Comments made by Charles Brink at the 2-3-05 Community input board meeting
1. Re-direct the schools to focus on education quality that reflects the demographics of the community. Stop thinking in terms of matching schools in the Antelope Valley, but instead exceeding the best schools in the Santa Clarita Valley.
2. Move all competitive sports to a volunteer supported status and reserve all of the government revenue for academic purposes. While sports are very important, they cannot diminish the educational quality of the school, or take funding away from educational needs.
3. Keep all developer fees in an account exclusively to pay for a permanent high school, including both buildings and additional property at the Vasquez site. Had we been saving the developer fees for this purpose over the last 10 years, we would have $5 million in that fund today.
4. Make the school operations fully public by:
a. Prohibiting the Superintendent from spending or contracting for any item exceeding $500.00 without placing the item on a public agenda for both full disclosure and public comment.
b. Publish on-line every document that is given to the school board and sometimes the public, which concerns every item on the agenda.
5. Make documents Public. Despite repeated requests, the public has never been able to see the contract for the gym or the various rental agreements for the modulars at Vasquez. It is incomprehensible that the school will pay over twice the cost of the modulars in rental fees without accumulating a single dollar in equity towards the modulars.
6. Immediately reinstate “class size reduction” by re-opening the Acton School, which will also eliminate the unneeded and costly, bussing of students to Agua Dulce and the $350,000 expense for the Dance of the modulars.
7. File claims against the architects who failed to obtain DSA approvals for Meadowlark and Vasquez Schools, as this was their professional responsibility, and a “normal standard of care” when we contracted with them to be the architect for these schools.
8. File a similar claim against the architect that was hired for the gym project, and further determine if we can make claims in the nature of “fitness for use” against the company that financed the purchase.
9. The school's latest claim that they are in the “black” is just plain outrageous in claiming that closing the Acton School did it. What really did it was the increase in state revenue, that enrollment remained constant, and they took the developer fees to pay the rent on modulars instead of using that money to build new facilities. They are ignoring the $350,000 they plan to spend on the “dance of the modulars” and the $300,000 required to buy new modulars at Meadowlark to institute CSR.
10. In fact, the school district is morally and financially bankrupt but together we can fix the problem.
Imagine what would happen if the 1200 students, whose parents have chosen not to use our school district, enrolled tomorrow and the school would yell “let's float a bond to build classrooms” or maybe they can rent some more modulars. We need a better answer.