This appears to be another dumb move by the District. According to a teacher, the Superintendent has started an alternative education program at the Superintendent determined surplus Acton School. The added cost of $100,000 per year appears not to be in the budget.
The cost to keep CSR (class size reduction) in K to 3rd was only $60,000 which the District "could not afford".
So the Superintendent takes an AP (Advanced placement) teacher and makes him a babysitter for a few behavioral problem students, keeping the Acton Campus open to these problem kids but closing it to the 4th and 5th grades that were housed there in renovated permanent classrooms. She then sends most of the Acton students to a now overcrowded Meadowlark school and places them in portable classrooms. This is after spending another $150,000 to $350,000 to move and refurbish those empty portables from Acton to Meadowlark, also not in the budget..
Only God knows how much this district will have to spend to add bathrooms, playgrounds, trees, shade, and make road improvements to Meadowlark to mitigate the overcrowding.
None of this money improves education but in fact damages it. How many more students will be lost to home study and private schools?
And you know the mystery renter of the Acton School is rumored to be a school for "behavioral" problem students from the Santa Clarita and Antelope Valleys. Just what we want in Acton!!
Presented by Doug Miller to Board of Education on August 5, 2004
Mr. President, Members of the Board:
I am speaking at this point in your agenda for you are about to employ my replacement as the Advanced Placement Government and History Teacher at Vasquez High School because of a decision by the superintendent to transfer me to the alternative education program. It is hard for me to understand how I can be transferred to a program that:
1. The board has never approved.
2. The board has not adopted a curriculum for this unapproved program
3. The board has not developed and approved a job description for a teacher in this program
4. The board has not approved a student selection process
Let me ask a few questions that you might want to consider before going forward with a serious mistake:
1. Has the board taken action to determine if there is a real need for an alternative education program in this small district?
2. If it is the intention that this program be for "wayward" students as reported in the press, or troublemakers as some have suggested, how are parents going to react to their children being labeled wayward or a troublemaker because they violate the dress code or do some other "dumb thing"?
3. If the alternative education teacher is "to teach according to the involved students" as stated by Dr. Wagner, then there is a possibility for a single teacher to have to teach as many as 11 individual classes to as few as 4 students. This could only be accomplished by the distribution of individualized packets and the elimination of direct teaching. With more students this number of individual classes will continue to grow. Is this effective education and is this how you want to spend a minimum of $80,000 to $100,000 per year for approximately 15 to 20 kids?
4. Is this how you want to use my 18 years of teaching experience and the Advanced Placement training which the district has invested in? Is this how you want to waste the five years we have invested in the Advanced Placement U. S. History and U. S. Government program. I am the only teacher to have had students successfully pass the Advanced Placement U.S. History and U.S. Government exam. Are you willing to trade this experience for a teacher with a preliminary credential with no recorded Advanced Placement experience?
5. Do you really believe it is in the best interest of the students of this district to take the only experienced history, government and economics teacher at Vasquez who teaches approximately 180 students and place him in a baby sitting role for maybe 10 or 15 students, handing out individualized instruction packets like we do in the core program?
This district has a history of making mistakes: a gym with no heat, moving to a high school campus when it wasn't ready, attempting to lay off experienced teachers and having an administrative hearing officer reinstate those teachers, and as late as last week grading without the necessary county permits.
These are all mistakes that didn't need to be made. Transferring me to a yet unapproved program with no curriculum or selection process is another one of these mistakes that doesn't have to be made. Please, before you hire tonight, rethink this entire program. Lets not make another mistake.
Thank you. Doug Miller