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GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIALBOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151ext. 112 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS Thoseofuswhoreadourmythologyin youth recall the Golden Fleece. It was the fleece of the gold-haired winged ram, which was held in Colchis. The fleece was a symbol of authority and kingship. You may recall the story of Jason and the Ar- gonauts seeking after the fleece. Fleece, the verb, means something else. When we think of be- ing fleeced, we think of be- ing cheated or fooled. The defi- nition means to strip of money or property by fraud or extor- tion. Our California history tells us about the roll of the Big Four in the transcontinen- tal railway, the Golden Spike. The "Golden Spike" was the ceremonial final spike driven by Leland Stanford to join the rails of the First Trans- continental Railroad across the United States connecting the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads on May 10, 1869, at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. In some ways the Big Four fleeced the taxpayers of that day, making excessive profits in their efforts. I am grate- ful for Stanford, however, be- cause he made it possible for me to have a good college ed- ucation. Recently there was an in- teresting editorial in the Re- cord Searchlight about an- other kind of Golden Spike; it this case it was about sal- ary spiking, a tactic used by some public employees to in- crease their entitlements from state retirement. Sal- ary spiking occurs when an employee's salary is hiked up through a raise, promotion or some other method just before that employee retires. When someone is guilty of salary spiking, a retired pub- lic employee fleeces the re- tirement system for more than he or she was entitled to under normal circum- stances. The point of the edito- rial was that strong union ef- forts have somewhat blunted new regulations attempt- ing to reduce salary spik- ing and bring the two large state pension systems into some kind of fiscal responsi- bility. As it stands now those two systems, the Public Em- ployees' Retirement Sys- tem (PERS) and the State Teachers' Retirement System (STRS), have unfunded lia- bilities in excess of $130 mil- lion. A recent report by State Controller John Chiang in- dicated that PERS will be li- able for about $800 million because of salary spiking. The conclusion of the audit his department conducted was that: 1) PERS makes it- self vulnerable to such prac- tices by "not aggressively re- viewing its 3,100 member agencies' payroll record" and 2) most of the spiking was al- lowed under the law in effect at the time. You may believe that kind of thing does not happen here in Red Bluff, and you would be wrong. I have done a thorough in- vestigation into this matter, and was surprised by what I found. I first became aware of alleged salary spiking within my first two weeks on the job as Interim Super- intendent at the Red Bluff Union High School District. Even though I had been on the job a short while, I re- ceived a letter addressed to me by name from STRS; the letter stated the dis- trict owed STRS more than $69,000 because of what ap- peared to be salary spiking and the inability of STRS to collect over payments to the retired superintendent in- volved. The events took place over six years ago. I did a prelim- inary investigation that cul- minated in a 27-page report to the School Board. The bot- tom line was that the School Board authorized a substan- tial increase in the salaries of retiring administrators. For the superintendent the increase amounted to more than $40,000. Although it was not the cause, the district has been in financial shambles ever since the Golden Spike was used; the biggest event was the inability of the state to support public education during the so called "great recession." The incident of the spiking, however, is a dramatic example of the im- portance of a school board and its willingness to be vig- ilant and pay attention to the matters they must ad- dress. Whether or not the fis- cal situation could have been less damaging had the board paid attention to all the is- sues it faced is difficult to tell. The current and, I hope, future school board will be paying far more attention to what is going on than its predecessor in 2008. Just as the fair board has learned a lesson about task avoidance and neglect, the school board has as well. Public entities through- out our state and beyond are struggling with the burden of retirement obli- gations. Part of the prob- lem is the down turn in the economy; another is that public pension sys- tems have mostly been de- fined, legally required ben- efits. In some cases public entities have agreed to pay both the entity's share of pension costs and the em- ployee's share. The city of Red Bluff has had to deal with this. In California the state has agreed to share some of the burden created, but it has been "behind on its pay- ments" as you might expect. Joe Harrop is a retired ed- ucator with more than 30 years of service to the North State. He can be reached at DrJoeHarrop@sbcglobal.net. Joe Harrop The golden spike or the golden fleece Cartoonist's take When you visit Brooklyn, you have to be amazed at the number of stoops. They're scenic and his- torical. These graceful old stairways were often built steep because they were con- structed during the era when Grand Pianos thrived, and when people would gather on the stoops to gossip, smoke and drink. In his excellent ebook, "Letters from