Roll up your sleeves Mission Viejo. This community will not sit still for rejection of what was a carefully crafted, and well supported charter school. There was no legal basis for the rejection recommendation; it is based on opinion and conjecture.
The appeals processes will in all likelihood expose the majority in this administration and Board as not just shortsighted, but clearly acting on an agenda cloaked with obfuscation and posturing. What Board creates a flawed criteria to evaluate school closures, which recommends historic, superior performing schools to be closed against overwhelming community opposition including the city’s own Mayor?
This Board first voted to keep O’Neill open, then staged a reversal with the only opposition coming from a set up group of opponents from neighboring Lake Forest . . . hardly representative of the actual community served or effected. The Board should be on notice that the gloves will now come off. Undoubtedly available legal redress will be sought so that the Board’s goal to stall the Charter process, until it is too late to keep O’Neill open as it is, or establish the improved Charter program for Fall, will be defeated.
The voters will eventually deal with this betrayal of leadership but the first task is to congratulate and support the fighters who are saving education, neighborhoods, and indeed the entire planned community we live in. Please go May 12 to the School Board’s meeting and shout your support, or just show your face to say, “No” to this misguided effort of a small number of elected officials.
It is time to stand up!
Bert Bennett
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I wonder just how much public education is at stake in this case? I certainly am suspect of a Charter School with Frank Ury on its board!! Frank did all he could to attack the union and the school board when he was on the SVUSD Board.
Casting the closing of a school that no longer has enough children in the neighborhood as a threat to an entire planned community shows a complete lack of understanding of what is going on.
Claiming overwhelming community support for wasting money on keeping an unneeded school open ascribes to all of us the views of a small segment of the population.
The support of a mayor that has demonstrated in the past his inability to function in a leadership capacity in the school district, and whose children attend private schools, is hardly of value.
Think of the process as much like the closing of the military bases that has occurred over the last many years. Shouting at people will not change the realities; since more schools will need to be closed in the coming years.
I agree with Neal Genda. The city of Mission Viejo is reaching a peak in the amount of children that live in this city. As our city ages, there will be less families and inevitably less kids. The districts with this limited budget cannot afford to keep every school built at our city’s prime open, not at the expense of other students in the district.
Also I think the idea that there is “overwhelming community support” is ridiculous. If you are refering just to the O’Neill community, then sure there is tons of support. However if you refer to the community of Mission Viejo and the entire Saddleback Valley Unified School District that is effected by O’Neill’s move to a charter school, there is likely not as much support. The La Tierra parents didn’t scream when their school shut.
The only thing keeping O’Neil open is that students are bused in from a few miles away from newer homes north of the lake. These students will now attend a higher performing school closer to their homes. The Deane Home community probably contribues only around 100 of the 400 some students at O’Neill and can easily be absorbed at De Portola which is even higher performing than O’Neil and adjacent to the Deane track.