4-26-05 The Acton-Agua Dulce School District has played "Musical Modulars" all too often. These moving costs do nothing to educate kids or build permanent classrooms or schools.
The current madness is to move 3 modulars from the Acton School to High Desert as a fix to the over-crowding caused by closing the Acton School. Looking into the school’s records, we find that 2 modulars were moved from High Desert to Vasquez High School in 2002.
This is an example of just a plain waste of money, because these 2 modulars could have been moved from the Acton School directly to Vasquez High School leaving the modulars at High Desert in place for expansion.
Now the District intends to waste more money to strip the modulars and Multi-Purpose Room at the Acton School. They intend to do it in three stages.
Four modulars to Meadowlark because they moved the kids from the Acton School to Meadowlark and they now need to move classrooms to house them in.
Three modulars to High Desert because they moved the kids from the Acton School to High Desert and they now need to move classrooms to house them in.
Four modulars and a Multi-Purpose Room (really not a modular classroom but in fact a manufactured building made up of multiple elements) from the Acton School to Vasquez High School.
This will strip the Acton School of almost all the modulars and eliminate the lunch area, making it hard to re-open the Acton School without the expenditure of even more money.
The existing plan to build a high school on the inadequate site for Vasquez High School, which the voters have rejected three times, calls for moving all the modulars at Vasquez High School once at a cost of over $1 million to the playing fields while permanent building are constructed. Then moving the modulars again for another $1 million, probably back to the Acton School, and spending an unknown amount restoring the playing fields.
Does anyone wonder why all the bonds have failed and will continue to fail until the School Board stops this waste?
First reconfigure the schools and re-open the Acton School to eliminate overcrowding, have room to reinstate CSR in third grade and a full day CSR kindergarten and stop the waste of money on the "Musical Modulars".
Eliminate the forced bussing of students from Acton to Agua Dulce and reduce the overcrowding at Agua Dulce
Take the money saved and place it in an account that could only be used to build a permanent high school. Buy the additional land adjacent to the high school so that new permanent buildings could be built away from the freeway above Escondido. This way the existing modulars at Vasquez could be used to supplement the new buildings and the community, knowing that $2 million wasn’t wasted on "Musical Modulars", might be willing to pass a tax.
Without a radical shift in thinking by the Superintendent and the Board, this proud District will be converted to what the kids self-named "Trailer Trash" and a significant number of additional parents will place their children elsewhere.
The board must take bold steps forward, ignore the Union defeatists whose leaders just wants more money and cares nothing about the kids. Support the quality teachers who have not been forced out of the District by the Union leaders and administrators.
Re-build our schools both physically and educationally.
Its not that we can’t afford bonds, its just that the community will not waste more money on disasters created by the prior board and superintendent.
The classic example is $1.3 million for a gym, which our students cannot use, but if they join the YMCA, they can use the gym. What part of stupid is this?