Conejo Valley Unified School District needs to recognize that much of the current situation with two new charter schools is because of the district’s own actions and attitudes. This is a “wake-up call” that CVUSD needs to embrace and learn from.

As we all know, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

The first wrong was CVUSD not partnering with Bridges Charter School in approving the charter petition. The second, more costly, wrong would be the district wasting taxpayer dollars converting a preschool campus into an elementary/middle school campus for Bridges and then wasting more precious taxpayer dollars converting the University Elementary School campus into a preschool/child care campus. Bad decision after bad decision.

I ask anyone with any doubts to drive by both schools.

After driving by University, the first question I had was how will the basketball courts with hoops at regulation 10 feet benefit preschoolers? Look at all of the vacant classrooms, another waste of taxpayer dollars.

Drive by Horizon Hills and you’ll clearly see that this school has been serving CVUSD preschoolers and already has in place the facilities for them. This is unconscionable at a time of state budget cuts.

Precious tax dollars could be spent on the children of the district and not thrown away, but because of CVUSD’s authoritarian attitude, it seems more concerned with protecting its turf–a fiefdom on the school board–than the education of our children.

The University campus is a mostly empty, move-in ready site, costing next to nothing in set up costs for CVUSD to ready it for Bridges. There’s plenty of room on the campus for the CVUSD’s current child care programs and Bridges Charter School.

My interest in this issue is purely as a taxpayer and voter in this community. My children have been in private schools because of this sort of bureaucratic nonsense. I’m considering CVUSD this year, but I just don’t think this board of education is considering the interests of children or taxpayers.
Cathy Ames
Thousand Oaks