Anonymous Mommy
  • Blog
  • About
  • Community
    • Safe Passage TOY DRIVE
    • Upcoming Events
    • Get Involved
    • Register to Vote
    • Conejo Community Outreach
    • CAN-tree 2020
    • Safe Passage Playground
    • Relay For Life
    • Why I got Involved >
      • Art Gallery
  • Testimonials
    • The Real
  • Contact
  • COVID-19
Picture

Subscribe

* indicates required

Your Handy Timeline

7/29/2018

2 Comments

 
Picture
There has been an effort to suggest that the creation of the alternative assignment policy was simply to aid in parent involvement and transparency. It's also been suggested that those who objected to this crock of a policy are anti-parent involvement. We are not anti-parent involvement in education. I am a parent. Do you get the impression I am anti-parent involvement? We are anti-poorly constructed policy. It's important to note that there has always been a policy in place in the district for parents who wished to opt their children out of literature. The books have always been listed on the district website. And, parents have always received a syllabus with the books listed. 

We are also anti-shenanigans implemented by an extremist board majority that create unnecessary controversy, community divisiveness, and inefficient use of time and district funds. Our district is operating at a deficit and our enrollment is declining, and yet the current board majority (comprised of Mike Dunn, Jon Andersen, and Sandee Everett) spent more than a year of board meetings on shoving through a curriculum and selection review policy that was never asked for.

Many people, who are trying to catch up on what exactly happened have been asking me to create a timeline to share. Please see below.



January 2017: English Dept. requests “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” be added to the curriculum. (It goes through the process, which involves being reviewed by the district's curriculum committee — a committee comprised of credentialed experts who are well versed in reviewing curriculum needs.
 
June 2017: The book appears on the agenda for approval by the board. CVUSD Board President Mike Dunn reads a quote from the book out loud, “I kicked him in the balls,” and says he’s not sure he would want his kids reading that book.
 
Book does not appear on the next meeting’s agenda for approval. Community members have to write in asking that the book be added back to the agenda for vote and approval. It is added to the August 15 board meeting.

READ RELEVANT BLOG HERE.
 
Quick facts:
 
  • Mike Dunn wrote a letter to The Acorn and described the book as pornographic and akin to child abuse. It is neither.
  • Mike Dunn wrote the same to me, and then when I asked him to show me the passages of concern, he sent me passages from  “Snow Falling on Cedar,” an entirely different book.
 
August 2017: After hours of public comments from both community members in favor of the book and outside activists brought in to speak against the book (affiliated with Unified Conejo), the book is approved with the caveat by Board Member Jon Andersen that the board formalize an opt-out policy on paper.

READ RELEVANT BLOG HERE.
 
Quick facts:
 
  • The state of California does not guarantee opt-out rights for parents except for three areas: HIV/AIDS prevention, sex-ed curriculum, and opt-in surveys
 
  • HOWEVER, CVUSD has always made it a policy to work with parents who request alternative assignments for their children. 
 
September/October 2017: Board unanimously votes upon creating a committee (we’ll refer to it as the teacher committee) to formalize language as to how a parent could request an alternative assignment for their child. The committee was to be comprised of teachers, district personnel, and to have oversight by two board members: Sandee Everett and Pat Phelps.

READ RELEVANT BLOG HERE.
 
November 2017: Teacher committee produces policy to Sandee Everett and Pat Phelps for review. Sandee Everett doesn’t like policy; writes her own. Gives powerpoint presentation at next board meeting defending her policy, and prevents many (including students who had been standing for six hours) from offering public comment on her policy. Board majority puts Sandee’s policy on the agenda for the next meeting to vote upon, despite Pat Phelps' request to wait, as she would not be present for next board meeting. They refuse.

READ RELEVANT BLOG HERE.
READ SECOND RELEVANT BLOG HERE.
READ THIRD RELEVANT BLOG HERE.

