I filed a formal complaint to the Vallejo School District (VCUSD) to protest the sections in its new budget that discriminates against low-income students and those students labeled black. VCUSD officials received my complaint, said that it conformed to rules and that they had 60 days to respond. Then, obviously they ignored it, because I heard nothing from them three weeks past the 60-day period deadline.

I called the District’s Compliance officer three times over a week, leaving a phone message two times. I received no response. I sent an e-mail to the District, believing it was possible the compliance officer was absent from work for some reason. In addition, I left a phone message with the office of the State Administrator Damelio administration assistant. Normally, they responded within 24 hours to e-mail or phone messages. However, this time I received no response after more than a week. .

It is unlikely that none of them received my message or that all were absent from work for three weeks. This is especially doubtful since VCUSD officials were at city council and school board meetings. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume they are ignoring me or that I am on their do-not-respond list.

The Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) wrote in their December 2004 inspection report that VCUSD communication was poor across the district.  It wrote, “Parents and community members are not generally made to feel welcome in the district and its schools. There is little demonstration of a customer service understanding among staff.”

This no response surprised me. Previously, I had pleasant, cooperative responses from VCUSD staff administrators. This is the first time that anyone in the district did not return telephone inquiries, although other people complained for years about the difficulty dealing with VCUSD. However, this episode makes me question how seriously the State Administrator and VCUSD are about improving communication with the community.

It is one thing for school officials to express a spirit of cooperation by inviting suggestions from the public about school projects. It’s a different challenge to receive complaints about a policy decision and respond according to California Department of Education regulations.  

I won’t argue the merits of my complaint to VCUSD, because this is something Damelio and VCUSD must do if they ever decide to answer. Nevertheless, they had a legal and ethical duty to respond within 60-days. They have an ethical and professional duty to the students and to the community to respond a complaint on their behalf made within state and school district mandated procedures.

They could have rejected it as baseless if this was their finding. Or, they could have asked for a reasonable extension to complete their investigation. I would not have objected to this response. After all, this was not an adversarial lawsuit I made against VCUSD. Instead, it was a complaint to them about a possible correctable unfair budget decision that was potentially unfair to some students and harmful to the community. Vallejo School District officials’ failure to follow regulations will ultimately costs VCUSD more money even if it only in more administrative costs explaining their violation

Students’ unruly conduct on and off campus has concerned the community and VCUSD officials for years. Sadly, some school officials’ rule violations also concern the community.    

It always puzzled me why some school officials believe it causes no harm when they violate their rules. They rationalize that breaking the rule is not wrong in this situation, because they need to do it for a certain result. However, rules are no less violated when they do it for convenience than when truant and unruly students do it for convenience.  

 

Write to Kenneth Brooks at P.O. Box 882, Vallejo, CA 94590. E-mail to: opinion@ethicalego.com.