It is teachers that give of themselves selflessly in this way because of their love of children. Now, feeling unappreciated, they temporarily take away their free volunteer efforts, and they are set upon by the UT as if such voluntary efforts are expected as a mandatory requirement from teachers. And where is the UT Board with their professed great love of children? Why aren't they saying that they will step in with this voluntary effort for a few weeks, to do what teachers do for free year after year?

The suggestion that any teacher in our district is ... See More

Maura Larkins · Top Commenter · UCLA

Hey, CVESD, give the teachers more money--BUT DON'T BACK DOWN ON COMMON CORE.

Pay the teachers for effective performance, and then make sure they're delivering.

Neither the district nor the union seems to want reliable evaluations of teachers.

Neither side is asking for more classroom observations.

Both sides are way too fond of school politics.

Maura Larkins

The Union-Tribune has at times been quite rabid in its support of teachers.

The paper practically hemorrhaged ink for weeks in support of the "Castle Park Five". The school district took quite a beating from the UT in those stories.

Bizarrely, one of the Castle Park Five, teacher Peg Myers, went on to become CVE President before she clambered across the bargaining table in the middle of her term to became a district administrator. It's amazing how enemies can become such good friends. How did Human Resources director Sandra Villegas-Zuniga orchestrate such a reversal? Did Peg, who now calls herself Margaret, suddenly wake up one morning and decide to switch sides for no reason? Obviously, there's more to that story, but I doubt that any news outlet in San Diego will tell it.

I got some information from Anthony Millican about the current bargaining situation. Mr. Millican states:

One of the more misleading slides by CVE at its ongoing parent presentations at schools in our community states that teachers have not had a raise in seven years while the Superintendent’s salary has gone up 11%. Dr. Escobedo’s salary as Superintendent has gone up once, by 4%, since he began serving in the position.

The union is counting restored furlough days as a salary “increase” in alleging that the Superintendent’s salary has gone up 11%. He began in the position with 7 furlough days.

The overwhelming majority of Chula Vista teachers make more in 2014 than in 2007.

That’s because the District paid automatic “step and column” raises (including anniversary increments) annually that ranged from 0% to 4.79% annually; the District-wide average was 2% annually, even during the Great Recession.

Out of 1,225 FTE teachers, approximately 11 give or take can truly claim to have not received a raise in seven years because their years of service put them at the top of the pay schedule for the seven year period. (That’s about 1% who can make a claim of not having had a raise in seven years.)

The union wants an upset populace to influence bargaining about primary pay increases that teachers historically received through “Salary Schedule.” That raise is contractually negotiated, and has not been provided to teachers in nearly seven years. Parents and community members react with surprise when they learn teachers earn two kinds of pay increases. Some would probably be ok with that if the union simply told them the truth.

As it stands, the District has included a 6% salary schedule increase in its latest proposal, part of a wide-ranging package the union’s leadership rejected. The proposed 6% raise is on top of the 2% average automatic raises that went into effect this past July 1. CVE, however, says teachers are entitled to a 10% salary schedule increase, and that the 2% “step and column” automatic raises “don’t count.”

It turns out that the teacher salary of CVE President Manuel Yvellez has increased 17% since 2007, thanks to "step, column, anniversary increments."

 

Patrick O'Toole v. Steve Castaneda (Chula Vista City Councilman) trial

Flashback to 2008: Steve Castaneda (see all posts re Steve Castaneda) has been reelected as Chula Vista City Councilman, but Patrick O'Toole has disappeared from the Public Integrity Unit.



ELECTION UPDATE NOVEMBER 5, 2008 STEVE CASTANEDA
CITY OF CHULA VISTA CITY COUNCIL - SEAT NO. 4
Precincts Reporting: 100.0%
SCOTT VINSON - 46.88% (24876)
STEVE CASTANEDA - 53.12% (28183)


ORIGINAL POST

Patrick O'Toole seems to be disappearing from the San Diego District Attorney's website. He's not on this page, nor is he on this page.

I went down to the courthouse to see part of Mr. O'Toole's prosecution of Steve Castaneda today.

I can't believe Bonnie Dumanis is spending tax dollars on this bizarre prosecution while ignoring my complaint about obstruction of justice at Chula Vista Elementary School District involving current Chula Vista mayor Cheryl Cox and others. It sure seems like the D.A.'s "Public Integrity Unit" is overly fond of Cheryl Cox, manufacturing opportunities to charge Cox's opponents with perjury (by investigating them with the flimsiest of pretexts, such as taking two hours off work, or thinking about buying a condo), while ignoring evidence that already exists.

I did notice that O'Toole was sitting by himself. He seems to be the only person on the planet who wants to see this prosecution go forward. Well, I suppose Cheryl Cox is sitting with him in spirit, but it's still a pretty lonely position.

Susan Luzzaro refuses to apologize for lapses in journalistic ethics; reveals that her daughter is on the CVE bargaining team

San Diego Reader reporter Susan Luzzaro seems to
have turned her back on journalistic ethics

See all posts re Common Core in SDER blog.

When I called out San Diego Reader reporter Susan Luzzaro on April 15, 2014 for her biased reporting about Common Core testing in Chula Vista Elementary School District, I thought I knew exactly how much she had compromised her journalistic ethics. It turns out, I didn't know the half of it.

I was shocked to read the following in an April 19, 2014 article by Ms. Luzzaro:

"...Chula Vista Elementary’s public relations officer, Anthony Millican, followed up by intimating it was unethical for me, as an author, not to have disclosed in the April 10 testing article that my daughter is a member of the Chula Vista Educator’s bargaining team. Millican also stated in an April 18 email, “You should have got our side of the issue in the first place”...(emphasis added).

