2-8-06 Many families move here to enjoy the "rural" lifestyle. Many kids are enrolled in more formal programs such as 4-H, which involve showing of animals, food and household products at the Antelope Valley Fair. This is all going to come to an end this year because of the mostly out-of-town teachers and union leadership.
The school has always started school on the Monday following Labor Day. About two years ago the union and Wagner tried to change the starting date to the last week in August to give themselves more days off. No they are not adding 4 teaching days, they will still only be teaching the state set minimum 180 days per year they are just rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic.
They are doing it again without notice to the community at the 2-9-06 school board meeting as item 11.1 identified as "Traditional school calendar",
Now any student who wants to show animals would be permanently branded with unexcused absences. When this issue was raised two years ago, the than current high school principal stated he would give excused absences only to the football players, not those students raising and showing animals.
Here is a quote from our 8-28-04 story.
"Its important to note that the high school principal looks down upon and wants to penalize the 4-H students. When the union wanted to move the start date of the school for reasons only known to their leaders, the principal at Vasquez High School stated that 4-H students that missed school to show their animals at the AV Fair would be penalized by permanent unexcused absences on their transcripts, but he also stated that he would provide an excused absence for all football players when they missed school due to football related absences."
He and Wagner were later let go.
Now we have the union trying to sneak this calendar in, falsely identified as "Traditional school calendar", with absolutely no notice to the community or for that matter the board.
All people who believe in a relaxed rural education must contact each board member and demand that the union's demands be rejected again and the schools return to what has been the 50 year old "traditional" calendar.
The community will have to decide who is going to run its schools or out-of-community educators who claim to know what's best for Acton and Agua Dulce based on their experiences in Palmdale and Los Angeles.