May First Alliance vs. Alisal teachers and employees

It should come as a no surprise to anyone that a group of friends and family members of Alisal Trustee Meredith Ibarra, Alisal employee Jose Ibarra, and those who support José Castañeda and Superintendent John Ramirez have come out publicly against salary increases for Alisal teachers and employees.

And they've done it via You-Tube.

The video is exactly what you would expect from this group, AKA the May First Alliance, who are now calling themselves Red de Padres por el Respeto y la Igualdad en la Educación -- Network of Parents for Respect and Equality in Education.

First the group takes credit for changing the school board and electing the group seated now -- the people who routinely rubber-stamp Ramirez's decisions with hardly any questions. Then it takes credit for kicking out the state trustee in two years -- wasn't that what the state said it was going to do in the first place?

Then the group says the teachers should not be getting salary increases because the children of the Alisal are not doing well -- 60 percent of them are reading below level, 40 percent are below level in Math level.

But wait a minute. Hasn't Supt. Ramirez been touting how much progress the Alisal has been making? How the achievement gap has been narrowing?

So which is it? Is the achievement gap narrowing or are the children still lagging? Are the teachers doing their job or not?

While no doubt the video is a blatant attack on teachers, it makes a point that is very important. A leader of the California School Employees Association is quoted repeating several times that parents of the Alisal don't know the legal names of their children, which causes undue burden on the employees as they have to spend a lot of time searching for their records.

So now it's parents who don't know the names of their children? How about parents living in a system that practically eradicates the existence of one of them in their children's lives? How about the system being disrespectful of people's right to give their children two last names -- the mother's and the father's?

Unfortunately, these are the type of comments that May First Alliance, Red de Padres, the Ibarras, the Castañedas, seize on to demonstrate how Alisal teachers and employees disrespect them. It's unfortunate. The district is not moving forward by having one group attack the other, and viceversa. An eye for an eye does make the world go blind.

It will be interesting to see how the unions respond to this video. Maybe with another one, with fewer inaccuracies? Stay tuned.