Say what??? Susan Luzzaro's daughter is a member of the CVE (Chula Vista Educators) bargaining team?!?

I had no idea! What is going on, Susan Luzzaro??? How could you have concealed that information from your readers when you were attacking CVESD?

(I checked the latest "bargaining update" on the CVESD website, and found that Vanessa Luzzaro-Braito, who seems to have suddenly changed her name to Vanessa Braito, is listed as a member of the CVE team. I'm going to make a wild guess that the reason for the name change is to conceal the fact that she is Susan Luzzaro's daughter. While I'm at it, I think I'll make another wild guess: I bet Vanessa Luzzaro-Braito does not like Common Core. Do I have any takers on that bet?)

NO APOLOGY

I notice that Susan Luzzaro expresses no remorse about her ethical lapse. Instead, she seems to be offended that Mr. Millican would "intimate" that her behavior was unethical. Ms. Luzzaro seems to believe that it's okay for her to behave as she does, but it's not okay for others to talk about it.

If she really believes that there's nothing wrong with her actions, then why is she upset that people are discussing them?

Ms. Luzzaro's attitude, and certainly the attitude of the San Diego Reader, seems to be expressed in the contemptuous headline of Susan's latest story: "Hey, Chula Vista Elementary School District, test this".

NO EFFORT TO CORRECT BIAS IN APRIL 10, 2014 ARTICLE

Ms. Luzzzaro has made no effort as of April 22, 2014 to balance the reporting in her April 10, 2014 story, "Standardized tests shunned by South Bay parents." After reading the story, one might be forgiven for believing that ALL parents at CVESD oppose the testing. Ms. Luzzaro does not appear to have made any effort to talk to parents who approve of Common Core and the associated testing.

WHY IS THE TEACHERS UNION ATTACKING COMMON CORE?

Susan Luzzaro is clearly trying to shift responsibility away from teachers who are having problems teaching basic concepts as required by Common Core. These teachers want to go back to methods that rely largely on rote memorization. See "Teachers who don't know how to teach are complaining about Common Core in Chula Vista Elementary School District."


Photo published by Reader on April 19, 2014.

Instead of retracting the false implication in her April 10, 2014
story that kids may be held back if they do poorly on a standardized
test, Ms. Luzzaro and the Reader reinforce the false impression with
a photo of a child being hoisted up by her mother, holding a sign that
says, “I am not a test score.” The photo dishonestly implies that the
district will change its treatment of the child based on a test score.
Shame on Susan Luzzaro and the Reader—and the parent who created that sign!

ANOTHER CASE OF COMPROMISED ETHICS AT THE READER?

All this is causing me to wonder if Dorian Hargrove's "mistake" in this story about Stutz Artiano Shinoff & Holtz v. Larkins was really a mistake. In his story about me, Mr. Hargrove said that I had written a statement about Stutz law firm that was, in fact, written by an anonymous commenter on my blog. I let Mr. Hargrove know about the error right away. When I asked him to correct it, he refused to do so, saying, "It happens."

At the San Diego Reader, such happenings are apparently not considered grounds for an apology or retraction.

NOTE #1:

I will be presenting my oral arguments in Stutz v. Larkins in the Court of Appeal on May 16, 2014 at 9 a.m.. I won in August 2011 in this separate appeal in this same case. This bizarre free speech case has dragged on for over six years. Click HERE to see all posts regarding this lawsuit.

NOTE #2:

I have severely criticized CVESD on numerous occasions, but I support Core and the associated testing because it is in the best interest of students.

Shame on those teachers who are intentionally making kids anxious about standardized tests: parents complain about Common Core at CVESD

I was intrigued by the difference between the San Diego Reader and the Chula Vista Star-News in reporting the implementation of Common Core standards in Chula Vista schools. Star-News Reporter Robert Moreno provided a much more balanced view of the issue than did the Reader's Susan Luzzaro.


Kristin Phatek
Has Ms. Phatek wondered whether there might be a better
solution to her children's problem than getting rid of Common Core?

See all posts re Common Core from CVESD Reporter blog.

UPDATE April 24, 2014:

Anthony Millican reports that 21 children out of 22,000 in grades 3-10 have opted out of field testing of the Smarter Balanced Assessment in Chula Vista Elementary School District. Surprised? Susan Luzzaro made it sound like there were droves of angry parents protesting the test, didn't she?

Mr. Millican provided the following information:

Can students opt out of the District’s Local Measure assessments?

Parents can request that a student opt out of state-mandated assessments, such as the STAR in the past and now CAASPP (which includes the Smarter Balanced Assessment). However, parents cannot opt out their child from school and District assessments. These assessments provide important information necessary to communicate to parents about student progress through report cards. Opting out of school and district assessments would be like refusing to take a spelling quiz or refusing to turn in homework. Evidence of student performance in these areas is necessary in any educational program.

The Chula Vista Elementary School District has administered Local Measure assessments since the year 2000. The Local Measure assessments differ from state assessments, but they are administered concurrently. Our teachers regularly assess for learning all the time through quizzes, benchmark assessments, and summative assessments to measure student progress. Parents expect that.

How many parents have opted out their student from the new online state tests?

Very few. Salt Creek Elementary has had the highest number of parent opt-out requests. There are 631 students in grades 3-6 at Salt Creek who are taking the Smarter Balanced Assessment and there have been 7 parent requests for opting out a total of 9 children from the field test of the Smarter Balanced assessment. This represents only .0014 percent of the student population. Furthermore, some of those parents have stated that their concern was only for the field test and that they were in support of the operational Smarter Balanced Assessment to begin next year. Districtwide, of 22,000 students in grades 3-10, parents of only 21 students have requested to opt out of the Smarter Balanced Assessment, or .00095 of the student population.

