As You See It: Nov. 6, 2009

I would like to see PVUSD management be the first to put what they say they will do down on paper. They say they will take a 10% pay cut and/or do furlough days. The leaders should lead. Instead they are waiting for the teachers and the bus drivers, custodian, secretaries to step forwared with yet more cuts to their workers. It just seems wrong to me. The ones that make the most and are furthest from the classroom sit back and wait for others who have already given.

STRIKE NOW !!

Dawn,
It is important that correct information be shared with the community. To further divide teacher and district administration without the facts is damaging to everyone and won't get us anywhere. The current Board of Trustees is the only Board, ever in PVUSD history, who has agreed to discuss binding arbitration. I can't go into details because we are still negotiating, but binding arbitration is on the table. Our job as Trustees is to be fiscally responsible and unfortunately that means we have the obligation to make painful cuts from all areas of the district. Please contact the Superintendent's office and ask for an explanation for each of your concerns. Thank you for your service to the district and our students.

Freedom has a price and it is called responsibility.

We can't keep doing what we do today forever, probably not even 100 years from now.

Get a reusable tote bag or sack, I use them, it is really no big deal.

OK, so Mardi Wormhoudt was a combination of Mother Teresa, Catherine the Great, Eleanor Roosevelt and Madonna. Please, will the Pope or someone just make her a saint so the newspaper can get on with current issues?

it is not just alcohol. it can be a variety of things.

People are injured and killed by cell phone users, is that actually a DUI?

People on medications, pot, meth, etc.

In a way our society creates the problem.

Selling alcohol at gas stations should be banned.

Resturants/Bars located in places where you can only drive to, sorry no bikes or horses since the same law applies.

It is funny that the biggest killer in our society is second hand smoke - est. 49K a year, but little is done about that. Bad fatty sugary food is next.

Move on dot urge wrote:

OK, so Mardi Wormhoudt was a combination of Mother Teresa, Catherine the Great, Eleanor Roosevelt and Madonna. Please, will the Pope or someone just make her a saint so the newspaper can get on with current issues?

Work with and know her personally?

Everything anyone does is not always valuable. You might look at what you do.

She probably did more than 90% of the people in Santa Cruz county have done,
except whine, most county residents excel at whining.

LDe Rose Pres PVUSD wrote:

Dawn, It is important that correct information be shared with the community. To further divide teacher and district administration without the facts is damaging to everyone and won't get us anywhere. The current Board of Trustees is the only Board, ever in PVUSD history, who has agreed to discuss binding arbitration. I can't go into details because we are still negotiating, but binding arbitration is on the table. Our job as Trustees is to be fiscally responsible and unfortunately that means we have the obligation to make painful cuts from all areas of the district. Please contact the Superintendent's office and ask for an explanation for each of your concerns. Thank you for your service to the district and our students.

Trustee DeRose: This is the 2nd or 3rd time I've seen you posting openly on Sentinel web page, offering your insight to threads addressing PVUSD issues, and I appreciate your efforts. They provide needed balance for letter writers and posters who merely offer the mantra of cut-from-the-top-district-bad- union-good. From what I've learned by actually studying the subject, the district appears to have done more than its fair share of cutting administration - especially when compared to other county school districts.

Dawn,
Go somewhere besides your union to clear up the misconceptions you obviously have regarding budget, wage and benefit concessions that are going to be required to meet budgetary constraints. Its not the district that opposed to furloughs. When you subtract what surrounding district employees pay for their health benefits (and add to your salary what pvusd district contributes towards employee benefits) you will see that pvusd employees are very closely compensated. Economic binding arbitration in a public funded budget that relies on revenues from an uncertain source (state taxpayers) especially in these precarious economic times would be irresponsible.

Wrote this before reading derose post. Would like to remind board member that the negotiations they engage in are with other peoples money and therefore should be certain not to continue to promise future unfunded wages and benefits even if it makes you unpopular.

LDe Rose Pres PVUSD wrote:

Dawn,
It is important that correct information be shared with the community. To further divide teacher and district administration without the facts is damaging to everyone and won't get us anywhere. The current Board of Trustees is the only Board, ever in PVUSD history, who has agreed to discuss binding arbitration. I can't go into details because we are still negotiating, but binding arbitration is on the table. Our job as Trustees is to be fiscally responsible and unfortunately that means we have the obligation to make painful cuts from all areas of the district. Please contact the Superintendent's office and ask for an explanation for each of your concerns. Thank you for your service to the district and our students.

Can you shed some light on why teachers in PVUSD are always such unhappy posters? Is it really that bad at PVUSD, or have they forgot what a full day of digging ditches is like?

And I will remember Mardi Wormhoudt as the fourth cog as councilmember (Laird being the 3rd) to give the SCAN progressives a council majority. First elected in Nov. 1981 by the students at UCSC, Wormhoudt brought forth the beginning, and continuing decline and degradation of Santa Cruz. Let's also not forget that her first act was to tell locals that their vote and passage of the Zayante Dam Project, designed to bring water to Santa Cruz for the 21st century, was dead.

