School disaster drill to symbolize budget woes

Calling the plight of California’s public schools a disaster is
nothing new to many educators, but on March 4 the label will take
on a whole new meaning in Healdsburg.
A partnership of education labor unions and organizations in
California hopes to send a message to Sacramento next Thursday with
Start the Day For Students, an event that includes public outreach
and, in some districts including Healdsburg Unified, a student
disaster drill. At issue is the $18 billion in budget cuts to
public education over the past two years, a dollar amount expected
to increase again in the state’s upcoming budget for 2010-2011.
Teacher union leaders in Healdsburg and Windsor both said this
week that plans for the day call for educators, staff and parents
to hand out literature on the ongoing budget crisis before school,
and a disaster drill during.
Both the Healdsburg and Windsor unified school districts have
agreed to schedule student disaster drills on March 4 to coincide
with the day’s events. Other county districts including Santa Rosa
City Schools are allowing teachers to hand out literature but have
no plans to hold disaster drills, although Superintendent Sharon
Liddell said that may change if the school board requests it.
Superintendents Jeff Harding of Healdsburg and Steve Herrington
of Windsor both say the event itself will not be political, a
practice prohibited by the state’s Education Code.
“We’re required to do one a month in grades [kindergarten]
through eighth,” said Herrington. “We’ll be doing the normal safety
drill, and there will be no discussion during the fire drill.”
“We’re required to hold disaster and fire drills anyway,” said
Harding. “To hold them on that particular day satisfies a
requirement. We’re not impacting instructional time.”
Even so, Herrington said the significance of holding disaster
drills on that day is clear. “It is to send a political message,
I’m sure it is,” he said. “It’s a very fine line.”
How fine? County Superintendent of Schools Carl Wong said Monday
he felt discomfort in linking an emergency drill to a politically
motivated event, calling such a connection “inappropriate.”
Wong said the California Teacher’s Association sent him a letter
requesting that he ask superintendents throughout Sonoma County to
participate in the disaster drill, which he turned down.
“I am not requesting that any district superintendent call an
emergency drill for this purpose, nor is my office participating,”
he said. “I am not of the belief that it is within my role, nor do
I feel, professionally, that that is the purpose of an emergency
preparedness drill.”
Still, Wong said he sent a check for $100 to the California
Teachers Association (CTA) union to help pay for the day’s
activities—other than the drill—and that he wouldn’t tell any
superintendent not to participate. “They are appointed as
superintendents and this is a decision they will make themselves,”
he said.
Pat Sabo, a middle school teacher at Healdsburg Junior High and
a regional representative of CTA, said the union is clarifying with
teachers what’s appropriate and what’s not during the disaster
drill. “We’re all very much aware of what we can and cannot do, and
we’re informing our people what we can and cannot do,” she
said.
She said the event is the beginning of a much larger effort to
educate communities on the consequences of state legislators’
budget practices. “The intention is to really, really get the
information out there that the state of California is not going to
be able to sustain itself, its public education programs, under its
current funding model,” she said.