The reality is that the overwhelming majority of parents want to know how their students are doing academically. The transition of our Local Measure assessments from the 1997 California Content Standards to the new Common Core State Standards reflects our District's commitment to ensure every student meets or exceeds the goal of being college and career ready.

UPDATE April 15, 2014:

I just spoke to Anthony Millican at CVESD, and he tells me that it is not at all true that if a student "failed the test he wouldn’t get promoted to the next grade." I hope that Susan Luzzaro at the Reader will publish this fact, since her article offers no contradiction to this quote in its first paragraph.

Mr. Millican notes that many teachers are delighted with Common Core. I'll bet the students of those teachers are also delighted. Why didn't Ms. Luzzaro quote any of them?

ORIGINAL POST:

I'm sure that there are many classrooms in Chula Vista Elementary School District where confident, competent teachers--and their students--are completely relaxed about upcoming standardized tests. In fact, those kids probably think that taking tests is fun.

But what about the teachers who simply don't know how to teach well? They are having hissy fits, and pointing the finger at Common Core Standards. There is nothing at all wrong with Common Core Standards. It's just that many teachers don't grasp the concept of a basic concept. That's what Common Core is all about: basic concepts.

Historically, a large percentage of teachers have taught mostly by rote, without teaching kids how to think. Also, there are some pretty good teachers who simply don't like to go into depth when teaching a subject. They like to teach a concept and then move on. This method is NOT used in countries with highly successful education systems.

These two types of teachers are intentionally upsetting children so that parents will come in and complain about Common Core instead of complaining about the teacher.

Why isn't this parent asking why 70% of kids don't understand basic facts? Has she not been paying attention for the past decades as student performance has gone down? Does she know during those decades fewer and fewer teachers have come from top colleges? The average teacher these days is simply not up to the job. As teachers have become weaker, the job itself has become harder.

So why doesn't the district simply teach the teachers how to teach? Perhaps you think that the district is run by brilliant minds? Administrators tend to be people who were very immersed in teacher culture and school politics when they were teachers. They played the game. They followed the right people. Don't expect them to have a particularly good understanding of the educational process, and don't expect them to know how to teach teachers.

Has Ms. Phatek wondered whether there might be a better solution to her children's problem than getting rid of Common Core?

Perhaps she might consider this solution to the problem: Here's how every child can have an excellent teacher--without firing or laying-off any teachers!

San Diego County parents should have access, as do parents in Los Angeles, to information showing how much the students in each classroom are learning each year, as measured by year-by-year changes on standardized test scores. The Los Angeles Times published these "value-added" scores for each teacher. Why doesn't any San Diego news source publish our information?

Amazingly, it was revealed that students of the most admired and highly-regarded teachers frequently showed remarkably little improvement. You can always find teachers and parents who think they know who the best teachers are, but it turns out they're often completely wrong.

Of course, test scores are only a clue, not a final determination, as to whether a teacher is doing a good job. Proper evaluation would consist of regular observations, interviews and test scores of both students and teachers. In the current system, most principals have very little knowledge about what most of their teachers are doing in the classroom. Often, years go by without a principal spending more than a few moments in a teacher's classroom. And in my 27 years teaching in CVESD, not once did any principal ever sit down and talk to me about my thinking about how to educate children.

If teacher performance were evaluated effectively, there would be an added bonus: administrators could be chosen from among the best teachers.

But the district administration isn't the only problem. There's also the teachers union. The one thing you can count on the California Teachers Association to do is to protect incompetent teachers. The parent in the article below who claims that Common Core is "advancing an agenda that I believe is geared toward privatizing all education" is doing what the teachers union calls "staying on message". She certainly sounds like she was coached.

The test isn't creating a problem, it's exposing a problem that has existed for years.

Standardized tests shunned by South Bay parents
“My son had been experiencing headaches”
By Susan Luzzaro
San Diego Reader
April 10, 2014

One night last year, Gretel Rodriguez was playing the word game Hangman with her son who attends HedenKamp Elementary in the Chula Vista Elementary School District. He chose an unusual word. When Rodriguez asked him why, her son said he was learning it for the California State Test. Then he said he was nervous — worried that if he failed the test he wouldn’t get promoted to the next grade.

Rodriguez said in an April 7 interview, “My son had been experiencing headaches, then when he told me his worries, I made up my mind to opt him out of any standardized exams.”

[Maura Larkins' comment: Why didn't Rodriquez ask the school district if test results might be used to hold a child back? Did she ever consider helping her child to get the problem into perspective? Does she normally try to teach coping skills to her child? Does she teach her child to search out the facts before dissolving in fear? I suspect that the teacher might have been manipulating his or her students emotionally instead of dealing with his or her own fears about test results. Was the teacher really afraid of what might happen to himself (or herself)?

Also, I'm wondering why the reporter who wrote this piece, Susan Luzzaro, fails to tell us if this child's fear is based on reality. Why doesn't Ms. Luzzaro report on this important question? Luzzaro's entire article seems to be based on the belief that the district actually flunks kids who do poorly on the test.]

Rodriguez is one of many parents, locally and nationally, who are choosing to opt their children out of testing.

“By opting my son out of standardized tests I’ve also ensured he doesn’t have to take the SBAC [Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium] test this year as well,” Rodriguez continued.

In 2012, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium was one of two companies that split a $330 million Department of Education grant to develop a computer-based test aligned with Common Core Standards.

In 2014, students will be taking a Smarter Balanced field test, or a test to test the test — based on Common Core Standards. The test will be administered to California students between March and June.

