No Decision Yet on Fate of Valley Oak

Last night, the Davis Joint Unified School Board met for nearly four hours listening to more information from the Task Force, representatives of the Davis OPEN group, and the general public. In the end, given the late hour they decided to forestall a staff presentation and board comments until a special meeting on Monday, March 19, 2007.

In the meantime, critical information was presented to the board. In particular the board was given answers to question of a half-mile distance from Valley Oak. At the March 1, 2007 meeting and in the report, the Task Force presented travel distances for one mile walking distance and one and one half mile walking distance. These data showed virtually no change in the walking distance for student if Valley Oak were closed down.

However, the problem with that data is that especially for young students, one mile distance is not walkable. Indeed, the Davis OPEN group in their presentation showed that ideally, a six year old would take 44 minutes to walk a mile but only 22 minutes to walk half a mile. Moreover as we discussed last time, few people would allow their Kindergartener to third grader to walk that distance to school.

The board asked for the distances for half-mile and the results of that data show a very large difference between leaving Valley Oak open and closing it down.

In an email from Scott Torlucci of Davis Demographics & Planning, Inc. (DDP) to the Davis School Board, of 100 K-3 students who reside in the Valley Oak attendance zone and attend Valley Oak, 50 are within half a mile of Valley Oak. If Valley Oak were to close, only 2 of those 100 students would be within half a mile of an alternate school.

Of the students outside of that half mile walking distance to Valley Oak, 27 of them appear to be closer to Valley Oak than to an alternative school while 9 appear closer to an alliterative school than to Valley Oak. There are also 14 that reside on Olive Drive and are not close to any school.

The Task Force defended their findings suggesting that only around a quarter of all students live within half-mile of a school and that would impose a standard that is not used anywhere else in the district.

Unfortunately, they completely miss the point here. First of all, this data conclusively demonstrates that closing the school would have a negative impact on the specific students that attend Valley Oak regardless of the standards for the rest of the district. Second, many students at Valley Oak have transportation issues since they are Title 1 students and this close would be a larger burden on them than on students in other attendance areas going to other schools.

The Davis OPEN group was able to present their counter-proposal for a good length of time last night. They reported that 1600 people signed their petition to keep all nine elementary schools open--a figure that represents a very impressive number.

Baki Tezcan presented evidence that cast some doubt on the methodology used to come up with the projections. His presentation was impressive enough to prompt Task Force Chair Kirk Trost to come back up to clarify their findings with numbers that did not seem to match the numbers used by Tezcan.

Baki Tezcan pointed out as we did the change in the projections from December 2006 to January 2007. The key difference was the use of Mobility #3 in December to using Mobility #2 in December and that shifted the finding from a stable +/- 186 K-12 students to an approximate decline of 400.

Tezcan said that method #2 compared all students in each attendance area from year to year while method #3 had a sampling of students. He suggested that sampling was the more preferred method for projecting and that it was the Task Force rather than DDP that made that call to switch to Method #2.

Tezcan then presented three sets of projections, the third one being "October projections" based on 2005 student data. These data show an actual small increase in enrollment. Tezcan demonstrated that the projections using this methodology more closely were demonstrated by actual numbers than the preferred methodology of the Task Force. When he averaged those three studies, he found a slight increase rather than decrease in enrollment over the next few years.

He then cited Stuart Sweeney, a professor at UC Santa Barbara:

"Beyond three to five years, projections are 'not at all certain and shouldn't be portrayed as such. Forecasting is never an exact science and ultimately rests on the validity of the assumptions used to initiate the model. ... Which assumptions are the 'correct' ones can certainly be influenced by politics.'"

Rick Gonzales presented data on the EL program. His main case was that the EL program at Valley Oak was exemplary. A higher percentage of students end up graduating from the program than is the norm in the district. Moreover a number of students go from EL to GATE which is extraordinary. Finally, the programs take a total commitment by staff and students. They take two years to put into place and closing the school would put these students who are already at risk, at even greater risk.

A number of parents and past students gave very emotional testimony about how much this school and this program had helped them and that they feared it closing.

The school board now has a number of factors to consider--first whether they can even close down a school at this late date and second whether they should close down the school. While the parents in attendance give perhaps a skewed view of the numbers in the community who support this, the near unanimity of the speakers in support of Valley Oak along with the 1600 collected signatures speaks volumes for the community. The decision is now in the hands of the school board who have not heard yet from staff on a variety of issues including fiscal ones and have yet to really discuss it among themselves. Meanwhile the parents at Valley Oak, wait with baited breath.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Thursday Briefs

County Supervisor's Race Coverage in the Davis Enterprise

Tuesday’s Enterprise article about who is lining up for District 4 Supervisor left out a key quote that was provided to Davis Enterprise Reporter Elisabeth Sherwin in response to her question, “Mariko, why, why, why, would [you] not run for Supervisor after serving only one term?”

Yamada's response was this:

“By the time my term ends on December 31, 2008, I will have actually served District 4 for nine years—four years as District Director and five years as Supervisor. Over the past thirty years, I have had the opportunity to work in federal service and for three California counties—Los Angeles, San Diego and Yolo. I hope to take that experience and local government perspective to the State Legislature.”

Also notably absent from that article was any quote or statement by prospective candidate and current School Board Member Jim Provenza. That absence is particularly conspicuous because all four of the other prospective candidates--John Ferrera, Bob Schelen, Richard Harris, and Erik Vink--were quoted.

It is not as though this were a timely article that had to come out on Tuesday. So why did Elisabeth Sherwin not contact Mr. Provenza?

Looming Fiscal Crisis in the City

At Tuesday's special workshop the city disclosed once again that there is a revenue shortfall. The short-term shortfall stems from a number of factor one of which is a $700,000 shortfall in revenue from parking and traffic violations. But there is a longer term revenue problem looming--one that has the city discussing new ways to tax citizens.

There is very real concern by Mayor Greenwald that we are going to end up taxing many retirees and others on fixed incomes right out of their homes in Davis.

Part of the problem that Mayor Greenwald has been very consistent in pointing out is that the city has been extremely generous with both benefits packages to employees as well as retirement benefits.

Rich Rifkin hit the nail on the head last week in his column when he pointed out that currently:

"As of now, a person needs to be with the city for only five years to obtain free medical premiums for life after he retires."

As Rifkin cites--currently Davis is paying the medical bills for 143 retired employees and that number will skyrocket in the next 10 years or so. Moreover these expenditures are paid out at the time that a person receives the benefits--there is no money set aside, which means each year, the budget will become more and more stressed by the system.

One solution that Rifkin recommends is that we increase the amount of service from five years to twenty five years in order to receive the medical retirement benefits. That would prevent future problems, but it does not fix the current problem because those under contract currently would still operate under the old system.

To her credit, Mayor Greenwald has been warning the community and her colleagues for several years about this problem, and she continues to vote against new benefits, but she is merely one vote often against four on this issue. At some point, the citizens of Davis will have to pay for these financial indiscretions.

Sunshine Week sees Federal Government Initiative Facing Veto

Democrats this week with broad bipartisanship support in Washington passed a number of bills meant to force government agencies to be more responsive to Freedom of Information Act requests for public Documents.

In all there were four bills passed by the House--each one with 75% support or higher.

According to the Associated Press:

Aided by substantial Republican support, the Democrats approved legislation to force government agencies to be more responsive to the millions of Freedom of Information Act requests for public documents they receive every year.

The House also easily passed bills to require donors to presidential libraries to identify themselves — an issue as Bush prepares for his own library — and to reverse a 2001 Bush decision making it easier for presidents to keep their records from public scrutiny.

Finally, lawmakers approved a bill to strengthen protection for government whistle-blowers.

There is strong opposition from the White House most particularly to the Presidential records bill.

It will be interesting to see if the bipartisan support is strong enough to override the veto--the vote counts of course were sufficient, but will that Republican support hold on a veto override, that remains to be seen.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Judgement Day for Valley Oak?

Tonight it is possible that the community might know what the Davis Joint Unified Board has in store for Valley Oak Elementary School. It's also possible that when the night is finished we will not know anything more than we know already.

At this point we know there will be three "presentations." First, the school board will have an opportunity one last time to question the task force about their report. This became necessary not just out of time constraints at the meeting two weeks ago, but also and perhaps more importantly because the board only received the report hours before the meeting. Next, the Davis OPEN group will present their counter-presentation and make their best case to keep Valley Oak open. Finally, there will be a presentation by school district staff members about implementation scenarios and possible action.

There are a number of concerns that we have about the report. We have covered some of ours in past blog entries. There are three main substantive criticisms. We have already spent considerable time and energy discussing two of those criticisms--the assumption about small school being non-viable and the use of a one-mile measure as an indicator of the effects on transportation closing Valley would have.

There is a third key criticism that we have not covered nearly enough and those are questions about the overall projections that purport to demonstrate that enrollment is actually declining. In December, it was reported that enrollment projections were "stable."

On December 7, 2006 Jeff Hudson of the Davis Enterprise reported:

Stable

That's the word demographics expert Scott Torlucci used, again and again, Wednesday to characterize a new batch of enrollment projections for the Davis school district, extending through 2016.

