I was disappointed and puzzled by Dene Bustichi’s commentary last week (“Yes, Dr. Silver, we do care about our schools,” Feb. 5) following his attendance at a community meeting held by the Scotts Valley Unified School District board and administration. The purpose of the meeting was to explain to the public the effect of the governor’s proposed budget on public education in general and SVUSD in particular.
During the meeting, audience members asked a variety of questions. Mr. Bustichi may have misunderstood but certainly misrepresented responses I made, taking them out of context and drawing erroneous conclusions. The commentary seemed to be a personal attack, rather than an analysis of, or commentary on, the difficult issues facing our school district.
SVUSD, already a low-funded district, will definitely experience further cuts that may ultimately hurt programs and services for our students. This is a time for the community to come together in a sincere attempt to understand the issues, have open and inclusive dialogue and come to a community consensus for action.
I trust that Mr. Bustichi is involved in community service for the same reason that I have dedicated my professional career to public education — to add to the quality of life of the people we have chosen to serve. In these difficult times, it is imperative that we take a positive approach, working together to support the young people in our community.
I invite Mr. Bustichi join us in a spirit of cooperation. Together, we can achieve far more.
Several years ago when SVUSD paid for a FCMAT report on how to save money and one of the suggestions was to work with parents and include them in discussions and team buliding opportunities......never happened....and yes, we the cititens paid for this report that dr. silver choose to not pay attention to....
throw in several no confidence votes by the teachers and I'd say we have a real problem here.
Oh, and I was at the meeting where Dr. Silver mentioned that she was from over the hill. She said her hometown supported bond measures for their schools. Ours did not. Simple statement of fact. There was no comparison. Geez, half the town gets their feelings hurt over a misquote. Must have been a slow news week.
"Are we a good school district? Eh. Do we have good kids and good teachers? Yeah, probably. But are we GREAT? Not really." - this was her speech the day before school started to all of her staff in attempt to inspire them to achieve higher last year.
She has also said that she doesn't live here but that her town is more supportive than ours. I strongly disagree.
Our teachers were not opposed to professional development - they already had it when Dr. Silver arrived. What they were opposed to is the idea that someone else should be able to tell them how to best spend their professional development time.