Sunday, May 25, 2008

Dysfunction at Castle Park Elementary School and CVESD

How dysfunctional is Castle Park Elementary School in Chula Vista Elementary School District (CVESD)?

Well, what do you expect from a school where teacher crimes have been covered up for years at taxpayer expense?

Even in this day of almost universal lamentation over the state of education, Castle Park Elementary stands out.

There are many good teachers on the staff, but the veteran teachers at the school, although they've become smaller in number in recent years, have grown in power. Two veterans of the school have become presidents of Chula Vista Educators (CVE), the teachers union, during the past decade. This was not a coincidence.

The current Chula Vista Educators president, Peggie (Peg) Myers, earned political points for helping former presidents Gina Boyd and Jim Groth to violate every law and rule that had to be violated in order to protect Castle Park Elementary teacher Robin Donlan from having to retract her false allegations and say she was sorry for committing a misdemeanor against Maura Larkins.

Why not just say you are sorry when you hurt someone, you ask?

It would have prevented a lot of harm to children at Castle Park. But that's not how CVE and CVESD operate. They operate in secret, and in tandem, and protecting their power is more important to them than any number of children.

The number of dysfunctional teachers at Castle Park has been reduced, but those that remain have been causing lots of trouble. Nikki Perez has managed to cause big trouble for both principals.

As a result, Principal Carlos Ulloa has now resigned from the school in a manner eerily similar to the way principal Ollie (Olympio) Matos left the school three years ago.