Is Orange Unified Going in Right Direction Now?

I agree with the July 1 editorial that it is time to put students first in the Orange Unified School District.

As an Orange Unified employee, I am greatly relieved that for now three conservative Orange board members have been removed. If they or their counterparts are not elected in November, Orange has a chance to reverse the decade-long brain drain that has so crippled all levels of professional staffing in the district.

Failure to reverse this trend will assign Orange schools to second-rate status among the county’s school districts for the foreseeable future.

The students, patrons and employees of Orange Unified certainly deserve far better than that. I congratulate The Times for consistently bringing to light all of the many issues that have affected the district in an accurate and even-handed manner.

Jack Detling

Irvine

Re “Outsiders Weigh In on Orange Recall Bid,” June 15:

Your article pointed out the partisan and financial influences affecting the recall.

Unfortunately, while the news focuses on the partisan aspects, certain school board decisions skirt the light of media scrutiny.

As a teacher and coach at El Modena High School, I am not shocked by two recent board decisions, which, with media attention, should shock the community.

The first was the board action to cap enrollment at Canyon, El Modena and Villa Park high schools. For example, El Modena, which when I started teaching in this district had more than 2,200 students, was capped at 2,050.

This decision was fueled by the need to stop parental choice and open enrollments. It is intriguing though rather appalling that school board members preaching privatization and charter schools are denying school choice to parents who feel their students’ education would be better served at different schools.

The second board decision was the eviction notice given to the Orange County on Track program. This award-winning program sets up mentoring relationships between high school and elementary students. The younger students are nurtured and encouraged by role models from El Modena High School.

The Orange Unified School District board’s decisions, not its partisan politics, are the reason parents signed the petitions.

John Ahern

Orange

The Times was consistent in its superficial coverage of the recent Orange Unified School recall.

By painting it as a “union vs. board” squabble over money and benefits, you allowed the real education story, which nationally seems to be big news, to slip by.

I am a retired editor with a credential who has, from time to time, been in many of the Orange Unified high school classrooms. Teachers make terrible “union” members. In Orange they were more united because of the many actions of the board that made it more difficult for teachers to operate. Sure, money was a problem, but just one of many.

Did the board majority ever try to pass a bond issue? Why did board member Bill Lewis support the recall? Why was the public information officer really fired? How much did the recalled board actually spend on legal fees?

There are many fine teachers and principals who have been keeping that district together. One has only to visit a teachers lounge to see how many new faces are now there. Orange Unified, like most county districts, has overcrowded classrooms, too many bungalow classrooms where all students have only a single door to exit in an emergency, no nurse on campus and four overworked counselors.

The current idea is that we can test our way to greatness. Recalling three bad board members won’t increase salaries, decrease class size or make students wake up and listen. But it is a start.

Cecil F. Rospaw

Placentia

The recent recall can be traced to a single factor: teachers who wanted more than a 23%-a-year raise versus a school board that had inherited another board’s bad fiscal decisions and knew there wasn’t enough money to give them their demands--at least not without cutting school programs or raising taxes.

Those teachers obscured that basic truth with enough superfluous justifications that their relatives, friends and neighbors bought into the unwarranted and unjustified recall of three excellent board members.

Now, far more liberal, union-backed board members have taken their place. Teachers will get whopping raises and within a few years we can expect another financial crisis in the district.

Will the new board, like those just recalled, cut teachers’ raises to remain fiscally responsible? Not likely. Their cuts will hit school music and athletic programs or our wallets.

Marion Krone

Anaheim