"Stability is the name of the game in all our projections (for the Davis school district)," Torlucci told the Best Uses of Schools Advisory Task Force, at an evening meeting that drew about two dozen interested parents, mostly from the neighborhood around Valley Oak Elementary School.

Hudson goes on to write:

Weber's projections showed enrollment dropping from 8,606 students this year to 8,218 students in 2007, then to 7,846 students in 2011, and bottoming out at 7,763 students in 2015. A loss of that many students would have far-reaching implications for the school district's finances, since schools rely on funding from the state based on the number of students enrolled.

Back in June, based partly on Weber's projections, the Best Uses of Schools Advisory Task Force reached a preliminary recommendation to close Valley Oak Elementary. That prompted considerable concern among neighborhood residents.

But this new batch of projections from Davis Demographics presents a less gloomy picture. Torlucci outlined a scenario in which enrollment will dip a bit over the next few years, bottoming out at 8,426 students in 2010. But it would start to go up again, reaching 8,603 students in 2014 — a figure that would be a virtual tie with this year's number of 8,606.

However, by January 5, 2007 there was a different word: "declining enrollment"

The new projections — containing small refinements and changes from a draft report presented to the Best Uses of Schools Advisory Task Force by Davis Demographics in December — show the district's enrollment heading downward slightly over the decade ahead, from an enrollment of 8,606 students in 2006, to an enrollment of 8,215 students in 2016.

Elementary school enrollment, which has been the particular focus of the task force, is projected to decline from 4,378 in 2006 to 4,143 in 2016.

I am not going to make the argument that one of these numbers are right or one of them are wrong. I simply do not know. What I will highlight is a key phrase in the second article: "small refinements." Small refinements in the way that the projections are performed lead to vastly different outcomes. So how much confidence can we have in projection numbers that are at best fragile and susceptible to very small changes in key assumptions. Most experts agree that outside of a five year period, they become increasingly unreliable. And yet we are going to close a school based on them?

Moreover, while the Task Force has pushed for an immediate decision, it is not all that clear that there is an emergency situation. Enrollment actually increased last year unexpectedly. De facto, the Task Force claims that their metric predicted that increase, but after the fact, that is highly suspect. The district is also not in financial dire straits at this time, so there is no logical reason that they could not wait until the fall to make a more informed decision based on actual fall enrollment numbers.

There are other factors that have complicated matters including the professed desire by some of the school board members in the past to delay a decision until next year anyone just out of logistical concerns if nothing else.

In addition, this will be the first meeting for the new superintendent, Richard Whitmore. The board may be reluctant to make a decision before the new superintendent has had a full opportunity to get up to speed on this issue. Given that this is not an emergency situation, it makes full sense for the board to delay its decision until Mr. Whitmore has had a chance to full deliberate and weigh in on the situation.

The suggestion has been made by some in this community that the Task Force's report speaks for itself. However, a thorough examination of three key findings, puts that into question. As we discussed in this entry, the projection numbers are based on key assumptions and small changes in those assumptions drastically alter the projections. If that is the case, how much confidence can we actually have in those projections? Should the Task Force have presented an array of possible projection scenarios and allowed the school board to decide between them? This has been a criticism in other areas as well including the assumption that there needs to be a 420 student minimum per elementary school and the assumption that a one mile distance from school was the key distance rather a half-mile distance.

In the end, one must question this report because it presented a very narrow array of options and a very narrow picture of what the effects of closing the school would.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Wednesday Briefs

Board of Supervisor Speculation

With the announcement of County Supervisor Mariko Yamada for State Assembly, the dominoes are now set to fall in other directions and the focus last night turned to the County Supervisors race for district four.

The Davis Enterprise reports five possible candidates to replace Ms. Yamada:

While none has yet formally announced, there is plenty of conversation regarding five possible candidates. Indeed, Yamada is already supporting the candidacy of Jim Provenza, a member of the Davis Board of Education. The other four most frequently mentioned as possible contenders are John Ferrera, chief of staff for state Sen. Denise Moreno Ducheny; Bob Schelen, consultant for the Assembly speaker's office; Richard Harris, Sacramento lobbyist; and Erik Vink of The Trust for Public Land.

A quick breakdown of the field, Bob Schelen is nice guy, but I don't see him as viable. Vink, I've never heard of. Ferrera would be very formidable. Richard Harris who was a former staffer for Fazio and currently a Davis Enterprise Columnist would be formidable. And School Board Member Jim Provenza would be formidable. Harris has been a big supporter of the council majority and land development. I do not know much about Ferrera. Provenza would be a standard bearer for the progressive but he has broad support in the community and I would think at least at this point would be a front-runner depending on the decision of Ferrera and Harris. I don't see both of them running, but you never know.

Public Poorly Informed on Departure of Murphy

Nearly a week after giving David Murphy a single-person standing ovation, Bob Dunning finally realized with the help of his confederate "Bog" that in fact, David Murphy was fired.

His confederate concludes:

"My question is this: Since this decision involves elected officials and public money, why is the board allowed to mislead the public in this way? As a public body, don't they have to tell the public how they are spending the public's money? I find all this secrecy and duplicity troubling."

Now the responsible thing for Dunning to respond with is to explain that confidentiality laws preclude the School Board from discussing this issue in public. Just as the city council could not discuss the firing of Jim Antonen or Jim Hyde in public.

Instead Mr. Dunning throws fuel on the fire:

You've hit the nail on the head, Bog … David Murphy, as a private citizen, can make any kind of "confidential" deal he wants concerning his own contract and salary … but the duly elected school board has a moral obligation to let us know — in triplicate — any time it spends the public dime … we have been badly misled by this "retirement" …

We have been misled by this "retirement" because the personnel confidentiality laws do not serve the public interest. Then again, when the matter is about Mr. Dunning's friend Nick Concolino, Mr. Dunning is probably less reticent about employee confidentiality agreements.

Which leads me to my next problem... which involves two letters to the Davis Enterprise both of which question the wisdom of paying for two Superintendents, one of whom will not work.

George Warner writes:

Let's see if I have this straight. We're paying one school superintendent $168,000 for an $80,000 job and another $235,000 for sitting on his hands for a year or so.

Barbara Wochok writes:

Under a "complex settlement," nearly $300,000 in taxpayer dollars will support two superintendents during one year. One will be housed at the district office, one not.

Obviously, administrators matter more than students at Valley Oak. Taxpayer dollars are taxpayer dollars. Once again the money goes to the top, not to the classroom. How sad!

What would be nice is if the local paper instead of writing editorials about how much we will miss David Murphy, actually reported the truth about what Murphy did and why he was likely fired. We have talked about the King High debacle here several times, but do these people understand that the district lost nearly $5 million in matching funds because it failed to meet deadlines? A fact that was buried in a paragraph near the end of the editorial on Sunday. Let's see five million versus $200,000. Hmmm.... Someone want to do the math here.

The district did the only thing they could to protect tax dollars and if that means spending a couple of hundred thousand to get the district back on track for fiscal sanity, then it is money well spent and it is meant to protect money for the students.

Finally, the public needs to realize why are where we are. When the previous school board left office in November of 2005, they voted 4-1 to extend David Murphy's contract until July of 2008. Why? They knew that the new board was likely to try to get rid of Murphy. And so BJ Kline, Joan Sallee, Marty West joined Keltie Jones and extended Murphy's contract. Only Jim Provenza dissented.

The new board then had to endure several more scandals before they apparently said enough was enough and they bit the $200,000 bullet. Dunning wants to call it misleading. The public wants to complain that we are paying someone not to work. It was the right thing to do. It took courage. And the sad thing is that because of confidentiality laws, they cannot even defend themselves. Which is why having the Davis Enterprise failing to perform due diligence and report the facts in a meaningful way does this board and this community a grave disservice.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Sunshine Week: Council Majority Refuses To Broadcast Long-Range Financial Planning Workshop

Last week, as we mentioned in yesterday’s blog entry, the City of Davis passed a proclamation naming this week “Sunshine Week.” So it is with great irony that the council this week has chosen to have a joint meeting between the City Council and the Finance and Budget Commission without television broadcasting despite the availability of broadcasting equipment and the fact that this meeting was held at what would be a normal meeting time for the city council. Moreover this meeting which discussed the “Long-Range Financial Planning Workshop” met immediately after another workshop on the short-term Calendar which was broadcast on television.

Mayor Greenwald in both the televised and untelevised meetings complained about the lack of broadcasting for the long range planning meeting. The suggestion was that this was a decision made by City Manager Bill Emlen at the behest of the council majority of Stephen Souza, Ruth Asmundson, and Don Saylor. The council majority insisted that this meeting be held without television broadcast.

This leads to a question as to why this occurred. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, should be the value of the concept of transparency of government deliberation and government action. The full value of "Sunshine" is the ability of the public to view and scrutinize the actions of their elected officials. The topic of long-range financial planning is extremely valuable in its own right and the public should be as informed as possible about the planning, goals, and concerns of its elected officials.

