"Master energy healer" in Mt. View Schools

Perhaps I shouldn't speak too soon, but I'm relieved that we seem to have more sense here in B'game than some of our neighboring towns.  Exhibit A this weekend was in the Daily Post.  Headline "Parents step in after healer".  It's an odd fragment of a headline, but reading on we learn:

Superintendent Ayinde Rudolph is forming a committee with parents and teachers to advise him on the budget after he caught flack for hiring an "energy healer" who gave teachers guided meditations.  The (Mountain View Whisman School District) gave $121,150 to "master energy healer" Alycia Diggs-Chavis to do sessions with 159 employees, district spokeswoman Shelly Hausman said.

Yikes.  It had better be a very good energy healing meditation for $761.95 per session.  One wonders what the teachers' union had to say about this.  Or is the "master energy healer" a union member?

As we ponder Measure GG here in B'game let's hope our teachers are self-energized.  That is the kind of nonsense that turns people off that might otherwise $upport the $chools. I will have more to follow on GG, but you can peruse John Horgan's survey of the tax landscape here.  He starts:

It’s a gamble. Dedicated advocates of adding money for the operation of Burlingame’s public elementary schools believe it’s a risk, a leap of fiscal faith if you will, that must be taken.  In essence, a proposed new property levy, if approved by the electorate (a total of 19,799 voters at last count), would be a new parcel tax on top of an existing parcel tax, a monetary double play.

Comments

[Spurrina]

No on any more taxes, bonds, fees.
Stop this funding of inefficiency.

[Michelle]

Burlingame High School is forcing kids to spend an entire day on some touchy-feely SEL program trying to force friendships and connections between kids (that NEVER works!) Waste of an instructional day at best (I've heard other negatives about this program but I don't want to confirm anything my child hasn't experienced yet.) Also I'm sure this program is quite expensive (4 days total for all kids.)

[Fugit All]

I'm sure the parents concerned have never benefitted from holistic practitioners like yoga teachers, massage therapists, reiki practioners... (I could go on: the list is long). Money is certainly tight in public school education so it makes sense that the community THAT GETS BY ON SUCH A LOW MEDIAN INCOME would gripe about an expense any local tech company would rank as bottom tier...

The outrage would make sense if teachers weren't already paid next to nothing. And around here, yikes.

[Cassandra]

Look at the massive, hardly used California Teachers Association headquarters on Magnolia.

Boo-hoo.

[Editor]

A lengthy comment that is repetitive to several comments made on other School posts has been removed. Other versions remain where originally posted.

[Mom]

Can't you get a year membership at Prime Time for about $760?

That's energizing.

[Peter Garrison]

No on 5

Mercury News editorial 9/13/24

But, as we’ve seen repeatedly in the Bay Area, the carveout for school bonds has been an electoral disaster. Proposition 5 would magnify the abuse.

We have witnessed local school officials, sometimes with questionable relationships with companies that stand to benefit, engage in deceitful political tactics and campaigns at taxpayer expense to pass their measures.

We often see ballot wording carefully crafted by political consultants to puff up the benefits of the measure, never mention the word tax and hide the true costs to taxpayers. Rather than fix these abuses, some state lawmakers have sought to enable and expand the deception.