During the recent debate over flying the LGBTQ rainbow flag at Antioch City Hall, I was most taken aback by the comments by one supporter of the effort. The lady literally said to the council, while directing her comments to those of faith in the audience, some who spoke against flying the “pride” flag, “You get to have freedom of your religion in the privacy of your own buildings.”

It’s not the first time I’ve heard that argument in someone’s effort to support what they claim to be the “separation of church and state”.

It was her way, and that of others, to attempt to silence those, mainly self-identified as Christians, to prevent them from arguing their point that the flying of the rainbow flag is an offense against the Bible and the Christian faith.

Her argument is completely hypocritical. What she’s basically saying is, Americans of faith are free to exercise it, but not publicly, and not have it   impact how they will be governed, while she and people on her side of the issue get to not only express themselves publicly, but have their views impact how we will be governed, and implemented into government policy and even law.

It’s ironic that she and her side complain that those on the other side of the issue are intolerant. Yet, her statement clearly shows her lack of tolerance of those with a different point of view.

Her statement is also completely false. The inalienable, God-given, and constitutionally protected freedom of religion – the first freedom and right enumerated in the Bill of Rights, because that’s what our nation was founded upon, going back to the Pilgrims in 1620 – can be exercised anywhere people of faith want to. That includes in the public square, specifically in public debate, discussion and decisions affecting all of us.

You can’t help but have how you believe, your views, and your faith impact how you will live and how you want to be governed in a democratic republic, such as the United States.

In fact, in this country we get to have what we believe implemented into law. It’s been said that every piece of legislation is a piece of morality, determining right from wrong, or what’s better or best about an issue.

Finally, there is no separation of church and state in the Constitution. The Bill of Rights are limitations and restrictions on the power of government, not the other way around. It’s actually separation of state from church. While there is not to be a state-run church or religion, as there was and is in England, the Church, i.e. people of faith, can influence how we are to be governed.

If you go back and study it, you will learn that Thomas Jefferson’s argument in his letter to the Danbury Baptists wasn’t about which religion’s views would be dominant in our government, but about which Christian Protestant denomination would be the dominant one in our federal government. Nevertheless, we don’t have or want a government-run church.

While flying the rainbow flag was a policy issue for the council to decide, the argument that those of us who still believe we are “One Nation Under God”, as is written in our Pledge of Allegiance, and that our nation was formed “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence” as our Founding Fathers wrote in the Declaration of Independence, aren’t allowed to share our views and values based on our faith, and want and can have them implemented by the government, is simply wrong.

The battle over whose views and values will dominate public discourse and decisions will continue. But those of us who are people of faith will not be marginalized, silenced or forced into the privacy of our buildings in order to exercise our freedom of religion – as Christians, Muslims and others of faith are forced to do in Communist China.

Editor:

Antioch is a city with well over 100,000 people, some of whom are advertising, marketing, and graphic design professionals.

Question: When faced with the prospect of rebranding Antioch’s image, why did city leaders choose an outside agency? Resident professionals would have had a more vested interest in promoting their hometown, and no doubt would have done the job for a fraction of “big city agency” prices.

This is a slap in the face to local talent and an example of why “opportunity” does not live here.

Opportunity leave here!

Anne Ray

Graphic Artist

Antioch

by Sandra Torres

There has been a lot of talk about funding for education lately, and very little attention paid to student performance. I’m a parent. And I love the public school my daughter attends in Antioch. But our elected officials don’t seem to care that my second grader started this year reading at a Kindergarten level and is now reading like a third grader. They don’t seem remotely interested to learn about what our school is doing right. They just want to talk about money.

The Antioch Unified School District (AUSD) is facing a $4M budget deficit. At a recent board meeting, the AUSD leadership pinned the reason for its deficit on charter school enrollment. “It’s not scapegoating, it’s math — that’s how we get our revenues,” Superintendent Stephanie Anello stated.

Actually, if you do the math, it is scapegoating.

AUSD has been steadily losing students for years. Each student that chooses another educational option means that money goes with them. But Antioch students aren’t fleeing to charter schools.