Quick facts:

 
The entire and sole purpose of the policy was to formalize language as to how a parent could request an alternative assignment for their child. What Sandee’s policy did:
 
  • Created an opt-out policy, that also included new criteria for the selection and review process of curriculum
  • Added a parent committee that would review curriculum requests (later the board majority would vote that there is no requirement that you be a parent of this committee, but could simply be a community member. Mike Dunn states openly at board meeting that he’s thrilled because a friend of his had been asking him forever to be on a committee.)
  • Required certain books be asterisked based on annotations that were attributed to books on the California Dept. of Ed (CDE) website.
  • Asterisked books would be on a district-created syllabus that would contain a paragraph of warning language about the book and ask for a parent signature.
 
***Also to note: Mike Dunn, then-board president, refused to add the teacher committee policy (you know, the one they unanimously agreed to have written) to the agenda for discussion/review, despite receiving a formal request to have it added to the agenda by Dr. Connolly. Mike Dunn lied at the board meeting and said he was never asked to add it to agenda. Dr. Connolly produces emails that show otherwise. 

The board only discussed Sandee Everett's policy — never giving the public the opportunity to hear discussion session on the policy created by the teacher committee.

 
November 2017: Board majority (comprised of Mike Dunn, Jon Andersen and Sandee Everett) votes to approve Sandee’s policy, despite receiving a petition of more than 3,000 community member signatures opposed.

READ RELEVANT BLOG HERE.
 
Note: prior to the vote, the agenda item for consent approving the purchase order for “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” was removed from the agenda. Then, when the board majority got the vote they wanted, they immediately added the consent item back to the agenda and approved it. They basically held the book order hostage until they got the policy they wanted approved. Then board president Jon Andersen gave a whole lecture about how he believes in transparency.
 
December 2017: Jon Andersen voted in as board president, Sandee Everett voted in as vice president by board majority.
 
January 2018: District syllabi go out. “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” the book that launched this whole charade — the one that Mike Dunn called pornographic, wasn’t even controversial enough to warrant an asterisk on the syllabus. Yes, my friends. We had all been had. It was just a prop in order to allow the board majority to implement and opt-out policy under the guise of appearing to support parental rights and transparency.

Issues with how hastily the opt-out policy had to be implemented: only one alternative assignment policy was created by the district  — a grade 9 reading level book. Therefore, regardless of grade, your alternative assignment that you would be reading in the library on your own, was level 9. If you opted out of more than one book (which did happen), you didn't have another assignment prepared.
 
Also January 2018:
 
  • I speak at a board meeting discussing my issues with the above.
  • Mike Dunn then emails my employer and threatens my employer if I do not silence myself.
 
READ RELEVANT BLOG HERE.

February 2018: Mike Dunn is censured by the board for threatening my employer. He doesn’t show up for his censure because his wife wouldn’t allow him to. I’m not kidding. That’s the actual statement he had Jon Andersen, now board president, read to the more than 300 people who showed up.
 
READ RELEVANT BLOG HERE.
READ SECOND RELEVANT BLOG HERE. 

Quick aside:
 
The California Dept. of Education (CDE), upon learning what CVUSD planned to do in using the annotations on its website for CVUSD’s policy, REMOVED ALL ANNOTATIONS from its website, believing the CVUSD was abusing the purpose of its annotations… thus rendering Sandee’s policy outdated… as it referenced annotations that no longer existed. This meant the board would need to review the policy and discuss amendments.
 
May 2018:  We learn that board president Jon Andersen secretly (without approval or even discussion of the board) used more than $1,000 of district funds to have legal counsel file a public records request to the CDE (which can be done for free) demanding ALL exchanges to the CDE regarding the annotations, as well as NAMES of all community members who corresponded with the CDE regarding the annotations on the website and the CVUSD policy up for discussion.
 
READ RELEVANT BLOG HERE.

