Grievances

griev·ance
Pronunciation: \ˈgrē-vən(t)s\
Function: noun
Date: 14th century
1: obsolete : SUFFERING, DISTRESS
2: a cause of distress (as an unsatisfactory working condition) felt to afford reason for complaint or resistance
3: the formal expression of a grievance : COMPLAINT

synonyms see INJUSTICE

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The following letter was read aloud at the OUSD Board of Trustees meeting on Thursday May 28. Each board member received a copy.

May 28, 2009

I have a number of grievances I wish to bring to the Board:

#1: The board voted to close Silverado Elementary due to budget cuts. However, the actual savings by closing the school are about zero, with the loss of around 40 students to other districts or home schooling. In other words, the district has just thrown away about 200k by treating Silverado children poorly, and their actions have not saved one penny, but instead have tremendously displace scores of children and tremendously inconvenienced families in the canyon community.

#2: Our pronouncements about children as young as kindergarten being asked to ride the bus for 1 1/2 to 2 hours to get to Chapman Hills were scoffed at by some on the board. However, the district’s recently released bus schedule will have children in Modjeska canyon board the bus at 6:30 am in order to get to Chapman hills by 8 am, a 1 ½ hour ride. A staff person in the superintendent’s office remarked they are shocked (or some similar term) at such a long ride.

#3: Furthermore, part of that 1 ½ hour ride will combine high schoolers and elementary schoolers on the same bus, a situation usually avoided due to the potential exposure of elementary schoolers to the more offensive talk and behavior of high schoolers.

#4: A board member told us that, following their vote to close Silverado they suddenly realized that the elementary kids would be on the bus for long rides, on dangerous roads, potentially exposing them to significant danger, and that was a big concern - alas too late to do anything about it. It appears that concern is expressed only when nothing is going to be done about it.

#5: As a group, a number of parents have for months been working hard to find a good solution to reducing the costs of operating Silverado, including cutting costs, and setting up a Charter Environmental Science School to relieve Orange district from financial responsibility for the school. However the majority of the board have not worked with us, and several in fact will not respond to our requests to meet or discuss options. May I remind you that the school board is an elected body put in place to carry out the education of the community’s children. The majority of the board’s lack of willingness to work with us is, frankly, far beneath the dignity of your positions.

#6: The canyon community are the only children in OUSD now being asked to travel as much as 19 miles to get to the nearest school, Chapman Hills. Orange Unified is willing to include us in their tax base, and is willing to take our state money for each student in their district, but the majority of the board is unwilling to provide a school within a reasonable distance from our homes. No other child in the district – NOT ONE - has a school more than a mile or two from their home.

#7: Property values in our canyon community will be negatively affected by having no school within reasonable proximity. No other community in the Orange district will be left without a school close by. Families with children will not want to move into our canyons because of this.

And it goes on and on…

Therefore, I am formally requesting a response to each of the above complaints about the failure of the board to responsibly carry out their elected duties. I wish to know how those who voted to close Silverado elementary can justify the above actions and consider yourselves to be in compliance with your elected duties as board members. I will e-mail a copy of this letter to each on the board who voted for closure, including the superintendent, and I respectfully request not to be ignored – rather, I expect the issues to be “researched and responded to” by each of you, as stated by President Ledesma.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey Wilson, father of two children from Silverado elementary

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"find the political courage"

Modjeska Canyon resident and longtime Irvine high school teacher Jim Mamer sent the following letter to OUSD Superintendent Dreier on Tuesday March 31.

Superintendent Renae Dreier:

Andrew Tonkovich’s statement at the board meeting of March 26th is probably better than anything I might write. And I’m pretty sure that you remember it, but I’d like to add a couple of comments.