Student enrollment in Antioch District schools is down by nearly 2,000 students since 2010 – from 19,081 to 17,232 students last school year. Over that same time, charter school enrollment in Antioch has consistently hovered between 400 – 500 students.

It’s no secret that Antioch families are transferring their kids to other school districts. In nearby Pittsburg Unified, student enrollment has increased by over 1,500 since 2010. Antioch families are also increasingly choosing private schools and electing to homeschool their children.

I am one of those parents who chose a different public school for my daughter. I chose Rocketship Delta Prep. And it was the best choice I have ever made.

I think it’s time for District leadership to take an honest look at why parents like me refuse to send their kids to AUSD schools.

Only about one in three AUSD students are meeting grade level standards in English, and less than one in five students are meeting math standards. Among low-income students, which accounts for 67% of AUSD enrollment, only one in four students are proficient in English and only one in seven are on track in math. Three AUSD elementary schools are listed among the worst 5% of all schools in the entire state.

Despite these glaring challenges, AUSD leadership is bizarrely wasting their time and taxpayer dollars on attorneys trying to invent a case to shut down my daughter’s school. Rocketship Delta Prep just opened this school year. We love our school.  If you came to one of three recent AUSD board meetings, you’d see over 300 Rocketship parents, including myself, asking AUSD leadership to show our kids, our school, and our community the respect we deserve.

When’s the last time you heard about hundreds of parents from an underserved community attend a school boarding meeting to demonstrate their love and support for their school? As AUSD board member Mary Rocha remarked during the April 10th school board meeting “I wish we had this parent support and spirit at our schools.”

If AUSD wants this kind of parent support, leadership needs to start confronting the real problems facing our students and our community. The AUSD board has held 16 public board meetings this school year and only one single agenda item has addressed the serious problems facing the District like poor academic performance, the racial achievement gap, chronic absenteeism, discriminatory discipline, or college and career readiness.

I hope to see the board start addressing these real issues at their next meeting. Honest discussion and progress on any one of these issues might help AUSD start winning back the trust of Antioch families.

Torres is a parent of a student attending Rocketship Delta Prep charter school in Antioch.

Dear Editor:

My friends thought I was crazy to move my wife and five children to Antioch three years ago. I can’t blame them. I read the headlines, and I know what people think of our city. But I also know that everything is not as it seems.

Our move to Antioch worked out great. We live in a large, beautiful home on a quiet street. Our neighborhood, like our city, is extremely diverse, and I’m grateful that my kids aren’t growing up among clones of themselves. We know our neighbors and they’re wonderful. Our two youngest boys attend Carmen Dragon Elementary School and love it.

However, I realize my experience is not like everyone else’s. As a vice president of a public relations and marketing firm, I’m fortunate to work from home, so I’m around my kids constantly. Many Antioch parents do not have this opportunity, which means their kids often come home to empty houses—or they find somewhere else to go or something else to do.

As a member of Carmen Dragon’s school site council, I learned Carmen Dragon is a low performing school with a chronic student absentee problem and a host of other challenges. Nearly three-quarter of my sons’ classmates come from socio-economically disadvantaged households. Yet there is no afterschool program at Carmen Dragon or at many other schools in the district.

I’ve also learned many kids in Antioch want to play sports, but their parents cannot afford to take time off work to take them to practices or games, let alone volunteer or coach.

When we signed our boys up for CYO basketball, they weren’t going to play unless I volunteered to coach both of their teams. When I did, I discovered nearby parishes have multiple teams at each grade level. But at our parish, some grades didn’t even have a team. In fact, there is only one girls’ team for the entire parish.

This is a huge difference from Concord, where we used to live. Every school our children attended had afterschool programs. Concord also has the Community Youth Center, an enormous facility that offers all types of programs, including wrestling, cheerleading, gymnastics, tutoring for grade schools and high schools, and more. It’s super cheap and open every day until 9pm. Our three older kids, who attended school in Martinez and Pleasant Hill, had access to a Boys and Girls Club and a YMCA, which were always full of kids and activities.

Antioch has nothing like these facilities. What we do have is a large community center on Lone Tree, across the street from Dear Valley High School. It has a gym, a full-service kitchen, a ballroom and an amphitheater. It should be filled with kids every day. Yet it is often empty after 5:00 p.m., when many parents are getting off work and just beginning their long commute home.

