Bill Ribblett CTA/NEA Service Center Representative. . .
or Victor Elementary School District Employee?

So, isn't it great that CTA allowed the raid of EVERY classroom in the Victor Elementary School District. Attached is a copy of the "response" received from Bill Ribblett, the CTA/NEA Staff Person for the High Desert Region of Southern California, located in the same city as Lomitas Elementary School. Other than this "response" no other action of any kind was ever taken by CTA to stop the abuses that were occurring. Be sure to read the comments following the pages listed below.

It's rather amazing, to say the very least, that Bill Ribblett "didn't have a clue" as to why the original complaint about the raid on every classroom in the Victor Elementary School District was sent to CTA's President, Lois Tinson. Want to see just a few of the reasons why? Take a look at some of the following pages to get an idea:

• Quick Facts About the California Teachers Association
• Quick Facts About the High Desert Service Council
• High Desert Service Council botches elections
• High Desert Service Council did nothing to stop ongoing harassment of teachers
• High Desert Service Council ignores segregation and discrimination in Victor Elementary Schools
• The High Desert Service Council knew about the ongoing problems with the Victor Elementary Teachers Association (VETA) (i.e., $14,000 worth of membership dues, from CTA, that were NOT deposited over a period of three years.)
• The High Desert Service Council's "role" in the creation of an "Employee/Employer Health Trust" (Health Plan) that went belly-up as well as the complete lack of ANY official representation, from VETA, on that trust's board of directors.
• The High Desert Service Council's sale of expensive office equipment to the Victor Elementary Teachers Association that was placed in the home of (and most likely used for the personal needs of) a VETA President who later quit the association. Years later, that office equipment had still not been returned to the rightful owner.

Not surprisingly, Bill Ribblett didn't read the original letter that his "response" was allegedly supposed to address. A few facts he would have caught include:

• The individuals who "directed and controlled the Commando Raid" (Isn't it nice that Bill Ribblett was the one who created that phrase!) were known. Why then, didn't Ribblett do anything about it?
• The original letter clearly stated that Lomitas Elementary School was the last, of ten schools within the Victor Elementary School District to have been searched.
• A "strong site level decision making article in the contract?" Was that the contract that only 22, out of nearly 300 teachers, ratified? (Most teachers were never notified of about this retatification meeting.)
• "Have a discussion with your President or an Executive Board Member who has been trained in teacher advocacy by CTA?" Ribblett noted this despite the fact that the VETA President's school had already been raided (could that be the same VETA President who took out an interest free loan, using membership dues, to go to on vacation to Hawaii instead of attending the CTA President's Meeting?) and who also knew about all of the other things mentioned on this web site? As far as finding VETA "Executive Board Members trained in teacher advocacy" - Huh? What? That type of training was NEVER provided to Executive Board Members.
• "File a grievance?!?!?!?!" - Gosh, it's amazing that you don't know that no one had every filed a grievance against VESD - at least not in anyone's recent memory. Why didn't Ribblett accept his duty as the "local staff consultant" and initiate such a grievance?
• An association investigation? It would be a very cold day in Hell before anything like that were to happen.

Well, the association already knew about the problem and did nothing about it.

Agreed, "what was described should not happen to teachers and their students" - neither should all of the discrimination, segregation, harassment, etc., etc. that had gone of for so many years in the Victor Elementary School District. So then, where was Bill Ribblett?

Thank you for your permission to "share this letter with anyone who can help remedy this problem" that is exacly why a petition was signed by Lomitas Elementary School teachers that you, once again, ignored and also why this letter has been posted on the Internet.