[Vision2020] What Your School Administration Doesn't Want You to Know

[Melynda Huskey]

In perusing the "What Your School Administration Doesn't Want You to Know" document, I think the piece I found most offensive and troubling was this excerpt:
 
"Chemical contamination is an issue at the proposed trail school site.  An infant born in a wheat growing rural community in the US has twice the chance of suffering birth defects as one born in a rural place that doesnÂ’t produce wheat, an effect researchers blame on chlorophenoxy herbicides.  Aerial spraying with its frequent overdrift contamination is used for the fields adjoining the proposed 40 acre site for the high school.  Will you worry about your exposure when you want a family?"
 
Can Prall, Radavich, and Willard really intend to assert that the Board of Trustees and the District would knowingly expose children to teratogenic chemicals for the sake of a new high school?  How irresponsible.  How ugly.  
 
Ms. Radavich now asks that we summon our "compassion" to come together as a community to solve the question of how to meet the educational needs of our children.  Would she characterize the flier as a "compassionate" document?  Is it "compassionate" to engender profound mistrust, fear, and anger in young people in an attempt to influence the outcome of an election?  
 
Right now, I myself would not be willing to engage in any discussion with the authors of this document; it's simply too repugnant.  I can't imagine how the trustees and school district employees must be feeling, after so many weeks of outrageous accusations and public incivility.  I think we'll find it very difficult to recover civil and productive community discourse.  How disheartening--much more so than the outcome of a particular bond.
 
Melynda Huskey