I live in these canyons with my wife, three cats, and dozens of friends, but I teach in Irvine at Northwood High and I often share my experience of living in this very old and very beautiful canyon with my students. Amazingly, almost none of them even know that these homes are here. They don’t know about the riparian streams or the variety of birds. They don’t know what California really looks like. So I talk. I talk about the two old oak trees in front of my home. I talk about the meetings we have at the volunteer fire station. I talk about stars that are still visible in a canyon without streetlights. I talk about the sounds of cicadas in the oak trees of summer, and the frogs, and the nuisance of the small black flies that come every August. I talk about the winds that sweep through the canyons – sometimes cold and sometimes hot. I talk about what it is like to share a bottle of wine with neighbors while watching the sun set on hills that are older than the country we live in. I talk about listening to an owl call out from the dark. I talk about the sense of community we all experienced when the fires surrounded us.

As you may or may not know we have a lot to be thankful for in these hills, but of course, as you certainly know, we’ve been through a lot recently with the fires and the smoke and the ashes. After listening, my students always respond with questions: How far away is Modjeska? How many HOURS does it take to get to work? It sounds like a different planet. How old is your house? Do you really know your neighbors? Can you really see the stars?

I’m sure that you understand my point. I’m sure you understand that Andrew was right when he noted that ours is a singular community; small, unique, remote, and politically vulnerable. Of course, I also understand that you have the power to close the school, but I doubt you understand that, as Andrew said, the school is one thread that weaves our families together. Did you take him seriously when he charged that you are helping to dismantle this community? Did you really believe that?

Personally, I find it absurd that we cannot, as one of the richest countries on earth, find the political courage to tax each other sufficiently to pay our bills in good times. And I find it equally absurd that we cannot, in bad times, find the political courage to maintain what is unique. You still have an opportunity to take advantage of that uniqueness. You still have an opportunity to build an environmental science program to which kids in the suburbs of Orange might elect to attend – if you let them.

I like to imagine what it would be like, if some of these potential students ever hear someone from these canyons talk about the sounds of oak cicadas and frogs, the nuisance of the small insects, and the winds crying through the canyons, I imagine how different it might be if a few more students in Orange don’t have to ask: How far away is Modjeska? because they would know from personal experience that this is what California is really like – was really like – and could be like again. I imagine what it might be like if a few more students learn the difference between native plants and transplanted, water hungry lawns.

In the end you will do what you will, but I’m afraid that Andrew was wrong about one thing - closing the last remote elementary school in Orange will not be your failure and your loss. It will be our loss, our county’s loss, and our state’s loss. It may well mark an end to what we offer and the beginning of a time when all of this will disappear into traffic, condominiums, starless skies, and graffiti. But it doesn't have to.

Jim Mamer

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Keep writing those letters. Check the sidebar on the right for more information.

"The closing of a school should be seen by any measure as a profound failure"

On Thursday, March 26th, Andrew Tonkovich, Modjeska Canyon resident and father of six-year-old Louis, addressed the OUSD board:

This board made a very poor decision two weeks ago, and we are back tonight to ask you to please reconsider. The closing of a school should be seen by any measure as a profound failure, in this case your failure. It is the absolute worst decision any board can make, notwithstanding one member’s assurance that the campus might somehow be reopened at a future time. The standard for judging your success as a group of elected decision makers is not in your ability, finally, to transport students on a bus or to sacrifice one one community toward presumably preserving another.

(Louis Tonkovich on March 5, 2009)

Our little elementary school is, we know, a singular campus in a singular community. We are indeed small and unique and remote and politically vulnerable. It seems that we are also the test-run decision for a worst-case scenario, perhaps as a way to see what the rest of the district will put up with by way of closing other schools. But so far we have been the singular worst case.

I know that your decision was for you individually a difficult one to make, but it was, finally, also just too easy. Close the smallest school, regardless of the actual savings, regardless of the effect on pedagogy, regardless of the impact on kids. Isolate and abandon and use as an object lesson the school with the fewest children.

(Silverado Elementary students, circa 1918)

I’m still not sure you understand the likely effect on our community, even though we have explained that the school is the thread that weaves our families and citizens together. In giving up on our school you are now helping to dismantle our community.

And that is also your failure, and your loss. Because you have in our Silverado group activist parents, community members, educators, environmental ed managers and administrators, potential donors and grant writers and business folk who asked you only to please, please give us a chance to work on something with you, to propose a way out --- who offered you a chance to not close a school.