This is a very important issue—long term financial planning. And yet, there were no non-staff and non-media members of the public at this meeting. As one of the members of the commission said, if your goal is long term stability and you want the public informed about it, then you need to bring light to the process.

Ironically one of the topics of conversations by both the members of the commission as well as the members of council was whether future meetings of the Finance and Budget Commission ought to be televised. This was mentioned even by members of the City Council who were part of the decision not to televise this particular meeting.

While in the end, there were no major bombshells at this meeting that ought to have necessitated either a directive to broadcast or not broadcast the meeting—that was the point. If you want public involvement in these meetings they have to be made accessible.

While public participation will likely remain an illusory goal the point is not to become an impediment to that participation but rather to facilitate it. As we saw with some of the problems facing the short-term economic workshop, the city is going to have to look long and hard about sources for revenue.

One key contributor to the budget shortfall hearkens back to the $700,000-plus revenue shortfall from fines collected from traffic and parking violations. The city has taken up huge capital upgrades in parking enforcement and traffic light enforcement. In addition they increased parking fines from $30 to $35, the expectation was that would lead to increased profit, instead it led to a huge budget shortfall as we have discussed in previous entries.

These types of decision are very concerning because they are the direct result of a number of poorly managed ideas. The unanswered question is now whether those capital improvements ended up costing the city a tremendous amount of revenue aside from the philosophical problem of relying once again upon violation of the law as a source of revenue.

This is clearly an issue that needs to be examined in both the short and long term. Frankly in the private sector, heads would roll over a $700,000 budget shortfall stemming from those types of decisions. In Davis City government it seems almost business as usual.

But it is with these sorts of discussions and decisions that the public ought to be involved in the process and the commission and council should be actively engaging the public in that discussion rather than discouraging it by refusing to televise it—for apparently no good reason.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Special Commentary: Enterprise Editorial Paints An Overly Rosy Picture of Superintendent Murphy's Legacy

Sunday's editorial by the Davis Enterprise, illustrates a fundamental problem with the reporting of the Enterprise--it fundamentally fails to hold public establishment officials accountable for their actions. The most concerning part of the positive editorial is that in fact, the editorial staff acknowledged the financial scandals in the schools and still wrote a very glowing piece on former Superintendent of Schools David Murphy. Do the residents of Davis who sent their kids to school and be educated in this school district deserve better than this whitewashing of what is now bordering on multiple incidents of what can only reasonably be described as sheer incompetence?

After all, we are talking in David Murphy about a person that the Davis Joint Unified School District is paying not to work, while they have hired another person to work. So why is his departure a big loss for the Davis community as the Davis Enterprise boldly states?

The Enterprise describes his strength on the academic side, "where he distinguished himself first as an innovative principal of Davis High School and then as a visionary superintendent who never lost sight of his goal: What's best for the students of Davis?"

Oh did he now? There have been longstanding complaints against Murphy for the failure to appropriately deal with issues of harassment, bullying, and racism on campus. In fact, those complaints stem back to his days as Davis High School Principal and the killing of a student, Thong Hy Huynh.

But it is more than that. There has been an utter failure to meet the needs of minority students--particularly the African-American students. The most recent incident being the resignation of Courtenay Tessler who was the adviser to the students of the Black Students Union. This was a devastating blow to the students in this organization, who relied on Ms. Tessler help and advice to them. By all accounts this was a devoted person and resource to many students in the high school.

The larger problem has been the lack of minority hires in this district. This problem falls squarely on the shoulders of the leadership and the Superintendent's office. The previous Superintendent was largely seen as a hindrance to the efforts of many to have a more diverse teaching staff in the district.

Perhaps the strangest part of the editorial however was the end where it talked about "rocky times... particularly with regard to facilities." The closing reads: "Ultimately, those issues cast a shadow over his shining record, and led the Board of Education to lose faith in him. What a loss his retirement is for the Davis community. We'll truly miss David Murphy."

I simply do not understand this sentiment. What an insult that is to the elected school board. Cast a shadow? More like eclipse the sun. We are talking about numerous and severe financial and conflict of interest problems that have literally plagued the district for the last several years.

This has been a tumultuous year for the school district with a number of different financial scandals. In November of 2006, the board halted construction on a new King High School building. Allegations were made at that time by Board Member Jim Provenza that "shoddy practices in the business office have cost us" money on the project. He further said, "I'm happy we have a new chief budget officer (Colby) and (we're) cleaning up the mess we've had in the past.

Earlier this month the project was re-approved with money from redevelopment funds. Board member Tim Taylor cast the lone, "no" vote and he too made allegations about irregularities in board money use. "For me, the issue is some financially funky stuff that's gone on to get us to this point. It has absolutely nothing to do with King High."

In addition there has been several recent financial irregularities particularly involving King High and also concerning the former deputy superintendent for business Tahir Ahad who founded an educational consulting firm while employed with the DJUSD. He in turn recruited many fellow district employees to join him at the firm all the while everyone of them continued their full time employment with the district. This "moonlighting" by senior and middle management district employees resulted in them not doing their district jobs full time yet they received full time pay.

Furthermore, the former deputy superintendent for business Tahir Ahad was allowed to do much of his district work from his home office where he actually focused most of his time on his start-up business resulting in shoddy work product for the district and causing it to lose grant monies in the millions of dollars. The new school board put an end to this and has pushed for a new and comprehensive conflict of interest code to prevent this type of conduct from ever occurring again.

It is clear that there were multiple problems in the school district many of which were the result of David Murphy, his hires, and his policies. The new school board should be the ones commended for having the fortitude and foresight to make the tough changes that will ultimately produce a better product.

If David Murphy has led the district to better academics--in a community as well-educated as Davis--I would suggest that a replacement can do so as well without the financial fiascos, without the hiring problems, without the harassment problems, without so many other problems that the public really is not aware of because unfortunately the process is veiled behind a wall of confidentiality that protects personnel from public disclosure.

I would suggest that the Davis Enterprise view this as is akin to an iceberg. We can see the tip of the problems but we cannot view their full damage. We do not know what lies beneath the surface, but we do know it was bad enough that the district was willing to swallow over $13,000 per month on an individual who is no longer employed by the school district. That alone should tell the public what they need to know and that we should not be honoring and defending this man's record.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Sunshine Week: Your Right to Know (What Your Government is Doing)

One of the most important values in our democratic society is our free and open access to what our government is doing. Last week the Davis City Council as prompted by Councilmember Lamar Heystek and signed into proclamation by Mayor Sue Greenwald declared this week--March 11-17, 2007 as "Sunshine Week: Your Right to Know in the City of Davis."

The proclamation declares that "freedom of speech and freedom of the press are cornerstones of all democratic societies and valued as important fundamental rights by all." Moreover that "open government is a fundamental principle for our democracy and transparency and open decision-making are essential to foster trust and confidence in our public bodies."

There is no stronger supporter of free and open government than myself. In the last year, I have made many public records requests in order to keep tabs on what our local government is doing.

Locally I have found that the city is professional and generally accommodating to public records requests. There have been some notable exceptions, but for the most part, I have been able to obtain the records I want from the city. When I haven't, there are other means by which to obtain those records as we shall hopefully see within the coming weeks.

Unfortunately, in general, government has a poor record in this regard. The public records laws in California are particularly weak. As we've discussed in recent weeks, confidentiality laws are often misused, abused, and in some cases imposed where wholly unnecessary. It is one thing to protect the privacy of rank and files workers. However, positions like police chief, city manager, superintendent of schools, among other high ranking, public positions should have much less protection. The public should have the right to know why a city has fired a police chief or city manager and why a school district has fired a superintendent.

Recently, the California courts have granted tremendous amount of protection to police officers from public disclosure of discipline and other matters that again should be public record. The California public records act specifically exempts many police proceedings such as incident reports, arrest records, and other things from public records act requirements.

As the Associated Press article that ran on the front page of the Davis Enterprise puts it: "The result: Californians might not always know if beatings or shootings by officers are ruled justified or whether those officers are disciplined or labeled as bad cops."

In fact, according to the article, public records are under fire. Currently, California Supreme Court justices "are questioning whether the public has the right to know the salaries of government employees even though they're paid with taxpayer money."

As the article declares:

"For a state with a progressive reputation, California's record on open government has left it far behind many other states. In Connecticut, Iowa, Kentucky, Rhode Island and Nebraska, for example, attorneys general investigate and even prosecute public officials who fail to disclose public records.

California, in fact, has retreated by some public-access measures since voters in 2004 endorsed a constitutional amendment to protect the public's right to view government documents and attend meetings.

Passage of the amendment was billed as a watershed for public access in California. Advocates said it would limit lawmakers' ability to write loopholes into law and require officials and even state judges to narrowly interpret laws that restrict the public's access to government's inner workings."

So the California Public Records Act is fairly weak at its best. It becomes even weaker because it is difficult to enforce. Theoretically, the burden of proof is on the agency to prove that they have legitimate reason to withhold disclosure of public records. However, in practice violations of the California Public Records Act are only enforced by a citizen filing suit against the public agency when they deny a request and even if the judgment is against that agency, the result is at best an order for the government to pay legal fees. This produces according to reformers, a culture where the incentive structure skews toward a withholding of information. There are no criminal penalties for failing to release the countless other public documents citizens may seek.

