By Thom Trybus Santa Monica
After reading the Feb. 21, 2003 Community Briefs column article entitled, “Music to their ears at the school district” twice, to make sure I read and understood it correctly, I cannot help but believe that its informative content will open up a sort of Pandora's Box of accountability questions from local hardworking taxpayer types. And it will probably be a deciding factor on a strong defeat of the upcoming local parcel tax.
With the school district (now very strongly supported by the California Federation of Teachers) constantly whining and complaining about funding shortages and budget cuts, having to pare back on a few programs, lay off any non-essential employees, their endless efforts through ballot proposals to elicit more and more truly great sums of money from the taxpayers is getting redundant to even those of us considered to be the dull and ignorant.
The added huge expense of yet a second election to vote on this haphazardly created ballot measure, the Deasy Parcel Tax, previously defeated having fallen short of acquiring a full two-thirds majority to pass, has never so far as I am aware of, been outlined and shown to the public. What will it cost to revisit this issue? And will someone please help me understand how a school district — declaring itself by acts of a Democratic Governor devastatingly broke and in need to milk more money (always at least doubling the amounts) from the local treasury — can afford to send the entire Santa Monica High School Choir to Boston for five full days, and the Malibu High School Choral Program to London, Paris, and Rome for a full 10 days?
But that's not all, because surely these gifted students aren't expected to be traveling alone. How many others, presumably adults, will happily accompany them? Will there be parents, teachers, instrument handlers, security, chaperones? How about John Deasy? Are you going along John? Nice vacation, or world class debut of a tour for even a big time rock and roll band. How much in real dollars will these trips cost? Aren’t there better uses for such admittedly scarce school funding? These are elementary and high school kids right? (Oh, you don't want to disappoint them right?) I would be proud to hear them say that they might one day visit a local V.A. hospital and play for deserving veterans. Proud as well if they went to Boystown, Nebraska and played for the orphans there. Are these the programs they fear will be cut if they don't get their way with the unfairly applied parcel tax? And, by the way, would they mind sending the rest of us a few postcards from London, Paris, or Rome? Heck, even Boston would do.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 28, 2003. Read the original PDF.