A modest proposal

After watching the March 15 Pleasant Valley School Board meeting, I have some suggestions for the trustees on how they can accomplish their goal of closing three schools. First, throw out any work done by staff, and by all means, completely disregard the recommendations made by the 711 Committee.

The committee was supposedly made up of Camarillo's best and brightest, so it is abundantly obvious that they came to the wrong conclusions after pouring over the "2inch binders" of information they received.

Second, hold the City Council and Mayor McDonald to their generous eleventh-hour offer to pour money into PVSD's coffers to fund a district that is spending money it can ill afford to spend to keep small schools open.

Maybe the Oxnard Union High School District should contact the city and ask for help paying for a new high school in Camarillo.

Finally, close all district schools and reopen the ones that have the most parents writing nasty e-mails and wearing the best colored shirts. Maybe you could circumvent this by simply asking the 11 petitioners who oppose unification which sites they think you should close - - they seem to know what is best for Camarillo's education system.

As one parent put it, maybe we should take the "energy" from the parents and focus on the right "issues." If you take long enough and keep coming up with new issues, maybe the issues will just go away altogether, along with our interim superintendent and our current teaching staff. Good luck and Godspeed. Mark B. Webster Camarillo