Unfortunately, as we celebrate Sunshine Week here in Davis as well as nationally, our right to know is underfire. There is no more paramount right of an informed electorate to have the means to monitor and scrutinize our government. There is no greater vanguard of freedom and liberty than the freedom of the press and speech. And there can be neither if the government retains the ability to keep public records in secret where no one can scrutinize them.

Later this week, I hope to have a major announcement pertaining to this issue. In the meantime, this is an issue that we should press on all future state legislators, that we need to fight and maintain open government and open access to government documents.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Disparate Treatment by the DA's Office

We have spent much time talking about both the Davis Police Department and Yolo County District Attorney's Office's over-pursuit of relatively minor cases and prosecution to the point of almost absurdity. In some of these cases, we have evidence that the deputy district attorney assigned to the case actually thought it better that the case be dropped rather than charges followed and was told that they not only had to pursue the case but obtain a conviction. These type of cases are pursued generally against people in a lower socio-economic class and minority defendants.

However, increasingly I have learned about the opposite problem--the failure of the Davis Police Department and the Yolo County District Attorney's office to pursue charges and a case against "upscale" and "affluent" defendants involved in a variety of what appear to be much more serious crimes.

While most of these stories only represent anecdotal evidence, An old professor of mine used to say data is actually many anecdotes when put together that form a systematic pattern.

A reader relates a case of road rage that happened several years ago where an individual, also a Davis resident, ended up following the person home, seeing where they lived and then speeding off. However, later that night they returned dumping a can or two of gasoline on the garage and setting the house on fire.

Only quick action by a neighbor helped alert the family to the fire and prevented it from becoming bigger and it ended up only causing superficial damage to the garage and the front of the home.

The individual described the man and his case to the police, but very little happened for over a year. Finally they had arrested a suspect. Apparently he had bragged to a friend about what he'd done, and the friend turned him in. It also turned out that he was not a nice guy. At the time of his arrest, he was on probation for having beaten up his girlfriend, and I was told by the police that he was also suspected of torching another man's car.

So of course the District Attorney's Office aggressively pursued this case like they did Buzayan's or Khalid Berny's, right? Wrong!

On the contrary, the District Attorney's office moved on this case at a glacial pace. Court dates were scheduled, subpoenas sent, vacation time from work arranged, only to have delays and postponements time after time. The Deputy District Attorney left the department and a new one took over. Shortly thereafter, the defendant pled guilty to reduced charges. Then for another eight months, the same sort of postponements and delays happened with the sentencing hearing.

Why is there such disparate treatment? Why is a person with a history and a record allowed to skate? Well, for starters, he's the member of a very wealthy and influential El Macero family.

So why is it then that the District Attorney's Office pursues some cases to the teeth--minor cases such as a man who allegedly allows his goats to run at large or a small parking lot accident resulting in $800 damage to the vehicle, but will not pursue a case of road rage that leads to arson against a perpetrator who has a history of this sort of violence? In fact, this case seems very close to the firebombing case involving another family in Davis--who happen to be gay--that the police perhaps haven't aggressively pursued.

A few years back there was a vandalism crime against a gay individual in Davis, he had eggs thrown at his vehicle and another black family's home. This was in October of 2003. By August of 2004, hate crime charges were dropped.

According to the August 18, 2004 Davis Enterprise:

"Yolo County District Attorney David Henderson appeared in court Tuesday to formally drop hate crime enhancement charges against a Davis youth accused of vandalizing the car of a local gay man and the home of a black family in an October incident.
Henderson cited insufficient evidence to prosecute the case with the hate crime enhancement. The 17-year-old still faces one felony count and five misdemeanor counts of vandalism.

Four youths reportedly shouted racist and bigoted remarks as they threw more than 120 eggs at five vehicles and one house in the early morning hours of Oct. 26. One car was owned by... an openly gay UC Davis lab assistant; another vehicle is owned by a black family. The house is owned by a black family."

A little further back from that, I know of an individual who was allegedly supplying minors, often as young as junior high school age (if not younger) with marijuana out of their home and the police would not follow through on repeated complaints from residents.

For whatever reason, the District Attorney's office over-pursues and over-prosecutes some crime but not others. This inconsistency is a bit perplexing in light of their overall refusal to drop charges in cases that clearly did not warrant charges to begin with, while failing to pursue cases that do. We have heard of cases, and in fact seen it in writing, where the District Attorney's Office or their deputy acknowledges that the reason for prosecution is because of an impending lawsuit. And yet, we also see now where the District Attorney's office fails to follow through on other seemingly more serious cases when the individuals involved may be influential citizens or the children of influential citizens. This county deserves more consistent and more common-sense law enforcement than it is getting.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Awards Ceremony Presents Us with a Time for Reflection

Several weeks ago I received an email from a group called the Dotties. It turned out that for ten years now this group has met and given out awards to the best websites in the Sacramento Northern California area. Recently with the rise of blogs, they have added blogs to their awards ceremonies. So on Thursday, I threw on a suit and gave out an award (those things by the way, weigh a ton and would serve as a good weapon against a mugging if you are an Olympic shotputter).

Mark S. Allen from Good Sacramento was the master of ceremonies. He did a very good job with a small and at times indifferent crowd. When he introduced me, he cited the blog as "bringing law enforcement together with the community." An amusing line that indicated to me that he has read the People's Vanguard.

The category I gave an award for--or at least was supposed to as the winner in my category did not show up to the event--was "Blogs and Online Categories." If there was one criticism, it would be that some of the groups were overly broad. For example, "Health Care, Biotech, Agriculture and Engineering." So we were sitting at a table with Mandarin Orange Growers who were competing against the ultimate winner, Sutter Health.

In the "Blogs" categories, MX Sponsor a site devoted to motocross sports. Highly technical in its design, and yet this would be the category that this blog might potentially compete against in the future. In fact, as they described the judging criteria--and its good criteria--they are looking at technical innovation, they are also looking as usability, and content.

The Dotties Awards Ceremony also presents us with an opportunity for reflection and to look toward the future.

This past week, the People's Vanguard of Davis passed the 50,000 hit mark since October 10, 2006 when I finally realized enough people were on the site to install a hit counter. One of the lessons I have learned is that you do not need a flashy site to get readers, in fact, this site is just a "blogger" site that I enter my writings directly into a template. It is as non-technical as it comes.

And yet as they discussed on Thursday, it meets the key threshold of a successful marketing endeavor--this blog found a niche that was badly needed by a segment of the community. I cannot go to a public event without people telling me that they read the blog--even in Sacramento. People were disparately looking for an alternative source of information and I have staked this blog's reputation on content rather than bells and whistles.

I hope as time goes on, the Dotties can begin to recognize blogs in their own right and judge them based on the information that they provide rather than the technical aspects. Blogging has become a valued addition to the fourth estate. It is a means by which to level the playing field. No longer is information confined to those with the money and resources to own a printing press. Knowledge and reporting has become unlocked. And in some cases for the good, and like all technologies, there is the potential for bad as well. The power of blogging is a constant reminder that we all must be vigilant and yet responsible.

That is not to say that this will also be just a "blogger" blog. As much as that format serves my short-term needs, I have already seen the limitations of the format. The future shall be interesting to say the least. This blog started as an outlet for my frustrations following the June 2006 primary in which it became clear that there was no accurate and reliable means to get information out to the public.

However, although this blog's growth and direction--in terms of popularity and perhaps importance--was always part of my "vision," I am not sure I ever really anticipated that it would end up being as successful as it has so far.

So the Dotties' awards gives me a good opportunity to look back at the past and thank the people who have been readers from beginning and thank those of you who will be logging on for the very first time in the coming days. It also gives me a chance to look into the future and there will be some changes coming down the pike. I will not be changing the content of this site or the information I provide. But there will be changes nonetheless and hopefully these changes allow us to continue to grow and prosper into the future.

Thank you and good day.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Research favors smaller schools

When the Best Uses of Schools Task Force issued their report, one of their key assumption and rationales for reduces the number of elementary schools to eight was falling enrollment. They used not only a fiscal argument about the cost of maintaining and operating a ninth elementary school but they also used an educational argument.

They made the argument that 420 students was the minimum size for a viable elementary school. This assumption was premised on the notion of differentiation and the amount of differentiation needed in order to have various features. However, as far as I can tell they cite no research to support their position.

A perusal of some of the research in a policy brief from WestEd, suggests a very different picture.

"No agreement exists on optimal school size, but research reviews suggest a maximum of 300-400 students for elementary schools..." A further note is that "researchers focusing on the interaction between poverty and enrollment size offer a rule of thumb: The poorer the school, the smaller its size should be." We have to be a bit careful because Valley Oak is by no means an impoverished school.

The review of studies goes on to suggest several major benefits from small schools.

First--students learn well and often better in small rather than large schools. In fact, "no study found large-school achievement superior."

