Kaiser faces more problems than just a move

I am a parent at Kaiser and I was involved in boycotting the Dec. 13

move. There is a much greater story than was published in the

newspaper.

The reason why I am calling is because at our school we have four

phases of construction that were scheduled and this move that will

happen on Dec. 20 is actually phase four, the last phase. Once this

phase begins 100% of our campus will be under construction or

considered a construction site. So our children are being forced into

an extreme situation of the first three phases, which are not even

complete.

There are many items, which are security hazards for our children.

For example, there are no heat controls for the rooms. The faculty

and staff are locked out of the heat so they can’t even moderate the

heat in our rooms. Some of the rooms don’t even have phones for

emergency. Regardless of what was stated in the paper, the fire

alarms are not integrated and they do have to be set off in three

different places. And then, because it’s not an integrated system,

there are fire alarms that cannot be heard in all of the classrooms.

So somebody has to run to those classrooms. So we do have some real

security issues going on at the school.

We really appreciate the Measure A work but we do feel that

[district officials] have not really taken into consideration the

extreme disruption that they are causes in our children’s education

this year. And as parents, we feel that a lot of undue stress has

been placed on our teachers as well as the Kaiser staff and that if

our testing standards don’t meet the state requirements there

shouldn’t be any blame because of the extreme disruption that we

continually experienced.

That’s just a few of them. I actually have in my possession a list

giving the 28 top concerns or incomplete items for phase one, two,

and three and it’s not even a complete list. One of our complaints

has been why or how can phase four even begin when the previous three

phases are not complete. And then why are they forcing a move on us

at a holiday time when I’ve been told by Bonnie Martin herself that

nobody wants to work, including her construction crew, over the

holidays?

It’s an interesting situation and I think that it really has

disrupted our school year for the most part for our children and put

a lot of undue stress on our teachers as well.

KISMA REIDLING

Costa Mesa