Editorial

EDITORIAL - Two things happened at the latest Friday night emergency meeting of the Madera Unified School District Board of Trustees, the school closures for Madera Unified, like elsewhere in the valley have been extended to May 1^st, and all seven members of the board of trustees unanimously gave Superintendent Todd Lile full authority to make unilateral decisions for the district without the need for prior board approval.

The board enacted section 35161 of the California Education Code which allows the board of trustees the right to delegate to an officer or employee of the district certain powers or duties normally reserved for the board itself.

EDITORIAL – The Madera Unified School District closed all the schools but, to be able to hold on to their Federal Grant for free school lunches, began their emergency food distributions today. How did it turn out? John Adams was out of lunches in 20 minutes, Sierra Vista ran out in about the same amount of time.

Schools from all over the city of Madera were calling for more lunches, but Lincoln School was so overstocked that many other schools were sending vans there to pick up the excess and re-distribute it where needed. Then Lincoln ran out and the district’s child nutrition office brought them more. Isn’t it funny how Lincoln always seems to get the most from the school district? Even during a time of emergency.

EDITORIAL - The Title IX attorneys are coming, but the Madera Unified School District is dragging their feet with little concern for creating equity for the female athletes at Madera High School. In July of this year, BVN published a story about the disparity between the MHS varsity baseball team and the MHS varsity softball team. That story has attracted the attention of the a California based Title IX law firm.

In April of 2016, a storm hit Madera with winds topping 37 miles per hour. Trees around Madera were toppled, a historic 58-year-old fresco of the father of the Virgin Mary over the front entrance of Saint Joachim's Catholic Church blew off the wall into the street below, and the backstop at the Madera High Varsity Baseball Field crashed down the old steel pipe and wood bleachers. The damage to the bleachers gave the school district $2 million in insurance payouts to rebuild.

EDITORIAL – There seems to be an issue at Chowchilla Union High School that is getting out of hand and that issue is communication. There are teachers making racist comments to students, students making racist comments to other students and an administration hoping if they bury their heads in the sand all of it will go away. Meanwhile parents are not getting any information out of the school and are being chastised for making posts on social media.

Last week a student brought a Donald Trump 2020 banner to school which upset a few students. The next day other students brought American Flags on campus and chanted to Hispanic students that they should all go back to where they came from. While the school and Chowchilla Police claim that no fights broke out on campus, unlike what was reported by students on social media, one student was suspended for fighting.  Police were brought to the campus to maintain order and extra security was enforced at Friday evening’s football game where there was a ban on any sort of flag or banners.

EDITORIAL – This last weekend over 1000 college students moved into Fresno State’s Student Housing. Furniture, refrigerators and boxes were trucked into the dorm area and many students began their first adventures away from their family homes. One of those students was my oldest daughter.

At Fresno State, dorm life comes in many different configurations. While around 600 students will live in the traditional dorms with communal restrooms, 400 or so students will experience dorm life in one, two or three-bedroom suite-style dorms with up to six other students. In my daughter’s suite, she shares a two-bedroom suite with five other girls who came to Fresno from all over the state.

EDITORIAL – The law defines a public figure as a person, such as a politician, celebrity, or business leader, who has a certain social position within a certain scope and a significant influence on society or a person who has thrust themselves to the forefront of particular public controversies to influence the resolution of the issues involved.

As the publisher of Big Valley News, I recognize that I have voluntarily placed myself in the position of a public figure. If I didn’t want to be in the public spotlight, I should have probably picked a different line of work. There are others in our community that take to the podiums at public meetings, such as county board of supervisors, school boards, or city councils, and share their opinions or criticize our elected officials. Those people are also public figures and hopefully, they all gave thought ahead of time to what it means to choose to spend time in the public spotlight.