Second--behavior problems diminish.

Third--attendance is higher.

Fourth--extracurricular participation increases.

Finally, poor and minority students benefit the most.

There are a number of key factors that suggest why smaller schools are better. First, smaller schools produce strong personal bonds to the school. Second, there is greater parental and community involvement in small versus large schools. In a large school individual parents would blend in to their surroundings more, while at smaller schools parents and teachers get to know each other and become allies in fostering student success. Third, it helps produce greater simplicity and focus which facilitates communication.

A big one that relates strong to the report offered by the task force is that "student achievement is influenced much more by caliber of instruction than by number of courses offered." This important because it strikes at the heart of the differentiation argument put up by the Task Force.

It seems likely there is other research that suggests that large schools may be better in some settings. However, I think the most important point here is that there is likely competing literature and competing ideas on what is the best school size. The problem with the Task Force is that they did not provide the school board with those alternatives and instead picked the argument that best fit their conclusion rather than presenting competing arguments and then proceeding to a conclusion. The size of schools is but one example exactly that.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Commentary: New Quota System for DA's Office

One of the most frequent complaints about the Yolo County District Attorney's Office under former District Attorney David Henderson had been the intractability of their prosecutions. Far too many minor cases were pursued well beyond the point that they should have. The District Attorney's office often failed to adequately use discretion in which cases to prosecute. And they would be extremely reticent to drop even cases that they either could not win or should not pursue. We can see those practices at work in three fairly high profile cases--the Buzayan case which was dismissed by a Judge, the Khalid Berney case which was dismissed after a judge forced the prosecutors to reintroduce their evidence, and the Bernita Toney case where the Jury acquitted the defendant.

A more reasonable prosecutor's office would not have pursued convictions in this questionable cases to begin with. In two of the cases, they were pursued because of orders from the command and leadership structure to the Deputy District Attorney that they must obtain a conviction and under no condition could they drop the charges.

This practice does not serve the public good from a fiscal or policy standpoint. The District Attorney's Office is to represent the interests of the state in pursuing criminal prosecutions. Often, they mistake that for being a prosecution machine where their job is solely to gain convictions rather than pursue actual justice. Sometime justice requires strong prosecutions to put dangerous criminals behind bars and protect society. However, at other times that means using discretion to realize when the public interest is better served by dropping poor cases against individuals who pose no threat or against whom the cases are weak and questionable to begin with.

It is within this framework that newly elected District Attorney Jeff Reisig enters the picture. Reisig of course came with the support of David Henderson as well as most of the deputy district attorneys in this county. That said there was some hope that policies would change. The evidence so far indicates that the policies have not changed.

One clear example is the establishment of a new bulletin board that tracks the progress of cases. Deputy District Attorney's get their names placed on the board as the case enters the system and they get their case tracked to an inevitable acquittal or prosecution. The implication is that those with the most prosecutions are doing the best job. In some ways that sounds like a good incentive.

However, the logical conclusion of this policy is the creation of a quota system. This leads to an inevitable continuation if not exacerbation of the current problems in the system.

First, those Deputy District Attorneys with many cases will be looked at more favorably than those with fewer cases. This means that there is an unstated incentive to get more cases onto the board by pursuing prosecutions rather than dropping charges.

Second, those Deputy District Attorneys with more convictions will look more favorably than those with fewer cases. This means again that there is an unstated incentive to obtain more prosecutions. Again this means that there is a disincentive to drop the charges or the case when it is clear like the cases mentioned above that there is a weak case or no strong compelling public interest to pursue charges.

The implication of this is that those Deputy District Attorneys who pursue more cases and obtain more convictions will be promoted, awarded, acknowledged and that those with fewer will not. Thus an unstated quota system emerges from this practice.

Why is this a bad idea? Statistics can be a measure of good performance on the part of prosecutors, however, they can always indicate dogmatism that serves neither the defendant nor the public interest.

We can use a clear example of police quotas for speeding tickets. Is the officer with more speeding tickets issued doing a better job or is he simply pursuing a greater frequency of marginal cases in order to increase his statistics?

The use of such incentives structures moves us in the wrong direction. It is clear that Jeff Reisig is continuing his predecessor's questionable prosecutorial discretion and in some ways even outdoing it. Yolo County needs to rethink its policies in this area because a lot of people are unfortunately getting caught in the crossfire and most do not have the resources to fight it.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Thursday Afternoon Briefs

David Murphy's Settlement Announcement

The Davis Enterprise reported last night that "recently resigned" Superintendent David Murphy will continue to receive his salary until mid 2008 (when his contract would have expired). The district would pay Murphy approximately $225,000.

A week ago, Superintendent David Murphy surprised many in the community by announcing his retirement. Already the Davis Enterprise is calling it a "resignation."

This represents mounting evidence however that Murphy was in fact involuntarily terminated. One would not receive a settlement package for merely retiring or even resigning. This arrangement pretty much confirms our suggestion last Sunday that Murphy was in fact fired.

According to the Davis Enterprise:

"Over the coming three months, ending May 31, Murphy will “focus his efforts on mutually agreed-upon duties,” including completion of a reference manual outlining the superintendent’s duties and responsibilties (sic). Murphy also will use accrued vacation time."

A couple of points that need to clarified. First, the District is paying David Murphy $225,000 of taxpayer money not to work. That is a pretty strong statement there.

Second, we need to remind the public that it was the outgoing school board with BJ Kline, Joan Sallee, and Marty West that as one of their last acts, decided to extend the contract of David Murphy and made it extremely difficult for the incoming school board to terminate an employee that they believed was doing a poor job. Those members cost the Davis taxpayers and perhaps the students a tremendous amount.

Yolo "COPS" Reality Show Canceled

According to a good source, the proposal for the Yolo County "COPS" reality show has been canceled by District Attorney Jeff Reisig and Sheriff Ed Prieto. Apparently the chief reason cited was liability.

The liability issue seems suspicious since numerous shows of this sort work with law enforcement in other jurisdictions.

10th Annual Dotties Awards Show Tonight

The 2007 Dottie Awards marks the 10th year of recognizing Northern California’s best Web sites with winners in 16 different categories, Top Dot and Peoples Choice Award. Take this opportunity to preview the best Web sites Northern California has to offer, and network with other business professionals while being thoroughly entertained at one of Sacramento’s premiere awards shows.

One of the presenters will be myself this evening. Jason Frankel, CEO of Coversant Inc. and I will be awarding the Blogs & Online communities Dottie.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

City Moves Forward Water Plans

The city is moving forward with an upgrade to its wastewater treatment. This massive project is currently estimated to cost $140 million. The average customer will see their sewer rates increase gradually over the next ten years by an amount of around 7 percent or just over double the rate projected rate of inflation.

The current proposal is for a flat rate in which all customers would pay the same sewer rates regardless of usage. However, the staff suggested that the costs are the same for both, the allocation of the spending may change if they go to a volume based system.

All involved acknowledged that given restriction on waste water outflow, that there is no scenario without waste water improvement--that is not feasible, we cannot simply do nothing.

Elaine Roberts Musser, Chair of the Davis Senior Citizens Commission raised a couple of concerns. She pointed out that a consumption based method would be best for seniors, since seniors have small households and thus will most likely consume less water on average than the average resident. However, these increases will still hit seniors and very income people very hard and some will lose their homes. Also concerned that multi-dwelling households will have the costs passed on to tenants and that seniors will end up hurt because of their fixed income.

Mayor Sue Greenwald's approach was that clearly this project was needed however, she wants to look into the feasibility of paying off the wastewater improvement system first before taking on the surface water project. She suggested that some outside experts agree with this approach and that not everyone has the sense of urgency for surface water that some have expressed. She suggested handling the sewer project first and trying to defray the costs on the other as long as possible.

The city has certainly not looked seriously into this possibility of delaying the surface water importation project, but I think they are going to need to. Ms. Musser's comments are very pertinent because they reflect concerns just about the impact of higher sewer rates on people of either low or fixed income. If you hit them with higher water rates in addition to higher sewer rates, you are hitting them with a double whammy from which they might not recover.

The arguments for doing it now are that construction costs have skyrocketed recently and some have suggested that they will continue to raise making it necessary to build sooner rather than later. There is also the first come, most served argument that those who do not stake their claim to water now will get less or none in the future.

As with the sewer argument, Mayor Greenwald disagreed and argued that talking to other experts that the water rights issue has been overstated. Cities that obtained water in the sixties have the same rights and access as people who have obtained water rights now.

The sewer rate increase passed unanimously but the water supply project was approved by a 3-2 vote.

The interesting subtext is that this is merely moving along the process of securing the rights to extract the water rather than dealing with the costs and engineering of moving that water to Davis.

The council majority argued that this part needs to move forward and that this approval is not tantamount to an overall approval that will happen at a later date.

However, Mayor Greenwald strongly disagreed and I agree with her. If you look at this history of this project it is a history full of small decisions like this that eventually and inevitably lead to the belief in fait accompli. This is just the same as the council claim that approving a Request for Proposal (RFP) is not the same as approving the project. But in fact, it may as well be for practical intents and purposes. There is considerable bureaucratic creep in these projects that means that as they move along, each small step makes it increasingly likely that the final project will end up being approved and that the council will never actually face the big issue of whether or not to approve the project.

