School Board Meeting June 23rd

Four parents came to the school board meeting last night on June 23rd. We came emotionally charged as a bureaucracy was taking steps to ruin what is near and dear to so many. We had to fight to find the words to express our feelings without too much emotion and we spoke from our hearts. Our first parent to speak focused on the quality program we had based in Knights Landing; the questions of why the district is taking something so precious away from us as a community with no regards to the parents. He gave a general overview of the program and it was a moving and touching speech. It was a hard speech for me to follow afterwards. I could not have been more eloquent than he.

I spoke next, and I spoke mostly about the legalities of their decision to have us vacate without even a thirty day notice and possible estoppel by silence, putting us at a disadvantage by withholding information to our detriment. We have to believe that they knew their plan well in advance of June 20th. By keeping silent we lost time to find a new location and obtain licenses. I also directed them to their own budget agenda that night that called for no increase of expenditures as of this date. I tried to explain that hiring two unionized teachers in place of two salaried teachers with no benefits was not budget tightening. That starting up a program from scratch was an expensive undertaking and while they will move into our old room, they will have to purchase all of the supplies. I do not understand their reasoning logically, and we hope to hear the reasons soon.

Lastly, a parent spoke with passion about how we will keep the belly of child who is hungry full, will WJUSD do that? That we will clothe a child who is cold, will WJUSD do that? That we will provide gas money to a parent in need, will WJUSD do that? She asked if any of the members had been to Knights Landing, not simply passed through. Have they come to see our program? Have they gotten the chance to see what a success it is with their own eyes? I am not doing her speech justice, but it hit home and almost brought us to tears. You can't compete with what we have here, you can't come close.

Let me be clear that we heard that this decision to take over and turn KLCC into a state pre-school only was not made through the board. The faces of the board members showed shock and disappointment. I can only use conjecture to what they were thinking when we spoke. We don't know, but I do believe that there is support out there. I urge you to contact the members of the board to have them put this issue on the agenda and to figure out who made this decision and why. We need answers.