Also May 2018: Sandee Everett writes 16+ pages of amendments to her policy. She only presents these amendments to board members for review when the agenda action item on the policy amendments is called. Pat Phelps and Dr. Betsy Connolly ask for an additional session to review the new amendments they just received before voting. The board majority rejects this request, Jon Andersen offers them 5 minutes to review, and then forces a vote, in which the board majority approves amendments. (It should be noted that Jon Andersen and Mike Dunn did not pose a single question about any of the amendments, nor appear to even glance at them — leading public to wonder if they had seen in advance or just didn’t give a damn.) It should also be noted that Sandee Everett did not allow amendments to be made available to the public which is a Brown Act violation. When The Acorn asked her about this, she lied and placed the blame on board clerk, Hyonchin Turner, despite the fact that community members witnessed Sandee’s specific instructions to Ms. Turner regarding number of copies and who/when the amendments would be distributed to.
 
What Sandee's amendments do:
 
  • Add a decency clause into the policy regarding curriculum selection and review.
  • Will still link to ARCHIVED CDE pages, stating that it still believes the annotations are relevant.

READ RELEVANT BLOG HERE.
 
Y'all, that's what your current board majority (Jon Andersen, Mike Dunn and Sandee Everett) have been doing this last year: misusing district funds, threatening constituents and their employers, threatening the quality of our district's education and beyond.  

Don't believe you have skin in the game? (Don't have kids entering/or in the district?) Poor school district reputation will affect your home value. You should be concerned. The decisions being made by our school board will affect all constituents, children or not.


NOVEMBER 6: #VOTETHEMOUT

Jon Andersen and Mike Dunn are up for re-election. Pat Phelps will not be re-running.


You have three votes. My choices are:

Bill Gorback
Jenny Fitzgerald
Cindy Goldberg

#CONEJOTOGETHER 

2 Comments
Jeg
10/3/2018 07:52:23 pm

I think you may have overlooked a key violation of the Brown Act, which not only requires open access to documents but also regulates communications among board members. If Sandee, Mike, and Jon met, emailed, or otherwise communicated as a trio, that's a quorum of the board and constitutes a meeting, whether they called it a meeting or not. If the three of them have met, or even communicated jointly, either through social media or by email, that communication may be an unlawful meeting. See also https://www.westerncity.com/article/brown-act-and-perils-electronic-communication

Reply
Jeg
10/3/2018 07:55:23 pm

And, further, it seems obvious that those three *did* meet (in the Brown Act sense of a meeting) because 2 of them didn't need any time to read, review, or ask questions about Sandee's 16 pages, whereas the other 2 board members (not part of this troublesome cabal) clearly hadnt seen it before. When did Mike and Jon see it? If Sandee emailed it to them, that's a violation of the Brown Act. And if the three of them discussed in an email thread, that's a *series* of violations.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Anonymous Mommy

    Archives

    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    October 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015

    Categories

    All
    Anythingbutbrunch
    Babyblues
    Breastfeeding
    Chadandbecky
    Community
    Huggiesgate
    Mallwalking
    Momgroups
    Momthoughts
    Nursing
    Ramblings
    Theplaydestination

    RSS Feed

Anonymous Mommy

Home
About
Blog
Contact 
© COPYRIGHT 2015. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Photos used under Creative Commons from elliemcc11, PersonalCreations.com, wocintechchat.com, Jonathan Meddings, Yachichurova, fveronesi1, jiposhy, osde8info, ultrakml, 401k Limits, Rosmarie Voegtli, Khanelle Prod' Medias, miguelb, HHA124L, mikecogh, quinn.anya, SharonLeePhotography, ultrakml, plastigffantastig88, timsackton, osseous, ultrakml, M. Pratter, Prestonbot, mcashpatel, Khanelle Prod' Medias, James St. John, stevendepolo, Francisco Anzola
  • Blog
  • About
  • Community
    • Safe Passage TOY DRIVE
    • Upcoming Events
    • Get Involved
    • Register to Vote
    • Conejo Community Outreach
    • CAN-tree 2020
    • Safe Passage Playground
    • Relay For Life
    • Why I got Involved >
      • Art Gallery
  • Testimonials
    • The Real
  • Contact
  • COVID-19