Another week, another disastrous San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) educational outcome for students and families.
It is clear that the total leadership incompetence, inexperience and corruption of Superintendent Marten, Trustee Tricky Dick Barrera and Trustee Whitehurst Payne continues.
This Sunday Reads highlights an article from the San Diego Union Tribune that tries to explain the SDUSD Four Step Reopening propaganda stunt with the most SDUSD relevant excerpts from that article highlighted We urge our readers to click on the title and read the full article for themselves.
BE WELL…TAKE COVID 19 PRECAUTIONS and VOTE!!!
San Diego Unified’s Phase Two Reopening May happen in January
The earliest all elementary students could return to school is Jan. 4, for middle and high school students it’s Jan. 25
QUOTES FROM ARTICLE:
At the earliest, San Diego Unified students will likely return to school campuses in January, after the winter break, district officials announced Tuesday.
The earliest that elementary students will be allowed to return is Jan. 4, and the earliest that middle and high school students could return is Jan. 25. This will be what is being called the district’s Phase Two of reopening.
During Phase Two, students will be learning in person only part of the time.
Elementary students will get to attend school in person half a day for four days a week, while middle and high school students will attend two days a week for four hours a day.
During the other hours students will continue their distance learning.
Any parents will be able to keep their students home in distance learning if they wish, officials say.
And…
The Phase Two plan is dependent on San Diego County staying out of the purple tier, the lowest of the state’s COVID reopening system, said board Vice President Richard Barrera. The district will not move to Phase Two while the county is in the purple tier.
And…
About 4,000 Phase One appointment sessions have been held at more than 100 schools, Superintendent Cindy Marten said. So far there have been no cases of confirmed COVID-19 transmission and no outbreaks at Phase One schools, Marten said.
And…
The district has said it will expand Phase One to include middle and high school students, too, but officials did not give a date for that expansion. That still needs to be negotiated with labor unions, Evans said, adding he hopes it will happen soon.
The district also is not yet announcing dates for Phases Three and Four of reopening, because Phase Four means full-time, in-person learning and “there’s much more that needs to be done,” such as figuring out a coronavirus testing program, Evans said.
And…
With an anticipated January start date, San Diego Unified will likely be one of last school districts in the county to reopen for in-person instruction. Most of the county’s 42 school districts have reopened for at least part-time instruction as of this month.
And…
In a county COVID-19 update this week, health officials reported a 6.6 percent increase in cases for children 9 years old and younger, which was twice the rate of increase for the county overall. There were a total of 2,016 cases in that age range from Oct. 19 to Oct. 25.
And…
When asked if the small number of COVID-19 cases reported by districts so far means San Diego Unified is being overly cautious in delaying reopening — as some parents have argued — Barrera said it’s “way too early” to make claims about COVID-19 spread within schools.
Barrera said that until school districts are testing all students and staff on a regular basis, he doesn’t believe schools can say there is little to no COVID-19 spread happening at schools, since many people can spread the coronavirus without showing symptoms.
“I don’t think there’s a single district in this county — or, frankly, in this country — that can make the claim right now that they know that if somebody comes onto one of their campuses with the virus that they are able to prevent the spread, because we don’t have the testing that allows us to make that claim,” Barrera said.
And…
Ebey Sorenson, a member of a parent group that has been pushing for San Diego Unified to reopen, says the district’s decision is frustrating.
She said parents have a lot of remaining questions about what Tuesday’s announcement means for expanding Phase One and what the district is doing to encourage more teachers to return in-person. Phase One is voluntary for teachers, which is partly why Phase One sessions are limited.
“It feels like the district keeps kicking the can down the line without answering these questions,” Sorenson said.
DISTRICT DEEDS SYNOPSIS AND COMMENTARY:
This week it was extremely difficult to select the “Sunday Reads” article.
The highlighted article highlights the ongoing “SDUSD Four Phase Reopening” propaganda stunt. We felt it was a good idea to help our readers memorialize each step of SDUSD reopening promises and lies.
There were 3 other articles that were very relevant to the current SDUSD educational disaster.
The first we almost chose is an Education Post article titled “School Boards Have Too Much Power They Aren’t Using to Fix Education”
The key quote from that article is the following:
“School board elections are too often dominated by local public employees who bundle their dollars and marshal their free groundworkers to hire their own bosses. As for voters, election results are largely determined by white voters and the outcome is that 78% of school board members are white even as only 48% of America’s 50 million public school students are white. Add to that the fact that less than a third of school board members are parents of school-aged children and you can see the disconnect between the governors of schools and the governed.”
A link in that article titled “Teachers Unions and School Boards Must Disconnect describes exactly what is happening in the SDUSD – in the election this Tuesday the SDEA Teachers Union is able to hire their own bosses.
