Supports unification candidates

There are only three candidates on the Pleasant Valley School District ballot in November who support our community's efforts to place unification before the voters. These candidates are Patty Lerner, Jennifer Miller and Ron Speakman. Miller and Speakman are part of the current board majority supporting unification. Lerner has been a PTA leader and long time supporter and worker for unification. If you support unification, or simply wish to have it on a future ballot so that a full public debate can be held, these three candidates deserve your support. This is a critical election and will decide the future of our city and the course of unification efforts. Do not be mislead by those who want to keep studying the proposal. It has been studied for eight years. The questions have been answered and are available on the PVSD website. Now we need a PVSD Board to work together to place it on the ballot for voters to decide.

More than four years ago I became a spokesman for, and ardent supporter of, unification for the Camarillo schools. I did so for the following reasons: (1) the educational benefits that an integrated K12 school curriculum provides for students: (2) the State of California encourages unification by providing a financial bonus to those districts which are unified. In Camarillo's case, that bonus would amount to around $6 million annually; (3) all Camarillo schools should be governed by a board comprised of Camarillo citizens elected by Camarillo voters. Today, we have a High School governed largely by Oxnard residents, elected primarily by Oxnard voters. Unless unification occurs, this will continue, given the difference in the populations of two cities.

The effort to allow Camarillo voters the opportunity to express their opinion on this important issue has been slowed, but not derailed, by legal objections and obstacles created by the Oxnard Union High School District Board. Their most recent effort resulted in a delay of six months and the expenditure of over $80,000 in taxpayer money to prepare a Environmental Impact Report which found that there were no significant negative impacts in unifying the Camarillo schools. Why is the OUHSD board fighting unification so tenaciously? It is very simple. Camarillo, with its larger per capita tax base supplies far more financial benefit to OUHSD than the cost of educating Camarillo students. In other words, we are their "cash cow."

Camarillo's Keight school district, Pleasant Valley, has over the past three years taken a position actively supporting this unification effort which, according to opinion polls, has overwhelming support in our community. However, PVSD's support has not come easily. PVSD Board has been seriously split on this issue, with two Board members fighting unification efforts each step of the way. They have publicly said that they support unification, but"we need to study it further" or "it is just not the right time". Their efforts have undercut the efforts by PVSD and, in my opinion, given encouragement to the Oxnard Union High School District Board to keep fighting the proposal, believing that a change in the majority of the PVSD Board may cause the issue to go away.

For all the above reasons, I urge you to join me in voting for current PVSD Board members Ron Speakman and Jennifer Miller as well as Unify Now! leader Patty Lerner. J. William Little Camarillo