Letters

The lament of college grad back home again

Top Five Hints You're A 2001 College Grad:

* The closest you get to any type of "process flow" is the traffic around Redwood.
* You've been following the reconstruction of the Saratoga library religiously.
* Dice, BrassRing, and Monster(s) are more than just playthings to you.
* Its not cool to cruise down Herriman anymore.
* You live in Saratoga again.

Christine Lee
Pike Road

Loss of eucalyptus a cause for sadness

There are many like me who have watched from the periphery as this battle has been waged, trusting that the leaders would recognize and stand against hysteria. When I heard of this last decision [to fell the 100-year-old eucalyptus on the Saratoga Elementary School campus] sadness filled me.

When so little space is allowed in public education for ways to develop the souls of children it is imperative that the leaders guard and protect those things, and people and places that nourish young hearts. What dry lifeless chaff is left to nourish the children when contact with earth and sky, seeds and fruit, sun and stars is replaced with contact with plastic coated diagrams of the life cycle of trees and charts of the heavens with incomprehensible numbers.

Videos and computers replace the experience of wrapping little arms around something bigger and grander and more reassuring than young feats. Being near evidence of the great forces of life is replaced by manmade environments that testify to humanity's false sense of being in control of everything.

Carolyn Armstrong
Sobey Road

School district misled voters about the bond

I totally agree with Mr. Ferguson's letter in the Dec. 19 issue of the Saratoga News saying the school district left much out of its report. The bond issue was described as funding improvements such as wiring, plumbing, removal of lead paint and asbestos, not as a complete replacement of the school buildings with cost overruns.

Only until I found that a website existed for their plans did I discover the extent of the "improvements." I called the district and had a few unsatisfactory discussions. As I live right down the street from Argonaut School, the periodic informational notices I received from the Saratoga Union School district did not at all describe what they really intended to do.

Since then, they continue to hide their real construction plans, overspending, misuse of bond funding, and they publish misinformation. I think we need a new committee to monitor the school district and the bond oversight committee. However, it may be too late.

Ray Froess
Ljepava Drive

School district needs to come clean about bond

On Dec. 5, the Board of Trustees of the Saratoga Union School district approved Resolution No. 241.12/01 to hold a bond measure election on March 5, 2002, for $19.9 million of additional funds to complete the Measure D Modernization Project which voters were originally told would cost $40 million.

Measure D was the $40 million bond measure approved by the voters in June. 1997 on the basis that use of the funds would be restricted to renovating and modernizing existing facilities and building new classrooms according to itemized lists distributed by the district during the election campaign.

We now know from the district's planning documents and by its own reluctant admission that it planned to use the funds for other purposes all along. These intentions had been withheld before the election apparently.

Thus, we can assume either the district had inflated the estimated cost of the project to include these unauthorized items or the district had always intended not to complete the project as it was presented to and authorized by the voters.

Even though the district became well aware of its budget shortfall long before construction had begun on unauthorized items, it chose not to drop these items.

Exhibit B to the Resolution indicates that $14.6 million of the new funds will be used at Redwood, and the remaining $5.3 million will go to Argonaut and Foothill with nothing going to Saratoga. It is difficult to understand why so much is going to Redwood even when you realize that the list of items includes the construction of "student support service areas" which appears to be the latest code name for an administration building.

Is the exorbitance of this amount hinting of another undisclosed agenda? Also of significance in the exhibit is that Argonaut and Foothill will not get the additional classrooms Measure D was supposed to provide unless the project is completed under the budget or the district is awarded matching funds by the state. Both of these possibilities seem highly unlikely considering how the district has handled Measure D funds and that the state has already reduced its educational budget to ease its own financial crisis.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the district had earlier chosen to sacrifice items the voters had authorized in favor of unauthorized items because it thought the voters were more apt to approve additional funds to complete the authorized items than to provide funds for these unauthorized items. Now we are being presented with just such a proposition--except this one admits to including a new administration building while dropping classrooms. The district is becoming emboldened now that only 55 percent voter approval is required.

I would expect most voters to be outraged, but perhaps not as much as I am. What can we do? I recommend we start by demanding that the district come up with a more reasonable number before it takes further action on arranging for an election, that it justify every dollar of the funds it claims to need, and that it provide a detailed breakdown of how Measure D funds have been spent, with careful attention being given to unauthorized items.

Absent these or if we are dissatisfied, therewith, I would have to recommend we reject the measure.

Wesley I. Ferguson
Chateau Drive

Correction

In the Dec. 12 issue of the Saratoga News, a story claimed Saratoga Councilman Stan Bogosian's sewer lines might be dilapidated. Councilman Bogosian fixed his sewer lines in 1995. He says he did much of the work himself and it cost around $1,000.

Photos: Eucalyptus tree and planting daffodils

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