It seems to me that serious questions remain about both sewer and water supply that simply have not been addressed. One of those issues is cost for people who cannot afford rate hikes. Remember a lot of fixed income people do not even have cost of living adjustments built in, so an increase at inflation would be troublesome, an increase at 2.3 times inflation could be deadly. An increase of that magnitude for both sewer and water supply could be catastrophic.

In the end, the answer may be that we do need to get a new water supply source and that it must be done now, but significantly more study would seem appropriate. While they have not approved of the final project as of yet, they could mandate further study even as they move forward to obtain the rights to extract the water.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Two columns on Schools in the Enterprise Miss the Mark

Dunning yesterday in his column suggested that the "town owes Murphy a standing ovation."

He suggests first:

"like most superintendents, David Murphy had his supporters and his detractors … it comes with the territory … it would be impossible to be a superintendent of schools in Davis and make hard decisions without someone taking a shot at you, including the local daily columnist …"

That is true--he has both his supporters and his detractors and it is also true that any superintendent would probably create some animosity. That however should not wipe out an assessment of his performance that I think will inevitably show that Davis is fortunate that they have an opportunity for fresh leadership in the school district.

"Yes, I've had a few disagreements with David Murphy during his tenure here, but none that made me question his integrity, his dedication or his desire to make the Davis district the best it could be "

Here is where I strongly disagree with Mr. Dunning. I have strong questions about his integrity and his performance. We perhaps can accept that he probably did have dedication and desire to make the Davis district the best it could be, but that does not mean he did a good job of doing that.

He leaves behind a legacy that has severe blemishes on it. His tenure as Principal at Davis High School was stained with the blood of Thong Hy Huynh and perhaps we could let it go, but his tenure as Superintendent often exacerbated that error. He was oblivious to the problem of bullying and blindsided by the intensity of emotions at a public meeting in 2003 where hundreds of parents and students came up, often drenched in tears, to complain about the situation. That forced his hand, but even in forcing his hand, the victory was incomplete and the scenario had to repeat yet again this school year with young Zach Fischer. It took Board President Jim Provenza and fellow board member Keltie Jones considerable effort to finally pin David Murphy down to strong language to fix the problems that had existed for years in terms of the discrepancies in the discipline code.

Moreover as I have cited throughout this past week there are multiple examples of financial misconduct, errors, malfeasance, and misfeasance. The King high school situation is just but one public example of the ongoing problems under David Murphy's tenure.

This town most certainly does not owe any Superintendent who makes over six figures a year in compensation a standing ovation. He was WELL compensated for his duties. But David Murphy's legacy is a tarnished one and hopefully the school board has hired the right person to set things in the Davis Joint Unified School District right again.

Meanwhile Richard Harris wrote a well-intentioned but ultimately flawed piece on Valley Oak.

There are strong reasons to keep Valley Oak open without opening up the development can of worms.

Harris uttered these words:

"Should the voters be asked to approve flexibility to Measure J to allow the City Council to approve annexations for a specified time period without projects going back out to voters?"

Supporters of Valley Oak should shutter, because the last thing that they want to is destroy the emerging consensus and support for keeping Valley Oak and the other eight elementary schools open by needless invocation that will scare literally half the voters.

Keep the growth issue separate from the Valley Oak issue. The enrollment figures by themselves do not justify closing the school even in the worst case scenario. Mixing issues can be fatal and Harris, who should know better, did not help the Valley Oak cause by needlessly alarming any self-respecting progressive or slow-growther or other supporter of Measure J.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Interim Superintendent Hired

The Davis Joint Unified School District moved very quickly to replace the “retiring” Superintendent David Murphy. The school board hired J. Richard Whitmore of Lafeyette, California as interim superintendent.

According to the announcement,

Interim Superintendent Whitmore served as Chief Deputy Superintendent at the California Department of Education under State Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin. In that capacity, he was the chief operating officer of the agency responsible for California's public education system. During his tenure there, he oversaw fiscal and academic accountability for school districts throughout California.

He became a recognized voice on school finance policy in California, and has provided advice and counsel to a variety of constituents over the past decade. He also led the state department's efforts to develop accountability systems. He led a strategic planning effort that resulted in the creation of the Superintendent's "Challenge Standards," which became the foundation for California's new standards-based curriculum adopted by the Standards Commission.

Interim Superintendent Whitmore is also a long-time leader in his local school community in Lafayette, serving on the Governing Board of the Acalanes Union High School District, and participating in the Lafayette School District's recent strategic planning process. He spent four years working in higher education, at Stanford University, where he staffed the President's strategic planning effort and managed the University's real estate and faculty housing programs.

When Superintendent Murphy announced he was stepping down, the plan seemed to be that Superintendent Murphy would step down immediately as Superintendent, the board would hire an interim Superintendent, and Murphy would work behind the scenes to facilitate the transition while the school board appointed a search committee to conduct outreach to find a permanent replacement.

However, according to some sources, that plan has changed. Superintendent Murphy is instead stepping down almost immediately with his final day being a week from Friday. This rather sudden departure fuels the continued speculation that rather than retiring, Mr. Murphy has indeed been terminated by the school board. Since this is a personnel matter and the board cannot comment on such matters, this remains only speculation at this point—but speculation fueled by a number of strong pieces of evidence.

Former school board member Joan Sallee was quoted last week as saying:

“I was deeply saddened to hear of Murphy’s retirement. ... I am very sorry that the current school board did not see fit to retain his services. The district has suffered a grievous loss, at a time when we can least afford it.”

Furthermore, given Mr. Whitmore’s very strong background there is speculation that Mr. Whitmore himself will eventually become the permanent Superintendent.

Board President Jim Provenza called Whitmore, “a leader who excels in managing both the education of children and business and financial operations that are so crucial to school districts.”

Former Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin speaks very highly of Mr. Whitmore. According to The Davis Enterprise:

During his years with the state, Whitmore worked closely with then-Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin, a Davis resident who attended Monday night’s meeting of the Davis school board. Eastin called Whitmore “an inspired choice for interim superintendent” in Davis, and added, “I can think of no finer education leader.”

“His extraordinary intelligence, integrity and administrative skills will serve this great district very well indeed,” Eastin said. “Richard will work closely with his board and his staff, keeping them engaged and well-informed.”

Whether or not Interim Superintendent Whitmore ends up being the permanent Superintendent, the district is in desperate need of fresh and strong new leadership to face a broad array of challenges. One of those challenges is with declining enrollment. This has led to a task force recommendation to close Valley Oak Elementary School. This recommendation has led to a firestorm of controversy.

In addition there has been several recent financial irregularities particularly involving King High and also concerning the former deputy superintendent for business Tahir Ahad who founded an educational consulting firm while employed with the DJUSD. He in turn recruited many fellow district employees to join him at the firm all the while everyone of them continued their full time employment with the district. This "moonlighting" by senior and middle management district employees resulted in them not doing their district jobs full time yet they received full time pay.

Furthermore, the former deputy superintendent for business Tahir Ahad was allowed to do much of his district work from his home office where he actually focused most of his time on his start-up business resulting in shoddy work product for the district and causing it to lose grant monies in the millions of dollars. The new school board put an end to this and has pushed for a new and comprehensive conflict of interest code to prevent this type of conduct from ever occurring again.

Finally, the harassment of a junior high school student has led to lawsuits and a renewed call for tougher standards against bullying and harassment which the new school board has taken to heart forcing the school administration to write a tough new harassment policy. Superintendent Murphy allowed all of this malfeasance to occur on his watch and this eventually led to his "forced" departure by the new school board.

If indeed Mr. Whitmore ends up the new superintendent, it is our hope that he will act quickly to help clean house and make changes that are desperately needed in terms of new blood and ideas in the administration.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Tuesday Briefs

ACLU Becomes Involved in Valley Oak Closure Controversy

In a letter to the Davis Unified School Board on March 1, 2007, the ACLU Northern California Division expressed concern about the impact of the closure of Valley Oak Elementary School on the rights and welfare of the predominantly minority student population at Valley Oak.

"The ACLUNC is deeply concerned that a decision to close VOES [Valley Oak Elementary School will violate the constitutional rights of its students." Furthermore they suggest "Because VOES is the only elementary school in the Davis Unified School District where students of color represent a majority of the student body, we believe that a decision to close VOES would have a racially disparate impact on students of color."

"It is also our understanding that closing Valley Oak School will seriously disadvantage those students who would otherwise have attended VOES. Such a closure will deny its students equal access to education in at least two ways. First, the lack of transportation to different schools will result in many children missing early morning classes because of their long walk, thus significantly limiting their class time and increasing their truancy. Second, there is no guarantee that English Language Learner programs will be provided for students who need them at their new schools. English language teachers assert that even an interruption in class time, let alone depriving students of the class altogether, will result in a harmful impact, which will obviously be aggravated if the students are sent to a school without an ELL program."