After three years here, it’s become evident that Antioch is failing its youth. Is it really any wonder why we have higher crime rates than other cities? We can hire police officers until we’re blue in the face—no pun intended—but this won’t prevent our young people from behaviors and influences that lead to trouble.

So, what does help? Study after study has proven the availability of structured, daily afterschool programs, Boys and Girls Clubs and community-based organizations targeting at-risk youth are effective at reducing crime. District attorneys, police chiefs and sheriffs across our nation support these programs because they actually improve public safety.

According to a massive, nationwide study by the Council for a Strong America, a bipartisan nonprofit comprised of law enforcement officials, military and business leaders, pastors, coaches and athletes, afterschool programs save communities at least $3 for every $1 invested by increasing a child’s future earning potential, improving their performance at school and reducing crime and welfare costs.

Recently, I sat in on a Antioch Youth Services Task Force meeting and listened to young people say they don’t feel safe at school or in the community. They want more things to do, but our city just doesn’t offer them.

I’ve also sat in on city council meetings and listened to how people thought we should spend Measure W funds. Some folks want all of the money to go toward adding more police. But until we invest in our youth, we will only be able to react to crime, not prevent the causes of it.

At the April 9th Antioch City Council meeting, citizens have a chance to tell city leaders how to allocate $14 million in Measure W money. Please show up and ask them to invest in afterschool programs, a Boys and Girls Club and juvenile crime diversion programs. Our kids’ lives depend on it.

Warren Lutz

Antioch

Dear Editor:

It isn’t supposed to work this way.  I am decades his senior and never imagined that I would be joining scores of colleagues earlier today as we held a prayer session for Paul Shatswell, Principal of Pittsburg Adult Education. Paul fought for over a week on life support after his shooting in a domestic altercation but yesterday his time came to cross the threshold.

The Pittsburg school community is still dazed because it all makes no sense. Too young, too vibrant, too passionate; too engaged it seemed o say goodbye. Newly appointed Principal, the world seemed his oyster.

Paul did nothing half-heartedly. The man epitomized gusto. His last comment to me was vintage Paul and came on his last day in school.  I had avoided dropping by his office all week because I knew that he was consumed by finalizing the 2019-2020 school budget.

I dropped by to congratulate him on the completed budget project. After graciously thanking me he ended our chat by saying that we had our work cut out for us in making the school all that it could be.

Ten minutes later I saw Paul in the parking lot. He gave me an exuberant thumbs up as he drove away.

Little did any of us imagine.

There is much we don’t understand. Life and death can seem inexplicable to our frail human perception.  Paul was a man of faith and would want us accepting, though.   He was not one to wail and gnash teeth but rather to affirm and celebrate.

We need now to focus on our blessings. After all, we were gifted as we worked. lived, played, laughed and cried with a good man on this journey called life.

May the Perpetual Light shine upon you, Paul.

Walter Ruehlig

Ellie Householder by AUSD.

An open letter to the Antioch City Council,

“Opportunity lives here” is a fitting slogan for Antioch. While our city has gone through major growing pains, our future together has rarely looked brighter. Yet the hard truth is that opportunity doesn’t exist equally for everyone, especially our largest and most vulnerable population, our young people.

Earlier this month, Kamani Stelly was convicted of four counts of attempted murder involving a 2016 shooting of an occupied vehicle at the corner of 18th and Cavallo. Thanks to the hard work of APD and the Contra Costa County District Attorney’s Office, he is now facing 160 years in prison. While justice may have been served, however, the damage and trauma this tragedy caused its victims and the entire community could well have been avoided.

At the time of the shooting, Kamani was 18 years old and a former student of the Antioch Unified School District. More likely than not, Kamani exhibited throughout his educational journey some sign of troubling behavior. The same might be said for Jordan Martin, who was murdered at the age of 18 last year in the Applebee’s parking lot, or the Deer Valley High School students who were loitering and disrupting businesses at Deer Valley Plaza in 2014. Whether anyone saw any red flags or bothered to intervene in the lives of these young people, we may never know.