Rodriguez has another son who is a special-education student in the Sweetwater Union High School District. At first he told his mother that he wanted to continue taking the standardized tests and Rodriguez agreed.

Recently he changed his mind and asked his mom to opt him out. Rodriguez said she was happy about his decision because the new Common Core test has no modifications for special-education students or English-language learners.

The Phataks have three children in public schools. Two of them go to Salt Creek Elementary in the Chula Vista Elementary School District; their older son attends Eastlake Middle School in the Sweetwater district.

When asked which tests she was going to opt her children out of, Kristin Phatak answered, “All of them.”

Phatak believes that “tests designed by publishing companies are not a good measure of my children’s progress. They also encourage teaching to the test.”

Regarding the Smarter Balance test aligned with Common Core, Phatak stated, “I firmly believe that test is being designed to fail the children, and in turn fail the teachers and the schools. It’s an attack on public education.”

When asked why she believes the test is designed to fail, Phatak resonded, “When you start looking at the money behind new Common Core Standards and the Smarter Balance testing, you begin to question both of them. Venture philanthropists, like the Gates Foundation, have poured millions into advancing an agenda that I believe is geared toward privatizing all education.

[Maura Larkins' comment: The Gates Foundation? Phatek sounds pretty paranoid to me. Why wouldn't Bill Gates simply be trying to do for education the same thing he does for health--giving away huge amounts of money in an effort to make life better for people around the globe? Or perhaps Phatek has simply been influenced by teachers who don't want to improve their performance.] "In states like Kentucky, where the Smarter Balanced Consortium test has already been used, the student failure rate was 70 percent. New York also had disastrous results with their Common Core exam. The push is to tie test scores to teacher evaluations. You can’t fail the teachers unless you fail the kids.”

Phatak encourages “parents who wish to be in tune with their childrens’ education to go to the Smarter Balance website and take the pilot test that corresponds to their child’s grade level.”

Phatak said she began talking to other moms about opting out last year. She is “shocked” because so many are coming up to her this year and telling her they are opting out.

Phatak is in contact with parents across the United States through her Facebook page, though she is not a member of a national opt-out organization.

“There are no consequences for refusing to take the tests,” Phatak said. “They [districts] cannot hold a child back.”

Opting out is not new to San Diego. In 2002, the Wall Street Journal carried a report on 212 Rancho Bernardo students who refused to take standardized tests. Rancho Bernardo parents expressed reasons similar to Chula Vista parents. They felt there was “no personal incentive for their children to labor over tests that aren’t included on school transcripts or are required for high school graduation.”

I was intrigued by the difference between the San Diego Reader (above story) and the Chula Vista Star-News (story below) in reporting this issue. Reporter Robert Moreno provided a much more balanced view of the issue than did Susan Luzzaro.

Common Core receives mixed reviews
Robert Moreno
Chula Vista Star-News
Sep 28 2013

California's newest testing method is getting high praise by education officials in the South Bay, but some parents in the area’s school districts are giving the new testing measure an F.

The Golden State signed on for the model on Aug. 2, 2010, with full implementation this school year. Forty-five states — including California — use the Common Core method of testing.

John Nelson III, E.d.D, assistant superintendent of the Chula Vista Elementary School District, said the new testing model places higher standards on students than the STAR testing did.

“We (the district) believe that these new Common Core standards reflect the academic need of all students to be successful,” he said. “We know that the old standards, we’ve learned a lot of good lessons from them; however, when it came to being college- and career-ready, the standards fell short.”

Nelson said under the STAR testing standards, students entering college were not prepared and as a result, dropout rates at the university continues to be high.

Common Core tests students from K-12 in math, English, science and social science. The tests and curriculum are based more on the use of critical thinking skills than memorization.

While the elementary school district approves the new testing measures, some parents are not getting with the Common Core program.

Kristin Phatak has a son in the Chula Vista Elementary School District and another in the Sweetwater Union High School District. She is opposed to the Common Core because she said it is “dumbing down” the education standards.

[Maura Larkins' comment: How does Kristin Phatek come up with this stuff? I'm guessing that she like the old rote-memory method of teaching that left students unprepared for college. Kids were left with very little understanding of basic concepts, and a whole lot of memorization that tended to be forgotten. I agree with John Nelson that the new concept-based instruction is better for kids.]

“California and Massachusetts were known in the nation as having some of the highest standards in the United States,” she said. “They did not use California or Massachusetts standards to rate these standards, they actually lowered the standards, and so by California signing on to these standards, we have in effect lowered our standards.”

Nelson said the Common Core is not dumbing down education standards, but rather deepening the understanding of learning. He said it is more critical thinking-based than the STAR testing.

Phatak claims that the Common Core puts local school districts in violation of the Williams Settlement Act.

The class action lawsuit was filed in 2000 and argued agencies failed to provide public school students with equal access to instructional materials, safe and decent school facilities and qualified teachers. As a result of this, for every student in a classroom, the school must make available one textbook for each student.

Phatak said because there are no textbooks available for the Common Core, teachers are struggling to come up with their own curriculum with Common Core methods.

[Maura Larkins' comment: What is this woman talking about? You can use ANY textbook to teach Common Core. But teachers who rely on textbooks to guide every step of instruction are simply failing to understand how to teach basic concepts. For one thing, the teacher should be guided by what her students know, and how well they are learning. The teacher's instruction should largely be coming from the teacher's brain rather than a textbook, and should be using his or her own words. The teacher should be making heavy use of the white board and a marker--and should be putting manipulatives in students' hands.

“What’s happening now is that the publishers have not come out with the textbooks for Common Core, yet the Chula Vista Elementary School District and the Sweetwater School District have decided to go ahead and implement it,” she said.