Brook- lyn," detailing a detailed, three-year exploration of New York City, retired San Diego Union-Tribune TV columnist Bob Laurence perfectly cap- tures the vibrancy, energy and beauty of this community. But what strikes you here is the large number of stoops. Kids bound down these stoops as they head to school as they did generations be- fore — but today there's a dif- ference. Schools here and elsewhere continue to grap- ple with a major issue that won't go away. From Califor- nia to Chicago to New Hamp- shire to Alabama, the prob- lem of bullying, how to effec- tively short-circuit it, how to educate kids and how to deal with it when it occurs re- mains an issue. Only now there's a new twist. A new problem: Some parents. Three years ago I left my home in San Diego go to on a national school tour in my non-writing incarnation as an entertainer who does pro- grams with a strong mes- sage content in schools. The tour began on the East Coast in September. By November 1 I had already been in three school districts where stu- dents had committed suicide due to bullying. But by January 2012 I no- ticed something else. Some principals and teachers were privately commenting that some parents were begin- ning to become a problem: if another kid looked at their kid cross-eyed, some par- ents would say their child was bullied and demanded the other child's suspension. A few schools told me to ad- dress the bullying issue but to be careful not to overuse the "b" word. By last school year, a few schools asked me to use the word "kind" and "kindness" instead of bullying. Now this year, as I do another tour, you can see still another shift. While some schools still do use the word "bullying," an increasing number don't want the word to be used at all. Some schools are now using an approach where they talk about "bucket fill- ers" and "bucket dippers" — and a bully is a "bucket dip- per." Kids are taught that your bucket is filled (you feel good) or someone dips into your bucket (you feel bad). Not all schools are using this, but quite a few are. There are several reason why. It's a good way to com- municate the concept to kids — and anti-bullying laws are all over the place. In some states, if a school learns about an argument but it re- ally isn't bullying, it almost doesn't matter because a strict process is unleashed as soon as a school is informed of an alleged bullying inci- dent. New Jersey's Anti Bul- lying Bill of Rights Act re- quires schools at all grade levels, including colleges, to report all bullying incidents to the state. This automati- cally triggers paperwork, an investigation and inform- ing all involved families. So the word "bullying" can't be used loosely because if it is not "real" bullying, any alle- gation sparks a required-by- law process. Connecticut and many other states pointedly de- fine bullying as more than one incident in a school year. The reason: over the past few years some schools have heard from angry parents whose kids told them they were bullied when it was just one incident. Some parents were defining bullying too broadly and had gone way overboard. It's a pity the word "bully- ing" is being frivolously used and overused by some par- ents to the extent that some schools now have to take care how they use it. Which makes combating bullying trickier. It's like Brooklyn: you have to be amazed at the number of stoops. Joe Gandelman is a veteran journalist who wrote for newspapers overseas and in the United States. He has ap- peared on cable news show political panels and is Ed- itor-in-Chief of The Moder- ate Voice, an Internet hub for independents, centrists and moderates. He also writes for The Week's online edition. He can be reached at jgandel- man@themoderatevoice.com. Follow him on Twitter: www. twitter.com/joegandelman. Joe Gandelman Newest bullying problem for schools turns out to be parents The bottom line was that the School Board authorized a substantial increase in the salaries of retiring administrators. For the superintendent the increase amounted to more than $40,000. Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. Once again, bail set at $50,000for at- tempted kidnapping? Seriously too low. Has he done this before and succeeded? Will he attempt this again? Shame on the court system and the judges who set these low bails. Kathy Holleran: On the arrest of a suspect for attempted kidnapping outside Vina School Thank you for being such a great model of goodness to our youth and parents alike. I hate when people say that children are our future. Children are today's thinkers, doers and believers. What they do now, they will do for years to come. Richard Cherveny: On a letter by John Minton about his years of service to youth Joe Harrop Assemblyman Dan Logue 150Amber Grove Drive, Ste. 154, Chico 95928, 530895- 4217 Senator Jim Nielsen 2634 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico 95928, 530 879-7424, senator.nielsen@senate. ca.gov Governor Jerry Brown State Capital Building, Sacra- mento 95814, 916445-2841, fax 916558-3160, governor@ governor.ca.gov U.S. Representative Doug LaMalfa 507Cannon House Office Building, Washington D.C. 20515, 202225-3076 U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein One Post St., Ste. 2450, San Francisco 94104, 415393- 0707, fax 415393-0710 U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer 1700Montgomery St., San Francisco 94111, 510286-8537, fax 202224-0454 Contact your officials OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Saturday, October 11, 2014 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A4