The “hire their own bosses” claim is supported by the second article by Will Huntsberry of the Voice of San Diego article titled “Teachers Union Is the Only Big Spender in San Diego Unified School Board Races“.
In the excellent article by Mr. Huntsberry, there is a key chart produced that shows how Trustees Tricky Dick Barrera (also corrupted by other various San Diego unions) and Trustee Whitehurst-Payne (totally disconnected from the Subdistrict E community she has repeatedly betrayed in the past 4 years) accept huge political donations “from the teachers union political action committee:
The new Board of Education candidate Bazzo, handpicked by Tricky Dick, is also emulating the union money grab as the replacement clone of outgoing SDUSD Trustee John “Empty Suit” Evans.
The third article we almost chose is also from the San Diego Union Tribune (SDUT), this time from the SDUT Editorial Board (SDUTEB), titled “San Diego Schools Need a Reopening Plan“. Both Tricky Dick Barrera and Whitehurst-Payne are directly responsible for the current educational disaster of having no reopening plan after 7 MONTHS of delay!
The SDUTEB stated the following:
“It should be deeply concerning that the partial reopening of the county’s largest school district is months behind many other local districts — both ones in wealthy areas like Rancho Santa Fe and poorer areas like Cajon Valley.”
As we wrote and predicted back on July 12, 2020 in District Deeds Sunday Reads titled “SDUSD Chooses Parents as Pawns” Propaganda Scam Over Real 100% Remote Learning Disaster Recovery Planning” we already knew that the incompetent SDUSD leadership of Supt. Cindy Marten and Tricky Dick would NOT be able to come up with a reopening plan:
“The way that COVID-19 is spreading in San Diego right now, it is not a huge leap to assume that the SDUSD will have to avoid “full-time, in-person classes”, and most likely ALL in-person classes, and have to deploy 100% Distance Learning for at least until January, 2021…ANOTHER EDUCATION DISASTER with NO RECOVERY PLAN!”
The incompetent SDUSD Marten, Barrera and their cronies has already squandered 5 1/2 months of SDUSD Student education (3 months in the 2019/20 school year and 2 1/2 months in the 2020/21 school year) with serious ramifications as the SDUTEB describes:
“School closures since March and the inadequacy of distance learning are going to have a lasting impact on students, especially those in already-disadvantaged families — both on their academic progress and their socialization.”
So what IS the reason for the delay?
District Deeds believes that the answer is in the famous Watergate quote:
Follow the money!
It has already been established that Barrera, Payne and Bazzo have received huge financial support from the Teachers Union Political Action Committee.
The only difference between the three candidates backed by the PAC is that Barrera has been, and maybe still is, EMPLOYED by local unions and also receives extra financial incentives from the local unions.
“Follow the money” leads to Tricky Dick Barrera.
Here is Barrera’s 3/26/20 California Form 700 Statement of Economic Interest:
As recently as a VOSD article back in 2016 titled “The Man Who Shaped the Workers’ Revolution at San Diego Unified” Barrera proved he was bought and sold by the local labor unions:
“Barrera led the council from May 2013 until December 2015 and made $110,000 a year. Despite the attorney’s caution, he did not sit out a single labor vote or discussion. District officials said they never advised him to.
He did help negotiate labor deals and voted on union contracts, approving raises, restoring furlough days and approving early retirement deals even when the district didn’t find enough interested retirees it said it needed to save money.
Barrera says that he never had to recuse himself because no unions with which he was negotiating ever paid him. Rather, he was paid by the larger umbrella council, though it subsists mostly on their dues.”
So what has changed since the VOSD article was published in 2016?
Barrera has just gotten better at covering up his corruption!
In the article Barrera is claiming that the advocacy of SDUSD Students for a puny $18,000 a year as SDUSD Trustee gets equal consideration as his advocacy of Teacher and construction unions in multibillion dollar construction bond contracts and political contributions for hundreds of thousands of dollars from those unions in both salary and political contributions.
Let’s see…
Barrera Gets $100,000 Teachers Union PAC money to get elected
Barrera Gets close to $100,000 for his Executive job with construction unions.
Barrera gets only $18,000 for his role as SDUSD Trustee.
Barrera never recuses himself on voting for billions of dollars of unionized construction project contracts.
Barrera never recuses himself when voting for billions of dollars of SDEA contracts.
And then, in the 2016 article, Barrera says:
“People might say, ‘You’re prioritizing the interests of teachers above schools.’ Well, you take two steps back from that statement and ask the public, ‘Does that make any sense to you? That the interest of teachers are not the interests of schools?’” he said.
The self-serving, corrupt Tricky Dick Barrera doesn’t get it because he is too corrupt to get it.
We will make it as simple as possible for Tricky Dick.
