Letter: School district must prioritize needs, wellbeing of students, teachers
Dear editor,
– As the father of two students enrolled in the Paso Robles school district it has been an exasperating few years. It has felt like at every turn the board has chosen politics and personal agendas over the well-being of students and teachers. My faith in the leadership of this district has been dramatically eroded and I don’t think I am alone in that feeling. The mismanagement of the Measure M funding alone led to a grand jury investigation that labeled the district a “Cautionary Tale” and quickly ended the tenure of the then superintendent.
Moving forward we have endured a board-contrived double move plan that had our kids scheduled to attend a temporary campus woefully equipped to handle our school’s size. Mine and other parents’ pleas for reason have fallen on deaf ears time and time again. If it were not for the amazing dual immersion program that my children attend I am confident we would have fled the district like so many of our friends and neighbors.
A glimmer of hope arrived a couple of weeks back when a seismic anomaly was discovered underneath the 36th Street campus forcing the district to re-evaluate the present course of action. My hope is that the better angels of our nature will prevail and we can move past the hundreds of thousands of dollars of wasted money and finally make the difficult decisions that need to be made. The circumstances that prompted the 7-11 committee report haven’t changed. We still have too many classrooms and not enough students. What money we do have is quickly being squandered pursuing inane plans that only serve the status quo.
Let your school board know at the June 13 meeting that the taxpayers of this fine city are not interested in flushing any more money down the drain at the 36th Street campus. Frankly, this district needs to come to the understanding that it can not keep spending money it doesn’t have on a school it doesn’t need for parents that do not want it.
Cordially,
-Jim Pahler, Paso Robles
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