"Mountain View School," 1881 (aka Villa Park Elementary)

My sister Fannie and I watched Montie Montana perform at our little elementary school c. 1961.

Villa Park Grammar School, 1925

.....Tell me, why do we so often destroy our own history?
.....My family arrived in Orange County (German immigrants by way of Canada) in 1959. By 1960, we had moved to Orange, near Villa Park. My sister Fannie and I went to tiny Villa Park Elementary, which had started life in 1881 as “Mountain View School.” It's on the National Register of Historic Places.

.....As you may know, recently, the OUSD decided to demolish some of the older buildings of the school, which date back to 1917 (or 1919). Efforts, initiated in the late 90s, to collect money to renovate the buildings have failed. Naturally, some locals were horrified. As the OC Reg reported yesterday (see District puts historic buildings up for sale), the latest plan is to try to sell these old buildings—for a dollar.
.....This seems to be a last ditch effort.

.....I’ve posted some photos of the school, plus some other historic OC photos that I’ve come across recently.
.....I just love this stuff.

Chunk's family used to buy oranges at this packing house in the 60s.

Villa Park was mighty small back in the early 60s, and very conservative. Still is. Only 17% of voters are Democrats. Greens?—.003%! There's 11 of 'em.

Meanwhile, deep in Modjeska Canyon...

[The photographs that once accompanied these words have disappeared. Here's what's left.]

It sure was a beautiful day.

Limber Lou was having non-stop fun.

Rebel Girl was lounging under one of her oak trees.

Debsy posed for the camera.

Paco was somewhat wary.

Red Emma posed with his new red star.

The Reb presented her 36-hour timer. Work to contract!

Work to Contract!

WELL, Rebel Girl just got home (11:41 pm) and while her spaghetti water was set to boil, she checked her email and discovered—as many of you have, no doubt—that the Faculty Association, with full support of the Academic Senate, is recommending that all faculty work to contract, effective immediately. The letter sent approximately an hour ago details this action and provides context—do read the letter and remember the hard work of your negotiating team.

From the letter:

The work to contract strategy is that faculty will temporarily retreat from all committees and shared governance meetings except those that strictly fulfill their contractual obligations. In order to work to contract, faculty members should concentrate on their primary assignment and perform only required activities. Beginning immediately, faculty should attend only meetings that would fulfill their contractual obligations. Faculty are urged to withdraw temporarily from all voluntary activities such as working on SLOs, special projects, task forces, and hiring committees. Further, faculty who are completing stipends and/or reassigned time should fulfill only the number of hours for which they are compensated.

Check back for more updates.

We're all in this together, folks. The goal is a fair contract which benefits us all. Remember that.

From the last board meeting: faculty address the board:

Our bubblin' cauldron

.....THE DVORMAN CASE. There’s a marvelous story in today’s OC Weekly about Capo Valley High School teacher James Corbett. You’ll recall that he and his district are being sued over Corbett's approach to teaching (remember “Jesus Glasses”?), which has got some Christians’ panties in a knot. (See Capo Valley High's James Corbett Isn't the First Local Educator to Face OC's Cultural Conservatives.)
.....This Corbett fellow is interesting:

The veteran history teacher...has taught at the university level in Beirut, Missouri, North Carolina and locally at Saddleback College. He has a Ph.D. in journalism from Ohio State University and wrote his dissertation on terrorism in 1970s Belfast. While teaching at the American University of Beirut in the mid-’80s, Corbett experienced “days of 155mm artillery bombardments,” he says. “I left after one academic year. The next year, all the faculty were kidnapped.”....

.....The OC Weekly's Altan and Arellano compare the Corbett case to the somewhat similar Joel Samuel Dvorman case of nearly fifty years ago. It was the Dvorman case, they explain, that set our beloved county down the path to being that special place where John Schmitz types are under every other rock. (Anyone who reads the letters to the OC Reg knows that, alas, these people are still among us.)
.....About Dvorman:

He ran for and won a seat on the Magnolia School District Board of Trustees in 1960...But Dvorman immediately proved unpopular. One of his first actions was to vote against a measure proposed by Magnolia’s other trustees to distribute Bibles in schools. For a district that had just desegregated five years earlier—long after the historic 1948 case Mendez v. Westminster ended segregation in Orange County elementary schools—this new trustee was too much for some parents: a liberal Jew who was a member of the ACLU and openly participated in protests against the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

.....Trust me, the article is terrific.

.....FACULTY CONTRACT. Things are happening re the faculty contract, although the non-availability of some key players isn't making things easy! I don’t want to mess anything up here, so I’ll just say that, based on what I know, people should hang tight and let things play out a bit. [UPDATE: the union is recommending work-to-contract, effective immediately.]

.....ESCORTED OFF CAMPUS? This afternoon, I ran into a reliable sort who had talked to an equally reliable sort who spoke to someone who "knew" that Vice Chancellor of Human Resources, Bob King, was “escorted” off of campus today. “How do you know?”, I asked. The answer makes me think that it may well be true. [UPDATE: TOTALLY FALSE RUMOR.]
.....What gives? Anybody out there got the facts?
.....In any case, these days, the ol’ SOCCCD seems like some kinda bubblin' cauldron, don't it?

Caption?

Our winner.

