School Board’s Critics Speak Up

If the Orange Unified School District board majority is really so very interested in giving people freedom of choice, then I challenge the board to eliminate the practice of electing board members at-large.

There are seven areas in the district. Voters of each area are supposed to be able to elect their own board member from among candidates who live in their area. However, because the board is currently elected at-large, a voting bloc from outside an area can actually elect the area’s representative, regardless of whom the local voters want.

This is what has been happening in OUSD and why the board majority can ignore the needs and complaints of citizens in most areas. It is because well-organized blocs of right-wing voters from just two district areas elect the board members they want in all the other areas, depriving local voters of having board members who represent local interests. It’s as if a bloc of New York City voters could elect Orange County’s members of Congress by outvoting us from New York.

If OUSD were run like a democracy is supposed to be run, then board members would be elected only by the voters of the area they represent. Is the current, so-called freedom-loving board majority up to the challenge of giving citizens the freedom to elect their own representatives? We’re waiting to find out.

DAVID REGER

President

Orange Unified Education Assn.

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* Re “Orange School Board Majority on a Mission,” Aug. 26:

The scene: A classroom in a school in the Orange County Unified School District sometime in the near future.

Teacher: Class, who discovered America?

Class shouting: Columbus! Lief Erickson!

Teacher: Oh class! What am I going to do with you? You’ve been reading those awful history books again. The answer is right here (picking up the Bible from her desk.) Obviously the first person to discover America was Noah. He found America when he was rounding up the world’s animals to put them on the ark. You should know that by now. I’m just going to have to assign you more Bible study homework. That’s all there is to it!

JAMES R. GALLAGHER

Huntington Beach

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* Your article about the Orange Unified School Board was right on!

However, this article missed some key issues. First, many quality teachers and administrators have left OUSD because of the low pay and even lower morale. Prospects of improvement look bleaker now than ever! Second, your article refers to the majority and minority views of the public. Where was the public at our last school board election? I believe [there was] a 12% turnout. Maybe the absentee voters need to be in school with their children.

It reminds me of the saying, “the citizens get the kind of government that they deserve.”

KARL BAYSINGER

Orange

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* The people of the Orange Unified School District really don’t have to worry about evolution being taught in their district. There is certainly no evidence the majority of their school board has evolved past Homo erectus.

I was especially entertained by board member Max Reissmueller, a biblical fundamentalist. He’s on the school board, but removed his daughter to home-school her. A school where he is the principal, his wife the staff and his daughter the student body (boy, will she be a well-rounded individual, with all the educational tools needed to allow her to compete in a global job environment). Maybe when she graduates, with that first-rate education, she can get a job in a religious bookstore. She can then help me locate my favorite Bible passage: “Believing themselves to be wise; they became fools.”

For icing on the genius cake, he thinks militant militias are a good idea. Maybe he can invite Timothy McVeigh to speak at his school on “Career Day.” How about a field trip to Oklahoma City? For physical education they can dig a survivalist shelter in his back yard.

America won the Cold War, but the Communists were right about one thing--religion is truly “the opium of the people.”

THOMAS WALTON

Laguna Niguel

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* On Aug. 27, The Times wrote about the need for 35 new teachers in the OUSD, along with 27 additional possible openings by teachers requesting to be released from their contracts.

That would be 67 openings in the district with less than one week left before school starts. To find the reason why there is such a mass exodus from the OUSD, one only needs to read the front page of The Times from Aug. 26 about our school board. It’s very clear to me that no one wants to work for these buffoons.

OUSD has a long-standing reputation of being the worst employer in Orange County. Until the school board changes, expect the mass exodus to continue.

JAY TURNER

Orange