Saratoga News

LETTERS

Art docents help kids to be creative

I am writing in reference to the article, "Dedicated docents bring a love of art to classroom" by Tim Persyn. The article was about parent volunteers participating as art docents within the classroom. This is a good experience for both the parents and the students alike.

I agree with this program, and I think that the students show their creativity and artistic talents. This may be the only chance they have to show these artistic talents to the adults around them. For those children who are shy, art gives them an opportunity to express themselves artistically, if not through words.

Parent volunteers in the Art Docent program in the Saratoga Union School District also learn from this experience; they have a chance to be creative themselves, along with teaching their children. Even though some parents enter this program not knowing a thing about art, they end the school year knowing a lot. This is a chance for parents to show how much they care for their children, if they do not know it already. Parents should also take time to volunteer in regular classroom activities because it enriches children's learning experiences, and it also allows parents to know what is going on in the classroom. Parents could also do activities at home with the children that are connected with those in the classroom.

Besides being a learning experience, it is a chance for all the students to have fun because it is not meant to be only work. Art is where all the other aspects of education come from; if a child can not read quite yet, he or she can learn by just looking at pictures. Everyone also gets a chance to learn about the many cultures and events that are going on around the world. This Art Docent program should be a pioneer program for many other school districts around the world, because it is a great experience for everyone involved.

Since there have been budget cuts in the Saratoga district, art should not be dropped from the curriculum because it plays a central role in a child's education. I think special funds could be raised to continue such programs with the help of the community, parents and schools.

Norma Ruano

Spring Avenue

Grand jury story was just too kind

I read with fascination your feature article on the Santa Clara County grand jury. It was too kind. What a pack of fools, and, as you correctly state, a pack of old white male fools. A fit adjunct to our funky, self-serving court system.

My "attitude" comes from personal experience. I was president of the County Board of Education when the so-called "grand" jury came by for a visit a couple of years or so ago. We attracted their attention because one member of the board had complained that the board majority wouldn't buy a building, discovered by chance by a friend in commercial real estate, for a new central office, a $15 million dollar "trophy" building being sold for $2 million at auction on the courthouse steps in five days.

No matter that the building was inadequate in numerous ways or that five days did not allow for the "due diligence" inspection required of any responsible buyer. It was criminal that it wasn't--and the grand jury agreed. They sat in our meetings for months, smirking and looking superior.

I was finally summoned to testify before this group of numbskulls. They, of course, knew nothing about this "good deal" building and had no interest in being confused by the facts. They should have been asking about the instructional programs at the county Office of Education and why they were not, and are still not, being evaluated for effectiveness--that cost taxpayers far more than a one-time $2 million dollar expenditure--even if it were wise rather than stupid.

Your writer's mention of "big changes" in the county Office of Education as a result of this vague "investigation" by the "grand" jury is amusing. I defy her to name one.

There are more school districts within the grand jury's purview than any other kind of political jurisdiction, and, as we all know, public education is in enormous trouble. Yet the grand jury is uninterested in getting at the heart of the trouble: teachers' unions electing teachers to school boards to protect and advance teachers' salaries and benefits and to protect them from meaningful evaluation--or any evaluation at all; school boards abandoning their responsibility to oversee multimillion-dollar budgets to a passel of incompetent educational bureaucrats whose solution to every problem is "more money."

Grand juries, at least in Santa Clara County, are really just a means to allow once-powerful old white men, and a few token women and minorities, to begin or continue the delusion that they are important. They certainly do not serve the public good--or any rational purpose.

George Green

Los Gatos

Oak Street residents are never consulted

"How can anyone object to Saratogans celebrating this wonderful day?" asks Mayor Jacobs about July Fourth festivities in his letter to Speak Out in the May 8 edition of the Saratoga News. I don't think that the Montalvo area residents "object" to any of their fellow Saratogans celebrating this wonderful day. Their objection lies in the manner of where and how this "celebration" should take place.

I would like to express my sympathy and understanding to those Montalvo residents who "spoke out" in the May 1 edition of the Saratoga News. Their concerns for their neighborhood brought up many valid points involving the use of Montalvo for cultural events and the difficulties that these events bring to the residents of this neighborhood.

I have been a resident of Oak Street for 16-plus years. In that time, my neighbors and I have endured countless closings of our street, bumper-to-bumper traffic jams, loud music, drunken celebrants, speeding and illegally parked vehicles; all for the dubious sake of providing Saratogans with "celebrations," foot races, parking for downtown business' parades, and an unofficial expressway for those drivers not interested in taking a few extra minutes to use Big Basin Way.

We residents of Oak Street are never consulted about any of these events that render our neighborhood at times impassible, uncomfortable, and often dangerous. Little consideration has been given over the years to our complaints in the "kangaroo court" known officially as the Saratoga City Council meetings.

The "pursuit of the almighty dollar" as mentioned by Wolfe-Andre Wanka in his letter on May 1 does seem to be the power and motivation behind our elected officials, not the welfare and security of those whom they were elected to serve. This is why Montalvo area residents are expressing their justifiable concerns about those "celebrations," Mayor Jacobs.

C. F. Hendrickson

Oak Street

Instead of distrust, let's stress cooperation

I am concerned about the general attitude in this country of distrust of all government people and activities, especially if they do not coincide with "our" wants.

Rather than divisiveness, distrust, backbiting and selfishness, which tend to produce prejudice, anarchy and hate, we should be promoting and teaching trust and cooperation which produce peace, prosperity, calmness and even, perish the thought, love.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Saratoga "politics." I have been a resident of Saratoga for about 18 years and have seen more of divisiveness than cooperation. There have been very few "calm" years.

Metro's Saratoga News does not promote cooperation much either. The cartoons by DeCinzo are a blatant example of this. Have you ever seen one example of this that wasn't meant to divide and produce distrust? Just look at the paper sent out by SONIC before the last election which was based on his editorial cartoons. All Metro could say was, "We didn't authorize it." It was authorized every week in the Saratoga News.

This city could use a lot of cooperation and trust, but I do not see that happening in the near future considering the new events in trying to implement Measure G.

Conrad H. Bracklein

Green Meadow Lane