Nelson said the Common Core is not solely dependent on textbooks.

[Maura Larkins' comment: Hear, hear!]

“There’s been a lot of misunderstanding in the community, Common Core is not about the curriculum, it’s about how we teach,” he said. “Literature is literature. Now we did achieve use of more complex literature but Common Core is about changing the instructional practice of teachers.”

Monica Cervantes is another parent who is against the Common Core. She has a child attending Tiffany Elementary School in Chula Vista. She said the elementary school district adopted the model without conducting research to see if it will actually work.

“I think before you implement any type of curriculum, you have to make sure it works,” she said. “If you go back and look where it was implemented first there is a lot of downfall with this.”

California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson recently announced that the Sweetwater Union High School District is receiving more than $8 million in state funding with the transition to the new testing model.

Manny Rubio, director of grants and communications with the Sweetwater Union High School District, said a portion of that money could be spent on new textbooks used in preparation for the Common Core.

The Sweetwater District is adhering to the Common Core too, because Rubio said the testing is mandated by the state, and therefore they have no choice but to implement it.

“This is something that is coming from Sacramento. It’s our mandate as far as following the law that they’ve issued.

My understanding is that ... we do not have a choice (to not implement the Common Core),” Rubio said.

Rubio said the district is implementing a Common Core curriculum for teachers this year with pilot testing for students. He said come next school year, the district will have mandated testing.

Tina Jung, information officer for the California Department of Education, said the adoption of the Common Core is not mandatory. She said it is up to the local school districts, not the state, to decide if they want to implement the testing.

“It is completely voluntary on the states and schools,” she said. “We can’t tell districts what to do. California is a local control state, that means local districts have more control than the state.”

Jung also said if a district accepts money from the state for Common Core, then that money must be used for Common Core purposes.

Because she did not want her child to take the Common Core test, Phatak withdrew one of her children from Tiffany Elementary school. The child is now being home schooled.

[Maura Larkins' comment: Why didn't Phatek help her child cope with anxiety instead of taking such a drastic measure. I have a suspicion that there's a lot more going on in Phatek's family than is revealed here.]

Cervantes said she plans to opt her child out of Common Core testing.

“We (parents) can try to stop this because this was adopted and not mandated by the state,” she said. “We have a choice, it is not mandated. They chose to adopt this.”

According to the California Department of Education’s website, the Common Core describes what each student should know and be able to do in each subject in each grade.

The name Common Core derives from the testing method that uses a set of national standards that apply to every school, district and state that has adopted the Common Core model.

Rubio said parents “will not” have a choice of opting a child out of the testing.

But while Rubio mentions that students can’t opt out, California’s education code says differently.

According to Education Code 60615, a student can opt out of testing.

“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a parent’s or guardian’s written request to school officials to excuse his or her child from any or all parts of the assessments administered pursuant to this chapter shall be granted,” the code reads.

James Milgram, Stanford University mathematics professor


I just noticed that the San Diego Union-Tribune has published a hysterical commentary on this subject by Lance T. Izumi. Mr. Izumi's rant contained an interesting fact:

...Stanford University mathematics professor James Milgram, an architect of California’s previous top-ranked state math standards and a member of Common Core’s Validation Committee, harshly criticizes the rigor of Common Core’s math standards: “With the exception of a few standards in trigonometry, the [Common Core] math standards end after Algebra II. They include no pre-calculus or calculus.”...

Professor Milgram wants every kid in California to learn calculus!?!

That's ridiculous. I took calculus in high school, and it didn't do me one bit of good because I didn't understand the basic concepts well enough. I got an A in the class, not because I understood the material, but because I learned and applied formulas. I had to take calculus over again at UCLA. I also took vector calculus, and when I graduated I thought I knew math.

Even though I wasn't interested in going to graduate school at the time, I decided to take the GRE (Graduate Record Exam) at that time. I figured I'd never again do as well on the math section of the GRE than when I was fresh out of college math classes.

I was wrong.

I spent the next fifteen years teaching basic math concepts to fourth and fifth graders. I taught those basic concepts like they were going out of style. As a result, I myself came to understand those concepts really, really well.

Then I took the GRE again. My GRE math score went up 100 points, from 640 to 740.

My big improvement was due to focusing on elementary math concepts. I have had proof in my own life that if you want your kid to be really good in math, you must make your kid really learns basic concepts. And you shouldn't worry one bit whether your kid takes calculus in high school.


Will Susan Luzzaro continue to turn her back to
requests for more even-handed reporting?

I sent the following email to the Reader on April 17, 2014:

Regarding this story:
Standardized tests shunned by South Bay parents
By Susan Luzzaro
San Diego Reader
April 10, 2014

In the very first paragraph, Susan Luzzaro quotes a parent saying that her child was worried that "if he failed the test he wouldn’t get promoted to the next grade."

Ms. Luzzaro makes absolutely no effort in the article to assure Readers that the test is not actually used to flunk children. This is not good journalism.

I urge the Reader and Susan Luzzaro NOT to leave this false impression dangling in the minds of readers. Luzzaro should issue a clarification about the matter.

COMMENTS ON SUSAN LUZZARO ARTICLE:

eastlaker April 10, 2014 @ 12:41 p.m.

If you want to teach to the test, you need to know the answers. But--these are new tests, and most of the time, teachers don't even have the materials to work from...

So, the testing is being done initially on materials the students have not been given. Gee, how fair is that?

Especially when not only the students will be evaluated, but the teachers will be evaluated.

Maura Larkins' response to eastlaker:

The test might be new, but basic concepts are NOT NEW.