Your corrupt support for the interests of Teachers during contract negotiations IS NOT in the interests of schools.
The Teachers have a strong, vibrant, well financed SDEA executive management group to provide that support to ensure that their 6,000 plus members have FULL representation.
It is not your job to “prioritize” Teachers contracts at the expense of the rest of the SDUSD Stakeholders!
The rest of us, Students, Parents, Administrators, Staff, Communities and Taxpayers depend on you and your corrupt Trustee cronies to provide FULL representation for US in ALL contracts!
You cannot negotiate against yourself!
As we have said in previous posts, the SDUSD Leadership has assured the SDEA that their members:
- Will get full pay.
- Will work part time and only be required to teach 3 hours per day
- Will not be given any disciplinary or performance evaluations
- Will not be required to teach from their school site classrooms
- Will not be measured by standardized testing of students
- Will decide for the SDUSD when on site learning will be allowed.
Congratulations to the SDEA for their strong representation of their members…you aced it!
Shame on you Tricky Dick, your corrupt Trustee cronies and incompetent Supt. Marten that have allowed it!
The SDUTEB article proved that THOUSANDS of school districts locally and nationally have successfully reopened during the Covid 19 Pandemic and the final quote from Tricky Dick shows how totally out of touch he actually is.
“I don’t think there’s a single district in this county — or, frankly, in this country — that can make the claim right now that they know that if somebody comes onto one of their campuses with the virus that they are able to prevent the spread, because we don’t have the testing that allows us to make that claim,” Barrera said.
The truth is that there has been over six months to make in-person learning safe for ALL on-site Students and District Personnel.
The truth is that Tricky Dick and Supt. Marten are both too incompetent to create and deploy a plan making campuses safe from Covid 19…and, by demanding safety for their members before returning proves the SDEA Teachers Union knows that Barrera and Marten do not have the skills or ability to actually do it.
The ignorant comment by Barrera explains a lot about how he performs as a trustee and another reason why we have no in person reopening plan.
The reason we cannot reopen SDUSD schools is because the Superintendent and Trustees don’t know “if somebody comes onto one of their campuses with the virus that they are able to prevent the spread”?!?
So the reopening plan criteria that the SDUSD is using is ZERO TOLERANCE for the Covid 19 Virus on any SDUSD campus?!?
How absurd to place the educational fate of thousands of students on impossible ZERO TOLERANCE criteria! This is just a delaying tactic because they have no plan or way to complete it!
Remember…we have a Superintendent that can’t think her way out of a paper bag!
The result of that position by Barrera is the ongoing SDUSD educational disaster for thousands of the neediest students who don’t have the financial resources to flee from the SDUSD to private schools, learning pods, tutors and home base schooling.
A parent in favor of reopening is quoted as saying:
“It feels like the district keeps kicking the can down the line without answering these questions,”
Using that ZERO TOLERANCE standard, District Deeds predicts we will all be kicking the reopening can “down the line” until the 2021/22 school year!
That’s right…NO FULL REOPENING UNTIL AUGUST 2021!!!
When you vote for Barrera, Payne and Bazzo, August 2021 reopening is what you will get…and you will deserve it!
Our question is:
When we do fully reopen the SDUSD, if there is ZERO TOLERANCE for Covid 19, will there be ZERO TOLERANCE in the SDUSD for:
- Systemic Racism?
- Not holding the Superintendent accountable for financial and operational mismanagement?
- Not holding Barrera accountable for conflict of interest?
- Not preventing financial and other contributions by Teachers Unions and PACS for Trustee Elections?
- Not providing full budget and enrollment transparency?
- Not representing all the other SDUSD Stakeholders in union contract negotiations?
The answer is:
Not as long as the corrupt Tricky Dick is allowed to dominate SDUSD Board of Education and his flunky Trustees.
We don’t call him “Tricky Dick” for nothing…he earns that title every time he opens his mouth!
Now for our quote of the week:
“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” ―
#MARTENSGOTTAGO
#BARRERASGOTTAGO
#PAYNESGOTTAGO
#EVANSCLONESGOTTAGO
#YESONMEASUREC
__________________________________________________________
IF
- Your family has been injured by the San Diego Unified School District, go to the District Deeds Complaint Forms page to find instructions to fight for your Civil Rights!
- YOU ARE TIRED OF THE COVER UPS AND LIES BY SUPT. CINDY MARTEN…
Please Click the Link Below and sign the Petition Today and READ the COMMENTS to Support the REMOVAL of Marten by SDUSD Stakeholders!
District Deeds 
Pingback: District Deeds Sunday Reads – Sunday, November 15, 2020: In-Person Window Slammed Shut? Purple Tier in San Diego Unified Makes Zero In-Person Learning Likely Until Fall Semester 2021!!! | District Deeds