REBUTTAL

After reading Michael Green’s rebuttal to your editorial on Ocean View

School District (“Reader feels editorial is misleading, incomplete,” Jan.

4), I was quite stunned to learn he was a member of Save Our Kids.

When did athletic facilities become a priority over the basic needs of

our children’s education, such as a clean and healthy school environment

with permanent air-conditioned classrooms instead of portables, updated

science and computer equipment, and textbooks that can actually be taken

home?

We are not sending our kids to school to become athletes but to be

able to read, write and do arithmetic in an environment conducive to such

learning.

On two points, the immediate neighbors of Spring View Middle School

are in agreement with Green when he stated that, the”single frontage

street and heavy weekend use adds to the parking problems,” and that

“1,200 to 1,800 parents and kids show up with nowhere to park.”

Open house, graduation and a few midyear school gatherings create

traffic and parking congestion, and the neighbors of Spring View accept

this as a product of living near an elementary school (Oops! I meant

middle school -- but that was another thing the school board sneaked by

the neighbors several years ago!)

What we do not accept is a 1,250-seat gymnasium sized for college

athletics with the intention to rent out the facilities seven days a

weeks until 10 p.m. at night with a provision for only 50 additional

parking spaces. Certainly, the neighbors here are not anti-kids nor do we

have a not-in-my-backyard complex. In fact, many residents have had or

will have children attending this school.

Therefore, we are deeply concerned about the condition of the existing

facilities at Spring View. If, in Green’s own words, “Ocean View [wants]

to realize its dream of bringing its middle school facilities, which are

clearly substandard, up to a level other schools would consider a

minimum,” it needs to rethink its strategy for improving the schools and

obtaining funds to do so.

He neglected to go into great detail about the Crest View fiasco by

not even mentioning that the “big-box retailer” is none other than

Wal-Mart, (whose labor practices in U.S. territories overseas are a whole

other story). Understandably, Green neglected to tell us that Supt. James

Tarwater and the Ocean View School District passed up nearly $21 million

in matching Prop. 1A funds for school modernization when they decided to

accept lease payments instead of a “one-time cash payment” of

approximately $8 million for the Crest View property.

About $5.2 million of this $8 million could have been used as match

money to receive the $21 million to use for school modernization.

Additionally, the group who wanted to purchase this property was hoping

to develop the site into a community sports center! Huntington Beach

could have not only modernized all of our schools, but have gotten a

top-of-the-line athletic facility with “recreational opportunities for

kids” and the entire community were it not for the shortsightedness of

our esteemed superintendent and his cohorts on the school board.

This is what I consider “poor management practices” as so eloquently

stated by Green.

When did grassy fields and outdoor basketball and volleyball courts

become inadequate playgrounds for our kids? For goodness sake, we live in

Southern California! If we really want to “save our kids,” let’s take

these funds allocated for the oversized gymnasiums and buy some new

carpeting for the classrooms so that on an occasionally rainy day, the

kids have some new library books to read and clean floor on which to

play.

ANA WIN

Huntington Beach