Are you saying that teachers need sample questions in order to figure out how to respond to a test? Well, sadly, you might be right. During my years at CVESD, long before Common Core, I regularly heard teachers at CVESD complain that they couldn't do the math the students were expected to do. So they demanded that the tests be changed, rather than that they themselves should have to go home and study their students' textbooks. We are not dealing with a new problem here. It's just that the teachers are now getting support from far-right wing nuts regarding this particular test because the test is supported by the Obama administration.

I would think you would be happy that teachers can't "teach to the test" if you think teaching to the test is bad. It sounds like you're saying that Common Core is forcing teachers to actually teach concepts rather than memorizing a certain type of test question. And if all the students and teachers are in the same boat, then what's the problem? The test will measure everybody fairly.

A good test measures thinking ability. That's why teachers who can't teach reasoning and logic hate good tests so much. When kids are thought to respond to any question with logic, then they do great on standardized tests. In fact, tests are a terrific instructional tool. I used to do a quiz every morning about the previous days' lessons, with the wording of the questions constantly changing. The kids enjoyed it. I would give the answer to each question as soon as the kids had written down their answers. It was an ideally teachable moment. The kids were interested in the answers, and they weren't graded by me. They were just testing themselves. It's a great way to focus kids' attention. And it's also a way to produce spectacular results on standardized tests.
I notice that many of the commenters believe that "teaching to the test" is a bad thing, as can be seen in the following comments.

anniej April 10, 2014 @ 9:17 a.m.

Teaching to the test, that is what our students are learning. There is little creativity, little interest being taught because it has become all about learning 'data '. BORING Back in my day, long long ago we were not taught to the test. We were engaged, we were involved, there was discussion, interesting learning.

Maura Larkins to anniej: You are right that interest and creativity are essential to learning. This is exactly the problem that Common Core addresses. It's the OPPOSITE OF MEMORIZING "DATA".

shirleyberan April 10, 2014 @ 9:27 a.m.

They were teaching to testing years ago when mine was is elementary 15 whatever years ago. I think it was the new thing to do back then. No wonder our kids can't read and write or do simple math. I think it was eastlaker who mentioned a sorry lack of critical thinkers.

Maura Larkins: to shirleyberan: The lack of critical thinking is exactly the problem that Common Core addresses. Critical thinking is the OPPOSITE OF MEMORIZING "DATA".

oneoftheteachers April 10, 2014 @ 6:36 p.m.

First of all, let's dispel the myth that corporations fostered:our educational system was broken. The US has some of the best universities in the world attended by graduates of our American public schools.

Maura Larkins' response: No one is saying that American universities are broken. They're so good that people from all over the world come to attend them. It's a disgrace that so many of our K-12 graduates are not prepared for our own universities.]

It's interesting that there is only ONE comment one this page (at 9:50 a.m. on April 17, 2014) that even suggests looking at this issue differently.

Bvavsvavev had the courage to say: "I am not an expert in education, so I don't know the answers. What I do know is that change is needed, money is needed, and testing is needed. The hows and whys can be left to experts to figure out."

Of course, he is immediately shot down by the regular commenters.

Interestingly, the Reader is the only news outlet in San Diego or elsewhere that prevents me from making comments. The reason was not that I made an improper comment, or even a comment that the Reader didn't like. In fact, the very first time I tried to sign up to make comments I was unable to do so. Who could have set this up? I suspect that Susan Luzzaro might have originated the idea. Susan Luzzaro's husband Frank, a former teacher and union official at Chula Vista Elementary School District, has made it clear to me that he doesn't want me revealing events at CVESD, at least not those that involve him. I once contacted the Reader to complain about not being able to make comments, and the result was that I was allowed to comment on this one story! Obviously, there is little effort at the Reader to provide a public forum. It's very much a controlled environment, run by political paymaster Jim Holman.

From the Dumb Teacher files: What is it about swimming pools that makes teachers act stupid?

Kayona Hagen-Tietz of Como Park High School in St. Paul

I had my own experience with swimming pool weirdness with Castle Park Elementary teachers in 2001.

School Slammed For Forcing Girl To Stand Half-Naked In Sub-Zero Temperatures
By: Robert Porter
Issue Hawk
March 5, 2014

A Minnesota school has come under fire for forcing a wet and half-naked student to stand outside in sub-zero temperatures. Fourteen-year-old Kayona Hagen-Tietz developed frostbite after being shepherded outside from a swimming class when the school’s fire alarm went off. A teacher at Como Park Senior High School in St. Paul told her that there was no time for her to get her clothes or towel from the locker and rushed her outside while still wet in a swimsuit. The temperature outside was -5 degrees that day and was -25 degrees with the windchill.

“When they had seen that, they should have had some kind of protocol,” said the girl’s mother, Eva. “If I had a fire and brought my children out in that condition, you know, I’m sure I would be charged in some way or another if I didn’t instantly bring them into a neighbor’s house or someplace else. The ultimate goal is to keep them safe and protect your children, and, in this instance, they did a really poor job.”

Eva declined to pursue legal action against the school, but also wants them to issue a public apology and reexamine their fire policies. The school district issued a statement saying they regularly review such policies and intend to do so again in the future, which the school’s principal declined to comment on the scandal.

Shaming kids at mealtime: kid's school breakfast trashed over 30-cent debt

UPDATE: Jan. 30, 2014

Utah hops on the bandwagon, throwing out 40 lunches in front of children who were in debt. See story #4 below.

