Davis

Comments about Òtalented, imaginative, proven leadershipÓ of the slate of three Davis school board incumbents remind me of e-mails and conversations I had with Gina Daleiden in January 2007 regarding Òlack of management and management oversight, be it educational, asset management and/or construction managementÓ at the Davis Joint Unified School District, which resulted in fiascos such as Montgomery, King High, etc.

While Gina kept reiterating Òthat was a previous board,Ó I advised her that the management was still the same. Daleiden informed me that the board was going to make some significant management changes, and they did.

As a result, the school district had the distinction of having three superintendents on salary at the same time! Do Gina, Sheila and Tim consider this an imaginative example of proven leadership? DonÕt try to e-mail the district; their server keeps crashing and they have no money to replace it. However, at the Aug. 10 board meeting, it was determined that Òrestoration of 3 FTE Secretarial was the highest funding priority.Ó ÒOne-time moniesÓ in the amount of $120,000 to $150,000 made this possible, and we could buy a lot of servers for that amount of money. One wonders if there really is a Òfunding priority.Ó

IÕm just not sure the District can afford four more years of the slate of threeÕs approach to exercising their fiduciary (big word) responsibilities.

Just so the record is correct, Davis, in the 60 years my family has lived here, has never rejected a school funding issue; this is a college town. Last-minute roll-outs of parcel taxes, designed to be less than the cable TV bill, do not build trust, particularly if they are insufficient to address the problem.

With regard to the Davis High School stadium project, thank you, Blue & White Foundation for forming in 2002 and pushing the issue via money and public pressure. Finally, it takes more than one year to determine if a superintendent is effective; look at James HammondÕs predecessor.

Walter E. Sadler

Davis

Comments

comments