It was Wormhoudt's election to the council that, for the first time, denied local residents their inherent right to self-determination, via niffy coup by academia. This is turn, relegated local citizens to not much more than overly tax-burdened lab rats for the greater glory of socialism.

In my humble opinion, Wormhoudt was to Santa Cruz what Tom Hayden was to Santa Monica. And I doubt that either community ever completely recovers.

"I will participate in social disobedience by not using any bag and force the grocers to assist me out to my car, one armful at a time"
- Bob Willig

Great! I just love customers like you who think that they can "force" me to do something I'd be happy to do if I was just asked nicely. As far as the "one armful at a time" fantasy of yours, I hate to burst your bubble but we have these great inventions nowadays called shopping carts that can carry all of your groceries to your car on wheels.

Here's where you really put your foot in your mouth:

"If there is no market for recycled materials making bags, then what are we to do with all the waste that used to go that way?"

If there's no bag making market, that means that they were put out of business by everyone using they're own reusable bags and there is no waste to recycle into new bags.

LDe Rose Pres PVUSD wrote:

Dawn,
It is important that correct information be shared with the community. To further divide teacher and district administration without the facts is damaging to everyone and won't get us anywhere. The current Board of Trustees is the only Board, ever in PVUSD history, who has agreed to discuss binding arbitration. I can't go into details because we are still negotiating, but binding arbitration is on the table. Our job as Trustees is to be fiscally responsible and unfortunately that means we have the obligation to make painful cuts from all areas of the district. Please contact the Superintendent's office and ask for an explanation for each of your concerns. Thank you for your service to the district and our students.

Leslie De Rose- I appreciate having you write in these comments. But while teachers are an extremely activist constituency, the board bears a fiduciary and educational mission responsibility to all the voters and taxpayers of the district and state. I would like for you to participate is an online discussion someplace where we can ask and have questions answered about the district. Is that possible?

teacher need to learn wrote:

Dawn,
Go somewhere besides your union to clear up the misconceptions you obviously have regarding budget, wage and benefit concessions that are going to be required to meet budgetary constraints. Its not the district that opposed to furloughs. When you subtract what surrounding district employees pay for their health benefits (and add to your salary what pvusd district contributes towards employee benefits) you will see that pvusd employees are very closely compensated.

This I culled from Ed-Data:

Per ADA Pajaro vs. statewide average for unified districts

Certificated Salaries $4,220 $4,323
Classified Salaries $1,504 $1,349
Employee Benefits $2,326 $1,668
Total:$8,050 $7,340
Total Revenue:$9,816 $8,984
Benefit share 29% vs. 23%
Total employee expense as a share of total revenue: 82% 82%

YES. Lois and Burt... Mardi is responsible for the Santa Cruz values, what ever that means. I think they must mean, the high crime, the rapes, the influx of gangs and the mess of downtown, but I am just guessing of what values they are talking about.

Thank you Dawn for your message.

As for Ms. De Rose...the only reason that you are discussing binding arbitration is because this is the first year it was ever PUT on the table by the teachers. Also, the district waited ALL YEAR to put it on the table. As someone who has been watching this board and issue closely for over two years, President DeRose, your comments make you seem so weak...why don't you just be quiet?

Move on dot urge wrote:

OK, so Mardi Wormhoudt was a combination of Mother Teresa, Catherine the Great, Eleanor Roosevelt and Madonna. Please, will the Pope or someone just make her a saint so the newspaper can get on with current issues?

You left out Wonder Woman and Madame Curie. I agree this sanitizing and fluffing up effort is getting tiresome. The only revisionist effort I can think of to compare with it was the near canonization of Cesar Chavez after his death, which converted a failed union organizer into a cultural icon, with a federal holiday and a gajillion schools, etc., named after him. Hey, how about the "Mardi Wormhoudt Desal Plant"? Her helping to pull the plug on the Zayante Dam may make such a money pit necessary.

PVFT Teacher in PVUSD wrote:

Thank you Dawn for your message.
As for Ms. De Rose...the only reason that you are discussing binding arbitration is because this is the first year it was ever PUT on the table by the teachers. Also, the district waited ALL YEAR to put it on the table. As someone who has been watching this board and issue closely for over two years, President DeRose, your comments make you seem so weak...why don't you just be quiet?

Hmmm...what makes suspect the last name of this Watsonville teacher might be Nichols, Mejia, or some other political sore loser? Trustee De Rose had the integrity and guts to share her opinion here fully identified, and now you attempt to silence her while hiding your own identity? What a cowardly wimp. Game, set and match to De Rose.

PVFT Teacher in PVUSD wrote:

Thank you Dawn for your message.
As for Ms. De Rose...the only reason that you are discussing binding arbitration is because this is the first year it was ever PUT on the table by the teachers. Also, the district waited ALL YEAR to put it on the table. As someone who has been watching this board and issue closely for over two years, President DeRose, your comments make you seem so weak...why don't you just be quiet?

Ms. De Rose, quite to the contrary from what this unionista recommends, I and many other people want to hear what our elected officials have to say and we want you to honestly address our questions so that we can be informed citizens.