Carolyn's Corner

September 1, 2005

Welcome back to the 2005-06 school year after a much too short summer! I hope that all of you took the time to relax, rejuvenate, and regroup. In this business, the next opportunity that you’ll have for any of those things is months from now!

Welcome to our district to all new employees…certificated, classified, and administration. I hope that you come to love our district as much as I have. Although PVUSD certainly has its challenges, we also have the best students and community support that educators could ask for, along with the beautiful setting and amazing weather that we are blessed with. And hearty congratulations to our two brand new schools: Pajaro Valley High School that finally got its own beautiful campus, and Cesar E. Chavez Middle School.

2005-06 brings many challenges to all of us. The major ones are:

1. The Governator’s special election in November which appears to be an all out attack on education, its funding (which is in the basement already) and the due process rights of all teachers that were protected in the past by “permanent status”. His attack also broadens to silencing the voices of all workers in the state of California in another of the ill-conceived propositions.

2. No Child Left Behind and its ever increasing AYP goals along with the ever decreasing funding which severely impacts our resources. Along with the lack of support, teachers and classified are experiencing increasing pressures with high stakes test scores, professional development mandates and the lack of time to get everything done.

3. The decreasing revenues from the state are adding to the stress. The state and the feds are making more demands with no money. Their mandates take up more of our time with little revenue for salary increases. And the skyrocketing costs of health benefits are only compounding the financial problems that we are all facing. This loss of money from the state is also impacting our students who have such high needs and an ever shrinking pot of money that is available to address them.

On a positive note…what do we do?

1. We fight the Governor and his corporate friends with every ounce of energy that we have. This is not a partisan fight…it is a fight for public education and workers’ voices for California, and probably the nation. National contributions to Arnold are not coming because of their love of California!

2. We continue to work on the Union/ Management partnership as we all work together for student achievement and to stay ahead of the ever changing federal and state sanctions. We all work together to implement the components of “Redesigning Schools to Raise Achievement” (RSRA) to impress on them that we are serious about reform and our students achievement.

3. We must continue to lobby our representatives in Sacramento and Washington regarding the importance of adequate funding for public education. Without support for this great institution, democracy, as we know, it is at risk.
We’re all in this together…we’re a team and we will prevail. Together we will fight the enemy and defeat it. This is our goal and we cannot fail. Our students are too important!

Carolyn Savino