No Need To Hide, SAUSD


Thank God for screen grabs. Without them, and without Orange Juice Blog's muckraking, we wouldn't be able to share the (tricky) little hide-and-seek game Santa Ana Unified School District played with its constituents yesterday.

Art Pedroza, over at Orange Juice, caught the district in hideout mode when he took a snapshot of their website and wondered aloud
why there was no information anywhere — in English or in Spanish — about a critical budgetary meeting tonight that will deal with the possible $46 million in cuts the district faces (read: potential school closures), because of the stalled state budget. The meeting's open to the public, but the pu
blic didn't know. Instead, it was outed in a Reg story which
listed a 7:30 a.m. (instead of 7 p.m.) meeting time. Art noticed the meeting wasn't listed on the district's website and threw down a little blog pressure, urging readers to call or e-mail spokesperson Angela Burrell asking where the meeting info was.

Miraculously, the real meeting info was brought out of hiding today, a little late for parents who may have rearranged schedules and showed up for a 7:30 a.m. “community meeting” instead of tonight's session. There's no way of knowing if the district gaffe — which would have kept parents and teachers away from tonight's meeting — was intentional. Could it be that district officials are a tad nervous that folks might show up wondering why assistant supe Juan Lopez was just given a raise and bumped up to associate superintendent during these hard times or if the district will proceed with
remodeling projects at district headquarters
in the face of more cuts (as it did this past summer)?

Only one way to find out: Special Board Meeting/Study Session of the Santa Ana Unified
School District Board of Education; Board Room of the District Administration Building, 1601 E. Chestnut, Santa Ana; 7 p.m. tonight.

*Image: Rena Cugelman  



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