Trustee is doing his best for school distric

I was disappointed to read in the Oct. 27 Thousand Oaks Acorn the childish letter complaining about Mike Dunn, a member of our local school board. I say childish because the letter was signed by the other four members of this same board.

I have a response for President Tim Stephens and his cronies: Please don’t forget that Mike Dunn was elected by this community and has exactly the same amount of authority as any one of the rest of you.

Mike went public with his concerns out of sheer frustration. It takes courage to stand up against an entrenched bureaucracy, and I respect him for daring to speak out so that the rest of us know what’s really going on.

It’s our money that pays the salaries of all your employees, and more importantly, it’s our kids whose future is being shaped by those employees. My experiences of the past 15 years (with four kids) suggest that most of the teachers in this district are hardworking, committed professionals who really do have some concern for the well-being of our children, and I agree that we have a great school district here, but I don’t at all agree with your self-serving statistical summary that tries to give the school board credit for this.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that we have a great school district in spite of our school board. The parents, the teachers, the students themselves, and the folks in the superintendent’s office rightfully deserve credit.

Your statistics claim that our test scores are among the highest in the state. Unfortunately, the overall trend in California’s public school system is steeply downward. I know this from firsthand experience: I have taught at the junior-college level continuously since 1977.

I get your high-school graduates and teach them sixth-grade arithmetic and third-grade English while trying to impart some practical technical skills that they can actually use to earn a good living. It can be challenging.

We are raising a nation of technical illiterates with serious deficiencies in practical thinking and a very distinct void of morals and ethics. I place the blame for this squarely on a self-serving education bureaucracy, led by the two dominant teacher’s unions, whose sole objective is to continue to have unfettered access to huge amounts of public funds with little or no accountability.

The public owes Mike Dunn a vote of thanks for having the courage to tell the truth, and for having a genuine concern for our kids. Our local schools have served us reasonably well overall for many years.

Mike appears to be trying to keep them that way, by resisting arbitrary changes that serve no purpose or degrade the quality of our children’s education. It would be wonderful to see some backbone return to the remaining members of this board.

Do you have what it takes to do what you know is right? If you don’t, why not step down and let a parent have your seat on the board? Remember, these are our kids you are messing with. Dirk DeKreek Thousand Oaks