Bob Dunning: We have the solution, now where’s the problem?

“Should the Davis school district reconfigure its schools, moving ninth-graders from their current assignment at the district’s junior high schools to a four-year high school program?” asked the opening paragraph of Jeff Hudson’s provocative piece last Sunday in The Davis Enterprise …

I’m not sure where this notion came from, given that I don’t remember even one of our five elected representatives on the School Board bringing it up when they were soliciting our votes … “ ‘I absolutely want to look at having ninth-graders at Davis High,’ said trustee Gina Daleiden, who added, ‘Most of the rest of the world is 9-12.” …

Trustee Tim Taylor piled on when he added “My pointed question, what do we know, what is it that we are doing, that makes us so much wiser than the 98 to 99 percent of districts who have figured out that ninth-graders belong at a high school? Why is Davis so much smarter that we know ninth-graders are better off at a junior high?” … sounds as if Tim may have already made up his mind on this one …

According to Hudson, Davis is indeed in a small minority of districts that still have ninth-graders at the junior high level … it’s interesting, though, that Davis seems to pride itself on being different … in the water war currently raging in our town, we are being asked to embrace a rate system known as the consumption based fixed rate that has never before been tried anywhere on the planet simply because it’s “innovative” and Davis should set the standard in this regard …

But when it comes to the education of our children, suddenly we’re supposed to play a game of follow the leader … that friendly reminder “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” rushes to mind … are Davis teenagers flailing and failing? … are our graduates not getting into Stanford anymore? … there must be something more here than meets the eye …

O CANADA … former UC Davis player and coach Dan Hawkins may want to brush up on his French after being hired as head coach of the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League … Hawkins had great success at Willamette and Boise State before he crashed and burned in a nearly five-year stint at the University of Colorado … This fall he was rumored as a potential candidate for Bob Biggs’ job at his alma mater, but apparently UC Davis was far below his pay grade …

Hawkins is a good man who believes in his coaching system, and it will be interesting to see how he adapts to the Canadian game … I mean, here’s a gambling man who doesn’t like to punt on fourth down, what on Earth is he going to do in the CFL, which gives you only three downs to move the sticks? …

All together, now: “Alouette, gentille alouette, alouette, je te plumerai” … not exactly Bossy Cow Cow, but they do love it in Montreal …

BALLOT QUESTION … my friend Janice at gmail.com wants to know “Is it true that all ballots not returned on the water issue will be counted as a ‘Yes’ vote? How could that be?” … an urban myth, Janice … sort of …

There are two Water World issues going on at the same time here … first is the all-mail ballot, which is not to be confused with the way we used to do things in this country via the all-male ballot … on that one we will be voting up or down on the Surface Water Project … “Yes” and “No” votes will have equal weight … whichever choice gets the most votes wins … if it’s a tie, we’ll all have to move to Woodland …

Then we have the “protest” procedure for the water rates needed to pay for the Surface Water Project … in this case, you have to write to the city and tell them you “protest” the proposed rates … if a majority of Davis’ 16,000 ratepayers file a valid protest, the rates will not take effect … this is where sitting on the couch doing nothing at all could be construed as a “Yes” vote, but it’s actually no vote at all …

— Reach Bob Dunning at bdunning@davisenterprise.net