DID YOU KNOW? Bonnie Donovan
Did you know that Santa Barbara Schools was rated No. 1 in education 40 years ago?
At that time, nobody was watching.
Money started getting moved through the system to partnerships, consultants and nonprofits to bring “support” in areas like special education, food programs, English Language Learners, CRT, mental wellness, COVID-19 funds and now SEL (Social Emotional Learning).
To these groups, our school system was a cash cow of state and federal dollars to be milked.
Did You Know? was forwarded a copy of a self-renewing contract from Capitol Advisors Group LLC out of Sacramento. It is dated 2013 and remains in effect today. That’s nine years at $36,000 per year and $324,000 in total. For what? Why does the Santa Barbara Unified School District need an exclusive, political lobbyist/consultant? Capitol Advisors claim that first; they are political advisers.
DYK asks, “Is anyone researching or asking questions before they vote?”
We sent an email asking a few questions to the current Santa Barbara County superintendent of schools, Dr. Susan Salcido, on April 12.
Her answers follow the questions.
1) How many employees are under you in the county?
“554 employees.”
2) How many campuses do we have? 3) What is the current number of students in the county?
“There are 20 public school districts of various sizes in Santa Barbara County. There are a total of 67,137 public school students in grades K -12. This content is available through the state Department of Education’s statewide public school data-tracking system, Dataquest “
4) Who appointed you and what year?
Superintendent Salcido was elected without opposition four years ago, after being appointed in 2017 to serve the final year of her predecessor’s term.
Then I was told: “You asked a couple of others questions that do not fall under the purview of the California Public Records Act. Under Cal. Gov. Code § 6253, there is no requirement in the law for government agencies to create new records to satisfy a request, nor does the law require an agency to answer questions when no identifiable record is described.”
HERE THEY ARE WITH THE NON-ANSWERS.
5) Do you support the removal of D’s and F’s as grades?
“N/A.”
6) What is the percentage of students per year who receive at least a C average?
“Individual districts may have this data.”
7) How many students receive Spanish instruction?
“Individual districts may have this data.”
For a person to have such an important job, and up for election, why in the world would you ever answer “N/A?” And then give a blanket statement that individual districts “MAY” have this data. We have noticed when questions are asked, they skirt around them, and when you ask for data, you don’t receive any.
So we decided to ask the same questions to Dr. Salcido’s challenger, Christy Lozano.
Here are her responses.
“In Santa Barbara County there are approximately 135 campuses within our school districts. Superintendent Salcido was appointed by Bill Cirone.
“I do not support the removal of D’s and F’s. There needs to be a metric or baseline that we use to determine that learning is happening for kids and this has always been our standard. If we come to the table and choose a different metric that educators agree on and it is better, I am all for it, but we need some way to measure progress and not continue to do things to continually dumb down the system.
“Well, it’s hard to say when over half of 67,470 students are below state achievement levels, and there has been a concerted effort to remove D’s and F’s. Check out this website. It shows the incredible amount of learning loss for English Language Learners, as well as other stats (ed-data.org).”
For the future success of our children, Did You Know? announces its endorsement of Christy Lozano for superintendent of schools
Meanwhile, across the country, parents are in revolt over their discovery of school boards and principals quietly inserting an agenda of widespread social engineering into explicit classes and integrating it into normal, academic lesson plans without parents’ knowledge or consent.
In the fight to push back on this usurpation of parental rights, parents have been in reactive mode fighting against what they refuse to accept as legitimate teaching in schools. Now parents should be more assertive in declaring what they want from their school districts.
Below is an outline of what that might look like. You, the parents must write this set of goals.
What do parents want from their schools? We believe in the inherent innocence and potential of all young children. We believe they all have the individual potential, in different ways, to succeed in the modern, multinational world of commerce and industry that we have created. Therefore, our mission is to ensure through education, equal access, and teaching to the subject matter and tools of knowledge that will prepare our students to be competitive and productive in the worldwide competitions for employment, according to their aptitudes and abilities.
We know there is no guaranteed equality in outcomes. Every person is different with individual abilities, aptitudes and motivations. But at the very least, we want a guarantee that at every grade level, at least 90% of our students will be able to achieve grade-level standards in the comprehension, reading, writing and fluency of the English language. Without this essential baseline knowledge, students cannot do well in other academic subjects.
We want a guarantee that 85% of students will achieve the grade-level standards in the required elements of Mathematics.
We want students through all grade levels to be guaranteed preventive, remedial, focused, instruction and assistance to be able to achieve graduating standards in English and math.
We recognize that most of your children are in our joint educational care for 13 years from kindergarten to grade 12.
Current student achievement standards in Santa Barbara are unacceptable after the time and money expended to develop students into educationally-competitive young adults. Therefore, these improvements in performance must be prioritized as though it is a “Manhattan Project” for excellence.
In reaching these objectives we, and the teaching profession, must deny and refuse political pressures to use our schools to promulgate theories of societal regimentation from cultural, racial and societal pressure groups and purveyors of teaching materials aimed at indoctrination of our children.
This mission can be accomplished only as a partnership between our educational institution and us, the parents of our students. Between us, it is our responsibility to work with one another and students to accomplish this manifesto.
Within four years, we must improve student performances in Santa Barbara County Schools to meet these standards.
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