“About 400 people descended on the Santa Ana Unified School District’s board meeting Tuesday to protest school cuts and rally against the displacement of a youth soccer league from a school’s fields,” according to the O.C. Register.
Half the protesters were there to speak out against the SAUSD layoffs of classified employees. Many of them were recently rehired but others remain without work.
SAUSD Trustee John Palacio said all along that the district HAD the money to pay their classified employees and that the layoffs were unnecessary. Now it looks like he was right. One Trustee, Jose Hernandez, even voted to fire his own Aunt, who raised him!
The other group “was upset that six fields at Carr Intermediate that the league has used for the past 17 years were assigned by the district to the Boy Scouts’ newly independent soccer league. The district originally gave the California League six other fields at three different schools, which the league says is a huge blow to its program,” according to the O.C. Register.
Reportedly about 3,000 players were displaced by the SAUSD and replaced by about 300 Boy Scout soccer players. Wow. Can SAUSD Superintendent Jane Russo and her administration get anything right?
The people of the city of Santa Ana should demand discipline for the Administrators involved in hiding 17 million dollars from them so that they can remodel their offices and buy new furniture while claiming poverty and letting go the staff needed to get the work of educating out children done. They should also bring a motion of censure for those Board Members who also knew that this money was available but voted to hide it and fire half of the classified staff.
What is there to differentiate between this and what former Superintendent Flemming did in Capistrano? What is there to differentiate between this and what former Sheriff Corona did to our County Sheriff’s Department? Citizens need to demand open, transparent government and throw the bums out when we find that they are making decisions to benefit themselves and not the children in our neighborhood schools.
It was a great rally. Congratuations to the organizers for a job well done!
I know a little about the soccer field fiasco as I was involved with it about 15 years ago. It’s the latest installment of something going on for over 20 years, and of its about money. Boy Scouts Orange County need membership numbers to get their allotment of charitable funds such as from United Way, and with an urban environment where merit badges, campfires, and knot tying are irrelevant, they’ve tried to get their numbers through Hispanic soccer teams. AYSO and CYSA (aka “club soccer”), real soccer organizations, have most of the state sewed up. But for economic and language reasons, Santa Ana, Costa Mesa, Garden Grove Hispanic youth find these big leagues inhospitable. At least twice the Boy Scouts have hired a director of soccer to organize and run a Scouts soccer league, and when they’ve fired him for one reason or another (one time I know for failing to get the soccer teams to do fund raising activities for the scouts, like cookie sales), the coaches and their teams stayed with the fired director, rather than stick with the scouts and their new director. They really don’t need the scouts to play soccer — the fired director was the guy who reserved the fields.
This latest installment in this drama is when SAUSD did away with the position of the person who had done the field reservations for years, and turned the responsibility over to the director of Risk Management and Benefits, Camille Boden. With institutional memory gone of who had been using the fields for years, the Boy Scouts jumped in and snatched the fields, leaving thousands of players and coaches without fields.
SAHS Teacher,
Thanks for the great background information on this story. How very sad – and how very typical of what we have come to expect from the SAUSD.
The rest of the story is that our City Council has UTTERLY failed to develop new parks over the last twenty years.
The tragic result is that our kids don’t have enough fields – no wonder so many kids end up going down the wrong path in this town.
We truly need new leadership at the SAUSD School Board and on our City Council. Thank God this year we actually have a few decent choices to pick from…
It isn’t too suprising that Rob Richardson’s fingerprints are all over this fiasco. Richardson’s allegiance to the Boys Scouts is undeniable and it’s more than likely he “advised” the Boys Club to slide in an access the Carr fields. He knows Ms. Bowden is inept.
Reason #99 why voters should NOT vote for him on Nov. 4
SAHS-
my bird friend told me this
I have heard the same thing as you but I did not know that the intial youth soccer director was replaced by the one that was recently dissasociated from.
I read the audit from the boy scouts and saw that membership numbers were not correct, having multiple members in different team, as well as the leaders.
I wonder if you agreed with the findings?
Obviously there was a reason that they removed themselves from the league. I have heard that this issue had to do with a few members enriching themselves at the expense of very deserving kids.
What is wrong with ridding ourselves of people who make money at the expense of kids.
You said that you were associated with the league, were you on the payroll as well. I; not being judgemental because I don’t know you but wondering about tthe relationship.
I have heard that the boy scouts have built up this league. Is this true?
Would without doing away with the boy scout financial subsidy allowed for this league to grow and maintain its membership?
How much is the registration fees for this league going to charge to pay the expenses?
thanks for your answers
k i just have one question.. how many people were reinstated? or were there any people reinstated? i keep hearing conflicting stories and would like to know the bottom line..
thank you