With no children still in the Conejo Valley Unified School District, I’ve followed the attempt to establish the Bridges Charter School with some detachment. Marty Bates, our local representative to the Ventura County Board of Education, though, got my Irish up. “I believe if we keep letting all these little groups usurp authority,” declared Bates, “it will deteriorate the education in Conejo Valley.”

Bates is in the business of education so he must know the definition of “usurp”: to seize and hold by force and without legal authority. Is that what the proponents of the Bridges Charter School have done?

Bates reveals an authoritarian attitude that’s all too common among public officials and seems more concerned with protecting turf–a kind of fiefdom for the school board–than in democratically serving the educational needs of the children of Conejo Valley.

If I were one of the parents or teachers who have worked to create Bridges, in a perfectly legal and democratic manner, I might ask Bates about accusing me of being a usurper.
Roger McGrath
Thousand Oaks