"It's relevant"; Education Alliance

• From yesterday’s OC Reg: Fiorello! will be the first musical in IVC's new theater:

.....Part of history is repeating itself on Friday at Irvine Valley College.
.....The debut of "Fiorello!" will include half a dozen cast members who were there, in the same roles, a decade ago in an intimate 65-seat theater at the college. One came back married, one is 140 pounds lighter, and one hardly changed.
....."Before, it was like acting in a barn," said Terry Christopher, who returns to play the lead character. "And now, you're just like, 'oh my gosh.'"
.....Oh my gosh, because the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical about a New York City mayor will be the first theatrical production inside the college's 388-seat Performing Arts Center. Far from a barn, the 53,200-square-foot building has balcony seating, an orchestra pit and updated light technology.
.....The two-hour musical has a cast of about 30, an orchestra, singers and tap dancers.
....."The wonderful thing about this musical for our audience is that we're in an election year with some really contentious and political battles going on," said Ron Ellison, theater instructor. "It's relevant."....

• On Saturday, we excerpted from a curious OC Reg story about Education Alliance and its involvement in the politics of the Capistrano Unified School District (Capistrano Unified recall group relied on political action committee.) As you know, Education Alliance has been involved in SOCCCD politics, too. It still is: Don Wagner is on EA’s board.

Here’s the Reg’s review of EA’s involvement in OC public school politics in recent years (that appeared on Saturday):

Education Alliance

.....Founded in 1994, the Tustin-based Education Alliance political action committee says it advocates teaching positive values in schools and a return to traditional classroom instruction. The group supports school voucher programs and local control over schools. It opposes bilingual education, what it sees as too much power by teachers unions and campus social services such as health clinics. Often linked to teaching religion in school, the group says it does not support that.
.....The Education Alliance has been named as a factor in the election of several Orange County school board majorities. It has been involved in some high-profile controversies:

2004: Two Westminster School District trustees backed by the Education Alliance are part of a school board majority that refuses to adopt the state's definition of gender, which allows a student to define gender as his or her actual or perceived sex. The school board hires Education Alliance co-founder Mark Bucher, an attorney, to fight the California Department of Education on the policy change.

2001: Orange Unified School District parents and teachers launch a recall election against three school board members over classroom instruction, fiscal management and teachers' pay and benefits. The board majority hires Bucher to help the district with recall issues. At the same time, Bucher personally campaigns against the recall.

1999: The five-member Orange Unified school board – some members linked to the Education Alliance – fights the formation of a Gay Student Alliance club at El Modena High School. Later in the school year, the school board clashes with teachers unions over salary negotiations. [My emphases throughout.]

• IRVINE: Group protests China's rights record:

A group of demonstrators protested Wednesday outside the Irvine Barclay Theater on the campus of UC Irvine before the scheduled showing of "One World, One Dream," featuring music and dance performed by Chinese students from Beijing. The group was protesting to bring attention to China's human-rights record. Groups are increasing their protests as the Olympic torch makes it way toward Beijing for the start of the Summer Games.

District Ominosity: code red

.....Uh-oh.
.....Looks like negotiations re the faculty contract are not going well. There's a very real chance that the Faculty Association (the union) will call for a "work-to-contract" (a 36-hour work week) very soon. Possibly on Friday.
.....If that happens, faculty will be asked to stick to the work defined by the contract, though it is likely that faculty will be encouraged to apply the action only to administrative activities, not to teaching activities. Union leadership is disinclined to take actions that will hurt students.
.....Among the faculty that I hang with, going into work-to-contract mode would entail a very substantial reduction in work.

.....Many of us, of course, are in the midst of search processes for new hires, part of Raghu Mathur's absurd HIRING INSTRUCTORS STUPIDLY (HIS) initiative, a misbegotten extravaganza necessitated by the Gooster's inveterate failure to observe the 50% Law (a law which, incidentally, has been on the books since about 1960, so ignore all that Fuentean "stupid new state mandate" malarkey).
.....In the case of the search that I happen to be participating in (for an IVC writing instructor), if the work-to-contract action is called, all of our committee's work—including about 18 hours of work per committee member over last weekend alone—will likely be for naught, 'cause we've got one more interview—there's no getting around it—and the soonest we can hold it is Saturday.
.....Alas, if the union calls for a work-to-contract action, they'll likely do that this Friday. That would mean that our committee cannot meet for the final interview and deliberations. And that, dear reader, would mean that our top candidates will be hired by some other college, not by us.

.....As you know, our Mathur-induced 50% problem can be addressed only by increasing instructional spending or decreasing non-instructional spending. Instructional spending boils down to: spending on faculty salaries and benefits.
.....Reducing non-instructional spending is damned hard, as you know.
.....But the Fuentes-dominated board is, shall we say, disinclined to opt for faculty raises or pay increases, even if they merely keep up with the cost of living. That pretty much leaves only the big dumb HIS initiative—that certified FIASCO that occupies the time (and weekends) of so many of us.
.....But, if the union is compelled to call for a work-to-contact, much of the HIS is threatened—and that could spell disaster for our effort to cross above the 50% line (spending must occur by June for this year). Perhaps as many as 20 of the searches are threatened.
.....Stay tuned.

N.B.: you'll find SOCCCD trustee bios (with email addresses) at Board Members.