CUSD – Plea for Help
Letter from a Capo parent

Dear concerned CUSD parent/taxpayer:

Your help is urgently needed to fight the latest mismanagement and inequity in CUSD. Here's why:

The "old-guard" majority on the Board of Trustees is set to approve up to $12-million dollars in funding to put in a pool and football stadium at the new San Juan Hills High School (SJHHS). This is on top of the estimated $142 million they have already spent on this school, which has an enrollment of only 640 students.

Meanwhile:

...students throughout the district sit in substandard, aging facilities with moldy portables, leaky roofs, old dirty carpeting, inadequate or nonexistent multipurpose rooms, rodent infestations, playgrounds/parking spaces that have been taken up by portables to ease overcrowding, etc., and

...the PTA is continually asked to fundraise to pay for what the district says it can't afford but should be funding -- basics like rug shampooers, photocopy machines, classroom supplies, librarians, library books and even school nurses.

CUSD is running a deficit of more than $18 million for 2007-2008, resulting in increased class sizes (some as high as 45) and cuts to basics like custodial staff and guidance counselors.

It would be great to have such amenities at SJHHS if the facilities and services throughout CUSD were not lacking basics that our kids are entitled to. But too many of our schools are poorly maintained, and they do lack the basics and/or have facilities that are inadequate and downright unacceptable in some cases (see pictures for examples). These schools have little or no money earmarked for basic modernization. If the facilities money is used for that purpose, money will have to be taken from other school facilities budgets to make up for the many millions spent on these pet projects. That means less money for your kids’ schools.

The district has yet to explain where the money for the pool and stadium is coming from. Even the district CFO couldn't explain the facilities funding when asked at the Finance Subcommittee meeting last Tuesday night. The sad truth is that certain district officials have been known to manipulate the numbers, and in the case of the funding of the administration building, they go so far as to lie to the public. For example, while taxpayers were told that the money for the administration building could only be used for that purpose, the truth is that every dollar spent on building and maintaining the district office is money that could and should have been used for schools.   

Please help put a stop to this irresponsible spending. Please send an email to our Board of Trustees, respectfully requesting that they put on hold the approval of funding for a pool and stadium at San Juan Hills High School until facilities in the district have been brought up to equitable standards and the district works it way out of its deficit. The Board members email addresses are as follows:

President Shelia Benecke - sbenecke@cox.net
Vice President Anna Bryson -  anna@annabryson.com
Trustee Marlene Draper - mmdraper@cox.net
Trustee Mike Darnold - bajamike1@cox.net
Trustee Duane Stiff - trapper2@cox.net
Trustee Ellen Addonizio - emaddoniziocpa@cox.net
Trustee Larry Christensen - ljchristensen@cox.net
Superintendent A. Woodrow Carter - superintendent@capousd.org

Second - and this is IMPORTANT: please attend the next Board meeting on Monday, November 5, at 7:00 p.m., and submit a blue "Request to Address the Board" card. Please tell your Trustees how you feel about their spending millions of dollars for unnecessary facilities when your school lacks the basics. Please tell them how you feel about the inequities in our district. Please feel free to let them know that it would be irresponsible of them to spend many millions more on one high school that has already taken up the lion's share of the facilities budget when other schools are overcrowded, aging and. in some cases, at almost third-world levels. 

I will send out the agenda item number one week prior to the meeting. Please add it to the card before handing it in at the meeting. I know it isn't easy to get up and speak, especially if you're not used to it, but you will see many other parents doing the same thing, which will hopefully offer you support and encouragement.

I can't emphasize enough that if you do not take action, the Board majority will vote to approve this funding. That would result in millions less for your children's schools. If you have students attending San Juan Hills High, please take a look at the pictures. Then, ask yourself why it's fair that other schools should do without or do with less so that a relatively small number of students can have a pool and stadium during this time of deficit and cuts to the classroom.

Thanks for your support.