ORIGINAL POST:

We frequently see poor judgment among school personnel. Recently a cafeteria worker in Texas actually threw a child's breakfast in the trash! Locally, superintendent Lowell Billings of Chula Vista Elementary School District thought it was a good idea to shame school children at meal time (see the second story below). The third story below tells about a breakfast meal that was thrown away--but not in the trash--when Lowell Billings was in charge at CVESD.

Of course, the cafeteria worker wasn't paid a huge salary by the taxpayers in the expectation that she would use good judgment, but Mr. Billings was.

STORY #1: TEXAS

Kid's school breakfast trashed over 30-cent debt
by FaithGardner
Daily Kos
Nov 08, 2013

How's this for petty? A student on the reduced meals plan at Barber Middle School in Dickinson, Texas, was 30 cents short in his meals account when he came to the cafeteria to get his breakfast. Rather than figure out some kind of solution to the problem, a cafeteria worker decided it would be totally okay to throw the kid's breakfast in the trash.

Jennifer Castilleja of Dickinson County said she received a call from her son's school Wednesday morning and was told the cafeteria refused to let the boy eat unless she came in and paid the 30 cents owed.

When Castilleja told school officials she was on her way to the school to pay and asked that they let her son eat until she arrived, the school refused.

According to KTRK-TV, Castilleja says her son is on the reduced meal cost plan and her prepaid account had simply run out of funds.

Needless to say, not only was this petty and unnecessary (and waste of a perfectly good breakfast!), but it was humiliating for the kid. "There were kids all around him," his mother said. "I think he may have been a little embarrassed and upset and, of course, hungry."

Even besides the point this was 30 EFFING CENTS, I don't understand why anyone would feel it's acceptable to punish a sixth grader for insufficient funds in the meal account. And it's pretty common knowledge that skipping breakfast leads to poor focus and health in children.

Here's to hoping that cafeteria worker was reprimanded for their behavior, and that the school district takes a look at their policy of punishing schoolchildren for insignificant debts like these.

COMMENT: Samantha Kilgore
"This makes me both so sad and so angry. And I wonder, too, if the child had not been part of the reduced meals program, if the server would have just shrugged off the 30 cent difference, or allowed the child to have the meal and charged later for it."


STORY #2: CHULA VISTA


The Scarlet Cheese Sandwich
by Gerald Pugliese
June 18, 2007

Apparently elementary schools in California are having a tough time with delinquent school lunch debts. So, if the parents won’t pay, the kids will. Instead of a customary school lunch, children with debt get a meesly cheese sandwich. Richard Marosi of The Los Angles Times reports...


The Lunch of Shame
By Joe Deegan
San Diego Reader
Oct. 25, 2007

...Nobody seems surprised that Chula Vista Elementary School District's cheese sandwich menu wasn't nominated as one of this year's candidates [in the School Lunch competition]. The sandwich is two slices of American cheese slapped dry into whole-wheat bread.

[Maura Larkins' comment: No one likes being forced to eat something. The whole wheat bread is wonderfully healthy--but I fear that CVESD is doing aversion therapy with it. I fear that CVESD's policy will serve to make children prefer the less-healthy white bread. And of course, American cheese has little nutritional value.]

In June, harsh spotlights were shone on the district's practice of offering the "alternative meal" to kids whose parents were delinquent on their school lunch bills. Both the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Los Angeles Times singled out the Chula Vista district for using one of the more draconian approaches to the problem. Subsequently, the Union-Tribune ran an editorial condemning the practice. All critics seem to agree that children shouldn't be shamed in front of other kids by depriving them of schools' regular lunches. And they shouldn't be punished for their parents' irresponsibility.

The intent of the bland alternative meal, of course, was to induce the children to pester their parents to pay up. Chula Vista claimed that serving the cheese sandwich reduced its delinquency balance from $285,000 in 2003 to $67,800 this year.

For comparison, San Diego Unified School District, which is kindergarten through 12th grade, reports that as of June, its outstanding balance was $13,500. Joanne Tucker is food services marketing coordinator for the district. "The problem of delinquent accounts in the School Lunch Program is serious everywhere in the country," she tells me by phone. "After all, we're a business. I feel sorry that the Chula Vista district has gotten so much negative publicity over their program. The cheese sandwich meal is nutritious. I went to a conference in Chicago not long ago, and an official from a Kansas district told us, 'We're in the black.' People wanted to know how they did it, and he said that when parents had unpaid balances, his district didn't give their children anything to eat. Well, we would never do anything like that in San Diego."

I ask if San Diego Unified used the alternative-meal approach to collecting debt. "No," says Tucker, "our food services director is much too kindhearted. Each of our schools calls delinquent parents to remind them that they're past due. Some schools are more successful than others. Soon we are going to an automated calling program in the hopes of doing better."

On June 25, Speaker of the California State Assembly Fabian Núñez wrote a letter to all school districts in California to discover how many "are providing an 'alternative' -- and intentionally undesirable -- meal to their children.... These districts are...stigmatizing children to put pressure on their parents."

Lowell Billings, superintendent of the Chula Vista Elementary School District, responded to Núñez three days later. "We serve six entrees each day, one of which is a cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread.... Additionally, with each meal [including the alternative cheese sandwich meal] we offer a full salad bar, a full fresh fruit bar, a promotional item, and milk, all for the price of $1.50 for full-pay students and $.75 for low income half-pay students.

"The alternative meal largely targets students with families most able to pay.... I have great difficulty understanding this as a 'stigma meal' or a less than nutritional offering. We serve approximately 400 cheese sandwiches daily. [Sometimes] they are the meal of choice. Feedback from principals indicates that some students have been found to throw away a packed lunch to get an alternative meal. [Billings confessed to eating and liking the cheese sandwich too.] Furthermore, principals do not find widespread student self-esteem issues associated with our practice....