Finally, they make the point that "the Valley Oak community was not represented on the Task Force making the recommendation to close its school."

City Council To Review the Performance of the City Manager

Tomorrow evening at a special meeting, the Davis City Council will meet behind close doors to perform their annual performance evaluation of the city manager. As a personnel matter such evaluations are of course confidential.

However, as I suggested on Sunday with regards to Superintendent David Murphy, it seems one thing to keep personnel records of rank and file employees confidential, however, when dealing with public records of employees who are high profile and very public such as the city manager such a rule makes much less sense. It seems to me that laws protecting City Managers, Superintendents, Police Chiefs and the like do not serve the best interest of the public by keeping highly paid public employees accountable for their actions by the public.

This is of course an issue not within the control of the city council, but it is something that I would like to see gain more attention--transparency in government does not work well when unelected employees who are in public leadership positions that affect the entire community are exempt from having public input and public scrutiny.

HRC Seeks Nominations for Thong Hy Huynh Memorial Awards

"The City of Davis Human Relations Commission is seeking nominations for this year's Thong Hy Huynh Memorial Awards. The Commission will honor individuals and community organizations that have made significant contributions in resolving or improving civil and human rights issues in the City of Davis. The Commission encourages groups and individuals to submit award nominations prior to the deadline of Friday, April 6, 2007 at 4:00 p.m."

For further information and for nomination forms please click here.

Homeless Awareness Day at UC Davis

Dear Doug Paul Davis,

I am writing to inform readers of the Davis Vanguard about the outcome of the Homeless Awareness Day at UC Davis sponsored by The Associated Students at UC Davis (ASUCD). The event took place on the 27th of Feb. at the Memorial Union at the University of California, Davis campus. A little background behind the event is needed.

The Homeless Awareness Day at UC Davis was inspired by the death of Jesse Newberry, a 24 year old youth who died by being hit by an Amtrak train around Freeborn Hall near the UC Davis campus. Activists took the idea of a homeless awareness day to the Associated Students at UC Davis and the Associated Students went to work on a senate resolution.The senate resolution designated a Homeless Awareness Week at the UC Davis campus and it called on other bodies of local government to pass resolutions that observed the homeless awareness week at UC Davis. With the passing of the resolution, we were able to finalize the logistics for a Homeless Awareness Day event at UC Davis.

The kick off of the event was a clothing drive where we were able to collect numerous clothing donations from students at the campus as well as from concerned community members. Besides the clothing drive that we had for the homeless, we planned a resource fair and invited the attendance of social service agencies from the community that provide service to the poor and the homeless of our community. Having the organizations at the fair served two functions. The first function for the resource fair was so that the homeless and other disenfranchised groups attending the rally would become more aware of resources that are available to them in the community. The second function of the resource fair was to give students interested in social issues an avenue to volunteer for a social service agency. We also invited several speakers to the event.

We invited Steve Jerome Wyatt, an ex-homeless individual and current community college student and homeless activist to read from a pre-written script authored by Jesse Newberry's mother. Jesse's mother was very happy to have the community recognize the life of her son. We invited Lawson Snipes, a homeless man and Editor-in-Chief of the homeless publication and journal - The Spare Changer. Lawson spoke about his experience of being homeless at UC Davis in the early 1970's as a UC Davis student.

We had two UC Davis students present poetry on homelessness and poverty.

Another speaker at the event was Davis City Council member Lamar Heystek.

At the event were representatives from California Assembly Woman Lois Wolk's office and from the Yolo County Board of Supervisor Helen Thompson's office.

The student senate resolution that designated the Homelessness Awareness Day at UC Davis was presented as well as a mayoral proclamation which was authored by Sue Greenwald that established a sister homeless awareness week in the city of Davis Feb 27th through the 2nd of March. Also presented was a similar resolution that Assembly woman Lois Wolk introduced in the California Assembly.

I think a very big thanks has to go to The Associated Students at UC Davis as well as the students of the UC Davis California Public Interest Research Group. Without their assistance, this event would not have been possible at all. Putting this event together was truly team work.

The event was a success for many reasons. The first reason is that the event allowed students on campus to learn about social service agencies that serve the impoverished. The organizations present were able to at least get some students interested in what it is that they do. The event had good press coverage. Many community members in Davis and in other parts of Yolo County seen that it was truly possible for different groups of people including community members and homeless people to get together and learn about homelessness.

Now that homelessness has been officially recognized in the community, homeless activists will now set out on the path to push for more educational events specifically around the topic of homelessness and hunger in the city of Davis. We would like to try to look at the feasibility of partnering up the homeless with specific employers in the downtown Davis area.

Untreated medical illness is prevalent in the Davis homeless population. A idea we like to try to push for is the feasibility of getting family practice doctors in the community to agree to see homeless people once a week. Homeless people have access to Y-CHIP which is a very basic form of medical insurance that is for the homeless of the community. Hopefully more medical access for the homeless will increase the number of medical problems that are treated in the homeless population.

We would like to start the discussion of getting marriage and family therapists in the community to volunteer some of their time to provide counseling for the homeless in the community. Counseling is a very big need for the homeless in Davis. It it is reality that once a person is homeless, it is very difficult to get out of homelessness.

If a person is going to be homeless for a long period of time, there should not be a reason why they cannot have a medical or mental health issue treated at a early stage.

Government works very hard to address the needs of the homeless and the impoverished. There is much that the private sector and the community can do to improve the quality of life for our homeless. I and other activists hope to at least stimulate discussion around how we can improve the quality of life of our homeless for the long term via contributions from the community.

For information about the Homelessness Awareness Day at UC Davis, please visit the California Aggie website.

Thank You very much for your support,

Richard Cipian

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Should Davis fear a collaborative process with the county?

In 2005, County Supervisor Mariko Yamada suggested a need for "a more structured communication mechanism between the County and our four city partners in Davis, West Sacramento, Winters, and Woodland on issues of mutual concern."

The logic of this approach is simple and straight forward. Shouldn't the governing bodies communicate as they update their respective general plans? It seems like such a basic and obvious concept.

As Yamada cited back in 2005, there is already an established county-city 2 by 2 process through which Supervisors meet with their respective District’s Mayors and City Council members. This would merely be an expansion into a large and broader Yolo County "council of governments."

Davis City Councilmember Stephen Souza has latched onto this idea and placed it on the City Council agenda for this evening.

His proposal is for a joint meeting--just as the city has with its commission to "enhance a culture of cooperation and improve the ability of both our governmental bodies to serve our respective constituents."

There seems to be a fear however that this type of joint meetings will be used to re-write the pass-through agreement to force the city to grow at a set rate on the periphery.

That is a legitimate concern. However, there are a couple of points that should be made in response to this legitimate concern.

First, if the council majority wants to impose a growth rate of one percent or even higher on the Davis periphery, they are going to need to get it through the Measure J vote. That gives Davis voters a strong mechanism by which to control peripheral growth.

Second, while it is true Measure J expires in 2010, it is also true that there will be two council elections between now and then. If peripheral growth becomes a threat from this council majority, it can be used as a weapon against them in the next two elections. The public will have to make a decision as to whether or not they want to grow on the periphery.

Third, if the current council majority wants to grow on the periphery, having talks or not having talks will not have any effect on that desire. The current council has the votes to do this with or without collaboration from the County Supervisors. The County Board of Supervisors is not going to give greater legitimacy at least for the majority of citizens of Davis who opposed peripheral development projects such as Covell Village.

Talks can never hurt--particularly if you are in a minority position. We need decisions that occur in the light where we can scrutinize them and take them to the public if need be. Talks place issues on the public record. If the County Supervisors and the Council Majority indeed attempt to use this process to force growth on Davis--that attempt will be on a public record at a public meeting and the progressives on the city council can then take this to the voters in 2008.

As I said, I understand completely the concern about forced peripheral growth on Davis. But if that is to happen--I want it to occur in an open and public process where statements are on the record and where we can then take it to the voters in 2008 to see if they indeed approve of such actions. If they do, there is nothing we can do to stop it. However, at least by having a public process, the public will be aware.

Moreover, there is another reason to have talks that has nothing to do with peripheral growth and everything to do with having a formal process whereby each group can meet and discuss concerns. Communication is the best way to resolve differences and work toward shared goals. Both the city and county take into this process their own concerns and objectives about the next 10 to 20 years of planning and it only makes sense to at least communicate about each other's intentions.

In summary, if this becomes an issue about forced growth on Davis--I think a number of people would like to know about it and will fight against it. However, I see no reason to fear talks and I see many reasons to prefer that these talks occur in an open and public meeting with Brown act requirements that will force members to talk about it in the open.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Criticism of the "Best Uses" Report

Last week, the "Best Uses of Schools Advisory Task Force" delivered its final report that recommended the closing of Valley Oak Elementary School.

While the group spent an admirable amount of time and energy working on its report over the last two years, the group has nevertheless produced a product that in the end falls well short of what both the school board and the district needed. The chief complaint is that this report reads like a lawyer's brief arguing for one viewpoint rather than presenting the school board with an array of options and evidence on which they could make an informed decision.

