Trustee only listens to the voices he wants to hear

I have been following the saga of Mike Dunn versus the Conejo Valley Unified School District Board of Education for lo these many months and I am sick and tired of him constantly making reference to the "majority" of parents who were against the adoption of the Glencoe Health Textbook.

He consistently refers to the "will of the people" and "majority" as against the textbook and then states the fact that the statement cards at the meeting where this was discussed ran 101 to 16 against.

What Mr. Dunn needs to understand is that 117 people submitted cards at the meeting. Of this number, 101 were opposed to the adoption of the textbook. I would submit, however, that 101 people do not make up the majority of parents in the district. If Mr. Dunn wishes to state that 86 percent of the people submitting cards at the meeting were against the textbook, he is on solid statistical grounds.

But when he states that the "majority" of parents were against the textbook or that the board went against the "will of the people" he is simply making a false and misleading statement. Without a survey of every parent in the district, no judgment as to what a majority is in favor of can be made. And I do not mean an informal poll taken by Mr. Dunn, I mean a complete and statistically valid survey.

When Mr. Dunn is accusing the board of going against the "will of the people," he is really saying that the board is going against the small group of people who have views similar to his own.

It seems to me that Mr. Dunn's ideas of listening to the parents in the district is restricted to only listening to those parents who agree with him. Is this attitude what you want in a CVUSD board member? Bob Ballog Thousand Oaks