'MY VIEW' BY DON SORCHYCH | JUNE 8, 2011
Alinski’s kids
At my advanced age I am amazed at how schools have changed. Admittedly, comparisons between schools in a town with populations of 2,500 are way different than CCUSD. My graduating class in 1949 was maybe a few dozen; I have forgotten.Our teachers though were a blessing. Three important teachers were spinsters. They knew us and they knew our parents. Marie Baumer was the first grade teacher who started me and my two older sisters on the right path. And who could forget English teacher Highland Wiseman. She was a skeletal person with two vices, Coca Cola and an affinity for a female classmate. But everyone behaved in her class.
She once firmly told Jesus (pronounced yay soos) Moreno to sit down and he defied her. She walked up to him and with one punch of her bony fist, decked him. He meekly crawled into his seat and the word got around. Could any teacher do that today?
The last spinster was Elsie Gurnett. Although she often sent me to the principle’s office for acting up, she was a decent teacher and I deserved it.
Our class sizes were small, not because of funding, but because there were few of us. Today we are brain washed that we must have small class sizes (which, of course, mean more money) although there is little proof there is any benefit.
We walked to school and, although I walked over a mile, I had friends who lived on farms that walked over three miles, one way. Taxpayers could save millions if CCUSD eliminated busing. Busing is not required by law and most private schools leave it up to the student to find a way to get to school.
Today, CCUSD uses students for their political goals. In my day schools were to learn, period. There was no kindergarten either. Today our taxes pay for what amounts to baby sitting and there is even talk of pre-kindergarten.
While CCUSD poor-mouths, they actually have revenue exceeding expenses. Two members of the school board, President David Shaeffer and Vice-President Mark Warren are the liaisons to the legislature, They apparently used that artifice to get in bed, so to speak, with then Rep.Nancy Barto, R-Dist. 7 and during the Omnibus bill proceedings she entered a floor amendment to alter a statute, which allowed CCUSD to use funds from a bond approved by voters in the year 2000 for purposes other than those enumerated in the publicity pamphlet.
The uses of the bond money would in no way resemble the original intent of the voters. The Goldwater Institute filed a lawsuit and a temporary injunction was issued. It is likely the court will agree Barto’s amendment is unconstitutional.
The new budget passed, by the legislature, will likely force cost reductions at CCUSD. But greed has few limits. Now they are planning a 15 percent (increased from 10 percent in 2010) override using age-old tactics that it won’t be a tax increase. It will be a tax decrease though if it doesn’t pass.
Despite their hysteria at CCUSD, no serious cost reduction has taken place. Why, for example, hasn’t Superintendent Debbi Burdick offered some of the $30,000 annual increase that was attached to her three year contract rather than asking others to donate? Why is a teacher still employed that had the audacity and dishonesty to present a graduation address as his own when it was pure plagiarism? Why are they not expelling druggies? Why are they hiding the drug issue so students won’t bail out to schools that deal effectively with the drug problem? Why are they tolerating CSHS’s Principal Beebe’s method of choosing coaches and his hostile reaction to public criticism?
But where CCUSD really shines is trampling election statutes. After a notorious history of abusing election laws, which led to a consent decree from the Maricopa County attorney’s office regarding their use of school resources to influence the outcome of elections the Goldwater Institute had to chide them about their recent activities concerning the 15 percent override for which they are planning to ask your approval vote.
What a wonderful example it is for students to see their leaders continue thumbing their noses at statutes that govern school actions in elections. Unfortunately, election bureaucrats like Kristi Passerelli give them byes or wrist slaps most of the time.
So how does the school handle its issues? By shooting at the messenger, namely Sonoran News.
It is our job to keep them straight. But their Saul Alinski methodology is to demonize us, and the cowards use students to attack us.
For the past two years the town cooperated with them to allow PAC members to go to the town-sponsored Taste of Cave Creek, while wearing LearnYes.org T-shirts. The students and their handler, Greg Smith, confronted attendees asking for their vote. Smith wrote a favorable CCUSD letter and gave it to Town Manager Usama Abujbarah, who in turn gave it to Mayor Vincent Francia who published it as his own in a local shopper.
Although Abujbarah denies it, he invited students to host the deleted annual film competition. He denies that students will be there in their inflammatory T-shirts. Wanna bet?
The school administration and teachers also praised a child who invited all the jerks who don’t like us to protest across the street on T.C. Thorstensen’s property.
Now the brilliant strategists have yet another bill board T-shirt from the globalist IB students. It reads, “I Think, Therefore I Don’t Read Sonoran News.”
An e-mail blast sent to sell the T-shirts, said: “We here in the IB class of 2012 are raising money to support our charity, The Alenah House. Help us to raise funds to provide life-saving operations to infants in China. When we are in Beijing next year, we are going to have the opportunity to tour the facility and see all the good they are doing. You can help by purchasing one of these awesome T-shirts. E-mail us, come to room 301, or stop an IB junior anywhere on campus.”
One of the reasons these one-worlders are so stupid is because they don’t read Sonoran News. If they really want to expand their horizons they should read Linda Bentley’s front page research.
Do these dolts have any reverence for history? As a Vietnam era vet it outrages me. And have they learned in their IB class that Chinese are communists? Are they even dimly aware of their human rights violations, which includes murder and incarcerations? If they are so public minded why aren’t their efforts expended here?
Note they are using a school room (funded by you) to pass out propaganda patterned after their Patron Saint, comrade Alinski.