One of the first things that struck me about the presentation last week and the report as a whole was its format. The report and the presentation made an argument. Those things that fit into that argument were presented. Those things that did not fit into that argument were not presented. That may be helpful for a lawyer's brief, however, the purpose of this task force should have been to provide the school board itself with options, not to advocate one position or another. As such, the best format may have been to present fully all reasonable alternatives and then perhaps make a recommendation based on those alternatives. However, that is not what this report did.

That is not what the school board wanted. The school board is now stuck in a very difficult position of either accepting findings that they may or may not agree with, or going against the work of a volunteer group that has spent two years working on this. If they choose the latter, they fall prey to the question--why did they create the task force in the first place if they were merely to do what they wanted to do anyway.

However, this is not an accurate assessment for two reasons. First, the task force was created in March of 2005 under the previous board and second, what few may remember is that the original focus of the task force was not the closing of a school. That developed over time. The original purpose of the task force was to "create a plan to guide the district's use of its schools, given the capacity that has been increased with the construction of the new elementary school in Mace Ranch." They were going to look at relocation of existing programs in the school district.

I have heard a number of criticisms of the report and their methods. I was appalled last week as to how defensive Mr. Kirk Trost became at times during the meeting. I thought some of his behavior was extremely inappropriate. Did he not expect that he was going to be criticized? Did he not expect that the report would anger many parents in the Valley Oak Elementary School area?

Volunteering for something does not immunize one from criticism. Indeed the entire school board does not receive compensation for their services.

There are two key criticisms I have substantively about this report. First, they make an assumption about 420 students being a minimum size for an elementary school and second their use of a one-mile distance to demonstrate the lack of changes in distance from school for elementary school children.

The task force argues that "the most effective enrollment in a Neighborhood Program is 420 students with precisely 60 students at each grade level." The key to this argument they claim is to have "differentiation" that "will become increasingly difficult as enrollment drops below 420."

They make this assertion with no citation whatsoever for any kind of research. There is a wealth of educational research in the field that would probably support their contention. But they do not cite it. Moreover, there is probably a wealth of educational research that probably would oppose their contention. This is a prime example of the need to have alternative viewpoints that are fully fleshed out in both research and argumentation. To me it is simply inexcusable to make these kinds of assumptions with no citation or research to back it up.

The differentiation argument needs to be backed up with research and research in these fields is almost never undisputed and so there needs to be both sides presented and while the task force can make a recommendation, the school board should have the ultimate say over this philosophy.

My second contention is with their presentation of transportation and walking distance from school. Their statistics and projections suggested that closing down Valley Oak Elementary school would have virtually no impact on the number of Valley Oak students who would be within one mile walking distance and the number of students within a one and a half mile walking distance from their school. That means that for current Valley Oak Students, on average, the walking distance using those two metrics would be virtually unchanged.

The problem is that they used as their metric--1 mile and 1.5 miles as their examined distanced. The school board in the past had specifically requested to see half-mile distances and whether students were having to walk further using that figure as a guide.

The problem with a mile is that most young children will not walk a mile. They may walk half a mile to school, but who is going to let a six year old walk a mile to school? Virtually no one. So that is not a meaningful measure. If you have taken a bunch of kids who were within half a mile and are now making them walk one mile, that is a disadvantage to them.

Again these data were requested by school board members, Board President Jim Provenza asked again at this meeting, and Trost suggested that they had not looked at that and suggested that this was a distance standard used by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, the Center for Disease Control, and various walk-to-school organizations. He also pointed out that if they used a tougher standard it would not be uniform throughout the district--a point that is immaterial to the current discussion at hand which involves the displacement of some students not all students.

This argument does not work for young elementary school kids. I can tell you that growing up, I lived a mile from school and that I almost never walked to school. It was a long way and took 20 minutes to walk home. I would bike to school but almost never walk. And it is considerably less safe for kids to walk now than when I grew up. So one mile, might as well be five miles for younger children at the very least.

The suspicion here is that the half-mile data would show that there was a considerable difference for having Valley Oak open versus not having Valley Oak open. That is just a guess, but given that the data were requested but not provided, not an unreasonable one. And if it that turns out to be untrue and that closing Valley Oak makes no difference in this area as well, we need to know that as well.

Overall, I would suggest that this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of fundamental criticisms. I know a number of the families in the Valley Oak area were unhappy with the amount of time spent studying the ELL program which they argue is exemplary and the lack of contact made on that front. They were also very disturbed by the patriarchal attitude of several members on the Task Force. I did not witness this personally, but in talking with members of the public these were concerns that they raised. And a big problem is that projections are at best a rough guess and long range projections are very difficult to make with any degree of certainty and they are very susceptible to the assumptions that go into the development of the model.

The biggest criticism remains that this report does not present options. They do not present a lot of research and counter-research to support key contentions and also oppose their contentions. One of the questions I would have asked the members of the Task Force on several of their points is what is their best argument against their report. Every argument has strengths and weaknesses and to present a case like this that is at best nuanced as though it were black and white does a disservice to this community, to the school board and especially to the parents that this decisions will personally effect.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting

Was Superintendent David Murphy Fired?

On Thursday evening, Davis Joint Unified School District Superintendent David Murphy announced his retirement.

Reading from a prepared statement:

“Since February 1, when I turned 60, my wife Robbie and I have been discussing what would be best for our family and with our life... It is now an appropriate time for me to conclude a wonderful era of 35 years of public service and spend more time with my family while we are all healthy and happy.”

While he intends to retire on July 31, 2007, he announced that the Board of Education would appoint an interim superintendent now and he would immediately hand over all his responsibilities.

The speculation is now flying around the community that Murphy was forced out rather than voluntarily retiring.

Said former school board member Joan Sallee in the Davis Enterprise:

“I was deeply saddened to hear of Murphy’s retirement. ... I am very sorry that the current school board did not see fit to retain his services. The district has suffered a grievous loss, at a time when we can least afford it.”

That is very indicative that in fact this was not a voluntary retirement.

This has been a tumultuous year for the school district with a number of different financial scandals. In November of 2006, the board halted construction on a new King High School building. Allegations were made at that time by Board Member Jim Provenza that "shoddy practices in the business office have cost us" money on the project. He further said, "I'm happy we have a new chief budget officer (Colby) and (we're) cleaning up the mess we've had in the past.

Earlier this month the project was re-approved with money from redevelopment funds. Board member Tim Taylor cast the lone, "no" vote and he too made allegations about irregularities in board money use. "For me, the issue is some financially funky stuff that's gone on to get us to this point. It has absolutely nothing to do with King High."

Another scandal in the last year was the Total School Solutions scandal which led to the resignation of a number of administrators. Total Schools Solutions is a Fairfield-based firm run by Tahir Ahad, who served as deputy superintendent for business services for the Davis School District from 1999 through May. Employees who worked at Total School Solutions while at the same time working for the school district were perceived to have a conflict of interest and this led to new conflict of interest regulations within the school district requiring disclosure of other employers that school district employees work for. At one point, the employees at Total School Solutions were largely made up of administrators from Davis Joint Unified who were simultaneously on the both payrolls.

These are some of a long list of problems including the reemergence of the bullying and harassment issue nearly three years after a long and heated community meeting in 2004 where several hundred parents and students came forward at a Davis Human Relations Commission meeting held at the Veteran's Memorial Center, to press for changes in district policy on bullying and racism. Those incidents led to the creation of a part-time School Climate Coordinator position now held by Mel Lewis. Since then the district has come under fire in the Fischer anti-gay harassment case and another similar case that has resulted in two law suits against the school. The district has now tightened up its disciplinary code.

Most recently we have the controversy involved with the potential closing of Valley Oak Elementary school and the recommendations handed down on Thursday by the Best Uses of Schools Task Force. That task force was appointed by the previous board. This is going to be another heated and tumultuous issue as the board now has to deal with that report and its fallout.

The previous board was fiercely loyal to Superintendent Murphy and his staff. In fact, on their way out, one of their last actions before new members Gina Daleiden, Tim Taylor, and Sheila Allen took over was to extend Murphy's contract until July 31, 2008, which had for all intents and purposes tied the hands of the new school board. Something that deeply upset several of the members of the current board.

However it now appears that they were able to find a way to get rid of Murphy. Joan Sallee's comment is informative because she was among the outgoing members that voted to extend his contract back in 2005.

The District has a tough task ahead. They need to hire a strong and competent new Superintendent who can effectively clean house of many of the other administrators who have become serious impediments toward furthering the educational system in Davis.

The public will unfortunately never know for sure why Superintendent Murphy has "retired," just as they will never know for sure why Jim Antonen was fired or Jim Hyde was fired. This is unfortunate. The laws protecting personnel confidentiality make sense when we are dealing with rank and file employees. When we are dealing with individuals in the command structure such as Police Chief, Superintendent, or City Manager, those laws make less sense. There is a strong and compelling public interest to know why such high ranking and highly paid public officials have lost their jobs. Transparency in government demands it.

---Doug Paul Davis reporting