BY EMILY MIBACH
Daily Post Staff Writer
A member of the elected Sequoia Healthcare District apologized to his fellow board members yesterday for sending an email to the Sequoia High School District that may have looked like a threat to cut funding to the school district.
The school board got an email from healthcare board member Aaron Nayfack, who doesn’t want to see the school district’s freshman honors courses restored. School board member Sathvik Nori, who wants to restore the courses, said he saw Nayfack’s email as a threat.
The email in part urged the school board to reconsider its path to potentially restore honors courses. “I would hate to have anything jeopardize the long partnership between SUHSD and the Sequoia Healthcare District,” Nayfack wrote.
The high school district and its K-8 feeder school districts get about $5 million from the healthcare district a year.
The healthcare board had not discussed the high school district’s honors program or any of its “equity reforms,” as Nayfack referred to the curriculum changes.
“I definitely didn’t mean … that it was coming from all of us,” Nayfack said during a meeting of the healthcare board yesterday.
Nayfack asked the board to approve a statement verifying that the healthcare district still supports the high school district.
The statement the board supported unanimously states, “The Sequoia Healthcare District Board highly values the collaborative relationship it shares with Sequoia Union High School District (SUHSD) and remains committed to providing resources, guidance and expertise on health-related issues affecting students’ well-being by way of its Healthy Schools Initiative. The SHD board intends to leave decisions related to curriculum, instructional methods, school policies, and other educational matters to the School Board and to keep those matters independent of Healthcare District funding decisions.”
Nayfack also apologized to district CEO Pamela Kurtzman and her staff if his email caused any extra work for them.
Why does this health care district still exist? What makes their board think they can dictate school district policy? Where do I vote to get rid of them all?