Tomorrow is an historic day

It's time to vote again! Please don't forget! If you're discouraged because your candidate is polling behind in California or you think your vote doesn't matter because your candidate is polling far ahead, IT DOES MATTER! There are many down ballot issues that will be decided this election. It's important that you take your opportunity to make your voice heard. Take a book and some water and a snack and go be a part of history.

If you don't vote you will miss your opportunity to speak out on these issues:

• Sacramento Mayoral Race
• Community College Funding (Measure M)
• Utility User Taxes (Measure O)
  
• Numerous School Board seats
• State Assembly Races
• Congressional Race
• State Propositions including: High Speed Rail, Children's Hospital Bonds, law enforcement funding, renewable energy requirements and funding, minor abortion waiting period and parental notification, veterans bonds and redistricting

Those of you in Natomas, please make your choices very carefully. If you were my best friend and we were sitting down to coffee, I'd caution you on the school board election in particular. Do you really want someone who is an incumbent, who sat through all the land deal mess and said nothing? Who says she has "learned her lesson" at the expense of our students? Sue Heredia has had eight years to learn her lesson and improve schools in Natomas. No thanks. I'll be picking 3 new school board members. Bruce Roberts, Patricia Adams and Briza Trujillo Cardenas have put in the time, energy and effort to make Natomas better. It's time we give them a shot where they can make a difference.

More thoughts on last night's meeting...

It dawned on me at about 2am while I was sleeping, that Lisa Kaplan was sitting in the back row at the meeting last night about the Natomas crime spree. For those unfamiliar, Lisa Kaplan is the former president, now clerk of the Natomas Unified School District Board of Trustees.

I sat up and started thinking that Lisa Kaplan, Ron Dwyer-Voss and the rest of the board, should have been sitting on the stage instead of Mayor Fargo last night. How is it that a bunch of high school aged kids are committing crimes during school hours and the school district seemingly holds no responsibility for that? Where was the district's security team last night? Shouldn't most of those kids have been in school? Inderkum's graduation was 6/12 and I can't find the date but I'll bet Natomas' was close to that. So for the first two weeks of the crime spree, these thugs should have been the responsibility of NUSD.

In the long run, I'd like to know if the brats that Captain Hahn and his team have arrested are NUSD students. I'd like to know if they have attendance problems and if they have been appropriately processed by their schools. I would find it shockingly hard to believe if these guys were all good students that had somehow slipped under the radar. More likely, year after year, NUSD dropped the ball again.

I'm reminded of an incident about three years ago at the park next to Natomas Park Elementary School. I had my son there and we were playing in the sandbox early in the day. A younger boy (about 2nd grade) was swinging on the swings and waiting for school to start. Two 5th grade boys approached the boy, yelled at him, swore and used horrible language. They got up in his face and looked as though they may punch him. I immediately intervened and the older boys laughed and walked off. I grabbed my son, walked the younger boy to class and went to the office to report what I'd seen.

The school secretary refused to talk to me. She said that incidents in the park are not their problem. I showed my district ID, identified myself again as a district employee and asked to speak to the principal. No luck. I got a counselor who asked me to look through a yearbook and identify the kids but too no notes, made no attempt at doing ANYTHING. Great no bullying policy...

Absurd. Those two boys are probably now, or will be soon, perpetrating these crimes. No adult had ever held them accountable and their school didn't seen to care either.

Take that North Natomas!

Is it that the bloggers are getting mad and word travels fast? Is it the rapid rise in crime in the area? Perhaps it's that the school district seems to think they're brilliant and wonderful managers. Either way, North Natomas is about to take another major hit over the head. This time, it's in the form of a community day school set on the same campus as a brand new elementary school.

That's right folks. The NUSD believes it can best serve the community by placing a group of students who need psychological services, have been expelled and have massive attendance problems right on your brand new elementary school! The Natomas Community Day School will, of course, be a heavily supervised well run program. Because we've seen the district is so good at that. (Can you taste the dripping sarcasm yet?)

For some unknown and unpublicized logic, the district is no longer interested in using the Sacramento County system of Community Day schools that are already established. They say they want to keep these students closer to home for easier reintegration. I believe it's a justification for a massive junior high school that will stand unused this year because of NUSD's poor financial management.

Despite what their information says, this is not "scare tactics." I have personally been the assistant vice principal at an alternative school where nearly all of my students had parole officers and had been in and out of juvenile hall. I'm not "scared" of these students and they deserve every opportunity to recover from years of bad parenting.

However, even I wouldn't be as bold and ignorant to put them on an elementary school campus and then promise the public that everything is fine because they'll be supervised. The things I've seen would shock any adult and not things you would ever want your adorable kindergarten son walking into in a boy's bathroom.

If you have a child who will attend Allen Hight Elementary or you live in the Creekside neighborhood or the far west side of Natomas Park, I suggest you get on the phone today and begin screaming and yelling about this decision. As best I can tell from old board agendas, the district waited until school was out to have a public hearing (on June 19th) and review the proposal. Their supposed "higher ratio" of teachers to students only includes a budget for one teacher and one social worker/administrator. That's a pretty bad ratio for a one room campus of troubled students.

I agree with the idea that Natomas students would be best served by a community school in our area. However, it makes the most sense to either put it on Natomas High's campus or locate it at Discovery High. Sharing resources and facilities with a school that is already equip to deal with older students makes the most sense. Instead, the district has chosen to do what it usually does- make a hasty last minute decision that is illogical and lacks vision.

And this my friends, is why we pay for private school

Natomas Unified has made some bad decisions under Dr. Farrar. We know about the land deals, the mediocre ratings on Great Schools, the below average spending per pupil (Current expense of education per ADA- $6304, state average $7,127) and the overall mismanagement and unhappiness of many parents in the district. The one thing they've done right is to let the charter schools do their own thing. In a mess of the district, the charters are doing well.

Dr. Farrar's response to the proposed governor's budget is perhaps the most appalling of mistakes. Per his letter, he has issued an immediate hiring and spending freeze as a precautionary measure. Interesting... especially since Natomas Unified still has jobs posted on edjoin.org listed as open and available. Is this a lie or an oversight?

While driving to the local library yesterday, I noticed that the Inderkum football field is all torn up and inquired inside. They are replacing it with artificial turf, that will apparently be state of the art. Yeah... we need a state of the art football field when you're already spending less per pupil than the rest of the state.

He even threatens to turn Kindergarten and 1st grade classes into 30 kids a piece next year, eliminate busing for students and even *gasp* potentially file for bankruptcy in 2009.

Now really, I know this is a fluff piece. It's designed to enrage parents in the assumption that they'll turn that around and push it on the governor. Right. The state problem is the same as the district problem... a simple mismanagement of funds. You can't spend what you don't have and you can always do more with less. I'm willing to bet, as a former teacher, everyone would forgo a football season to have a few permanent teachers in the classroom and a few less subs. Maybe leaving off the synthetic turf soccer field at the new Hight middle school would have bought a few more class sets of textbooks. I'm for sports and sports programs... but not when they sacrifice learning for athletics.

Perhaps that few million extra misspent for the land in North Natomas would be useful now?