[Maura Larkins' comment: I'm sure Mr. Billings hears exactly what he wants to hear from principals. CVESD is a very top-down organization. I wouldn't be surprised if sycophant principals are actually agreeing with Mr. Billings that children don't have any problem being forced to eat something as a punishment for their parents. Why does Mr. Billings think that kids throw away a packed lunch? For exactly the same reason that they don't want cheese sandwiches shoved down their throats.]

"The delinquent meal balances are owed by the highest income families in our District. Why should we allow their indiscretion to impact those students who are most needy? There is a lesson in this for our students. Data [from] the Junior Achievement of San Diego and Imperial Counties show that the number one cause of college dropouts is not poor academic standing but credit card debt. Where do they learn this important life skill set? "Our state legislature," Billings concluded, "could benefit from this same lesson. I am fearful that the ongoing structural state budget deficit undermines our children's future."

[Maura Larkins' comment: I know for a fact that Lowell Billings has wasted $100,000s of taxpayer dollars trying to cover up wrongdoing in the district. Also, huge amounts are wasted on expensive programs that don't work. Maybe someone should make Lowell Billings eat cheese sandwiches. Perhaps then he'd be more careful with taxpayer dollars.]

Apparently, Núñez, who was recently skewered in a Union-Tribune editorial for using campaign funds for personal trips, was not convinced. In the July 5 Los Angeles Daily News, he wrote of "at least four school districts in the state [that] serve substandard lunches to children whose parents fall into arrears on payment into their child's lunch accounts." "If the 'dunce cap' were still in use as a schoolhouse punishment, there are several school officials in California who need to be assigned corners and fitted with cones.... Make no mistake," Núñez went on, "parents have a duty to fulfill their responsibilities.... But leave the kids out of it. Any dunce who allows the punishing of kids over their parents' mistakes is the one who deserves to be shamed."

But what of the superintendent's defense? It is not a good sign that at the end of his letter he changed the subject to the legislature's problems. To address the alternative meal's inclusion of salad and fruit bars made more sense. Even that, however, is less than reassuring, given kids' notorious aversion to salads. The additional fact that the Chula Vista district recently started serving a ham-turkey sandwich as another alternative meal was a concession to critics. Many parents had been arguing that constant repetition of only the cheese sandwich alternative would provoke kids to throw it away. Now there is even talk among district employees of occasionally offering tacos as the alternative meal.


STORY #3: CHULA VISTA

Here's another story of a school breakfast that was thrown out--but not in the trash. This also happened during Lowell Billings' term as superintendent of CVESD.

Formerly President of
Chula Vista Educators,
Peg Myers now works
for the district's
Human Resources Department,
keeping teachers in line










The morning after the May 27, 2008 meeting at Castle Park Elementary, one of the parents who spoke out at a meeting took her children in to the school, and came back to find that someone had thrown cereal and milk on her car.

Children are not normally allowed to leave the school cafeteria, where breakfast was being served at the time of the vandalism, with milk and cereal. At least one adult who is connected to the "Family" was in the cafeteria.

What interest would a child have in someone else's mother who spoke at a meeting? The speaker's own children are too young to come to the attention of kids old enough to pull a stunt like this.

But several staff members and teachers at Castle Park Elementary have demonstrated out-of-control hostility in recent years, attacking fellow teachers and principals with shocking malice. The longtime leader of the Castle Park Family was Peg Myers, whose work history demonstrates the bizarre interactions between the Castle Park Family and the district office. Two of the last three CVE presidents (Peg Myers and Gina Boyd) have come to the CVE presidency directly from Castle Park Elementary, and the other one, Jim Groth, aided the cover-up of wrongdoing at the school.


Story #4 Utah School Threw Out Students’ Lunches Because They Were In Debt
By Annie-Rose Strasser
Think Progress
January 30, 2014

A Utah school’s child nutrition manager threw out the lunches of about 40 elementary school students this week after the kids’ parents fell behind on payment.

Some parents at Uintah Elementary in Salt Lake City say they didn’t even realize they were indebted to the school. The school apparently made calls Monday and Tuesday telling some parents that there was a balance on their accounts, and the children of those who had missed the call were the ones whose lunches got thrown out.

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the child nutrition manager’s original plan was to withhold lunches for kids whose parents hadn’t paid. But cafeteria workers were unable to distinguish who was on that list before serving. Once the food had been dished out, food safety codes say it can’t be given to another student and must be thrown away.

The children were given milk and fruit instead of a full lunch — the meal that the school says it gives any child who isn’t able to pay.

“So she took my lunch away and said, ‘Go get a milk,’ ” recalled one student, a fifth grader named Sophia. “I came back and asked, ‘What’s going on?’ Then she handed me an orange. She said, ‘You don’t have any money in your account so you can’t get lunch.’”

Parents were outraged by the move, calling it “traumatic and humiliating.”v Salt Lake City’s school district has apologized to parents and students for the incident. “We again apologize and commit to working with parents in rectifying this situation and to ensuring students are never treated in this manner again,” the district said in a Facebook note.

Still, the incident raises longstanding questions about child nutrition and low-income families. It is not the first time that students have had their lunch thrown out for insufficient funds. In November, a Texas middle school student’s lunch was thrown away because he was 30 cents short on payment.

But depriving children of food — and embarrassing them in front of their peers — isn’t the only option. In Boston, for example, public schools provide all students with cost-free breakfast and lunch no matter their financial situation.

A compelling set of evidence drives such decisions. Child hunger has lasting impacts on children’s mental health, as well as cognitive and social ability. And while more than one in five children lack stable access to food, only half of the students who are eligible for free breakfasts actually receive them.