(Silverado Elementary Students, circa 1930)

Our plan was --- is --- viable and real, a program for an environmental sciences education campus that could positively address not just the short-term difficult decision but build for a brighter future --- not only for the canyons but for the district.

We are still here, and still asking. We have not given up, and we have not given up on you. Please. We need your imprimatur, your sponsorship, we need one year to help all of us in the district --- not just Silverado Elementary --- be creative, risky, imaginative and brave. Closing a school is, finally, just not acceptable. I am confident that you know that too, and I hope that some among you will be brave enough to see that you have a chance, still, to revisit a mistake, to address a mistake, and to try harder. We pledge to do our part and you can know that the faith you will have won from not just our community but the entire district will be profound and long-lived.

(Silverado Elementary School, circa 1930)

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Write those letters and emails! See the sidebar on the right for more information.

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A Father Speaks: Do no harm

A number of people spoke at the Thursday March 26 OUSD board meeting. Here's an excerpt from one statement.

Tim Thompson was accompanied to the podium by his seven-year-old son Cole who was dressed in a fireman's outfit. Thompson had this to say:

"Saddleback Unified School District got it right too. They got it right about utilizing a small school as an asset rather than as a “liability of inefficiency," "a “burden,” as Silverado has been portrayed by some, Saddleback Unified not only saved Trabuco Elementary [their district's so-called small, rural school] , they turned it in to a money making, revenue generating school. And not just for the small surrounding Trabuco community, but they developed it into a resource for all of the citizens and students throughout their district. They bring in a 100 students a day on buses from around their district at $15.00 per student. That's $1,500.00 per day, $4,500 per week, $18,000 per month. Trabuco is still a small school of 75 students, but unlike all the other schools, it’s paying its way and then some.

(At left, Tim Thompson and his son Cole at the March 12 OUSD meeting.OC Register photo)

The OUSD has been given a proposal by the canyon community that has been 2 years in its genesis. The plan is to create a similar self-sustaining charter/magnet school for Silverado. We need time, a short amount of time, one year. We urge the four trustees revisit this decision for a reconsideration based on these factors:

1. The new financial changes to the – (negative) side of the revenue issue, following the latest offer from Ms. Pat Evans.

2. The polling results since the board’s vote on March 12, which shows that as of today 50% of existing Silverado students will transfer out of OUSD at a cost of approximately $200,000 in lost ADA revenue. These transfers are not to be construed as a threat. Rather, these are the very real actions of a determined community to see that their children/students grow and prosper in the environment in which they live and are intimately a part of - a rural habitat not a city setting.

3. The millions of dollars of economic stimulus money that is slated to begin coming into California schools.

Is OUSD able to provide a school for environmental programs & green technology? Absolutely. What school in OUSD could possibly offer anything remotely close to what Silverado is surrounded by, the Irvine Co’s 360 degree open space preserve of wilderness lands and trails?

We ask that you follow the lead of your fellow three trustees that see these possibilities. They got it right! Join them. Look beyond this rhetoric of so called inefficiencies. Don’t hide behind them.

Do no harm to a canyon community that is the last living reminder of the previous 100 years that has all but vanished from the Orange County of today.

(Tim Thompson and his son Cole march to OUSD headquarters on March 5, 2009)

My son Cole, standing here in his fireman’s outfit, is wanting to remind the four trustees who voted for Silverado’s closure that the volunteer firefighters of Modjeska and Silverado who placed themselves in harm’s way and risked their lives in October 2007 to save the school.

You four trustees who voted for Silverado’s closure, dwell deeply on this:

Did these community volunteer fireman take on such a risk for the sake of preventing the school buildings from being lost? Or rather did they risk life and limb to save what they knew deep in their hearts was one of the most valued assets of the entire canyon community? Silverado - this small school with six rooms and a little library, that their own children have attended for over a 100 years and is truly a cornerstone of their rural community.

Follow your fellow three Trustees. Revisit this decision. Reconsider it. Get it right!

Thank you."

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