What we do know is that these young people did not have the same access to youth programs, services, and resources that other cities Antioch’s size have. And this fact is preventing all of us from living and experiencing a safe and secure Antioch.

No one individual, no one single institution is solely responsible for how a 17-year-old enters the world of adulthood. It may sound cliche, but it truly does take a village to raise a child. As a current school board member and former AUSD employee, I understand that children are going to push the envelope. But as a community, it’s the responsibility of all of us–parents, educators, neighbors, police, and civic and business leaders–to teach them where the line should stop.

As the former chair of the City’s Sales Tax Oversight Committee, I was often concerned about how the city seemed to only understand public safety from an enforcement standpoint. Antioch is a city where a third of its population is school-aged, the vast majority of working parents commute an average of two to three hours each day, and latch-key kids are growing in numbers. Yet historically, any discussion about public

safety has focused almost entirely on adding more police, and nothing else. What truly keeps a community safe is its ability to address “safety” by balancing enforcement and interventions. Enforcement is important. Yet just as important, if not more so, is crime prevention. Essentially, youth services and programs represent this kind of preventative work. Study after study has proven that youth programs are highly effective at reducing crime in a community. And yet this crucial element of public safety is sorely lacking in our city.

I frequently hear about the pressing need for youth programs. The school district has done it’s best to provide these services, but our primary goal is academic. We need a partner in this process. That’s why I applaud the city for establishing the Antioch Youth Services Task Force consisting of Council Member Lamar Thorpe and Mayor Sean Wright. I’ve learned a lot from our community by participating in and observing the task force panels and workshops, including the fact that youth services are something our community desperately wants and needs.

By passing Measure W, Antioch citizens overwhelmingly voted in favor of adding before and after-school programs and other youth services and quality of life measures. Now it’s time to hold the city accountable and make sure our leaders deliver on that promise.

On April 9th, the City Council will begin the process of allocating a projected $14 million in annual Measure W funds to increase safety in our city. I encourage all members of our community to show up and participate in this process, so we can all work together to create a bright, safe, and beautiful city.

While y outh programming is an essential element to public safety, in Antioch, it is a glaringly empty piece of the puzzle. Filling it will ultimately reveal a bright and vibrant community that is safe, welcoming, and thriving. If we want the words “opportunity lives here” to have truth to them, opportunity must also exist for our young people. Now is our chance to make it happen.

Sincerely yours,

Ellie Householder

Antioch Unified School District Trustee

Dear Editor:

I would like to make the community aware of upcoming budget cuts at the Antioch Unified School District. This Wednesday (March 20) at 7:00pm there will be a School Board meeting in the board room at the district office. At this meeting, the district will propose cuts to be voted on.

Among these cuts will be $775,000 worth of classified staff. Around 29% of that will be Library Media Technicians (elementary school librarians). In the past when budget cuts were made, library techs were laid off. Full time school libraries were not staffed. Some schools only had a library open two days a week.

When this happened, there was a drop in reading scores, love for reading, and books in general. We are seeing the result at the middle school and high school level now. Since library services have been restored, reading scores have began to improve. Some of our students never hear a story read to them aside from in the library or the classroom. Others are not able to afford to purchase books because it is just not in their budget.

Books are treasures to students who sometimes need to escape the hard realities they are living in. Libraries are a safe place for students, and librarians in our district are not just librarians. We do not just read to kids. We participate in PBIS programs such as Tool Box or Mindfulness. We plan activities and stories to support what is going on in the classroom. We teach literacy. We feed the inquiring minds of students daily. We process books and keep open schedules to accommodate teachers and students. We do yard duty in the mornings and after school. We plan fundraisers, book fairs, and family events. Some of us participate in PTO’s/PTA’s at our school sites. Others sit in on School Site Council meetings, and more. We are valuable.

If, as a community, we can agree that reading is important and has a place in everyday life, how can we not then say that libraries are not just as important? Let’s face it, we all know that cuts need and have to be made because at the end of the day, the budget is the budget. However, why do the librarians have to feel close to 29% of that cut? Why aren’t there more cuts being made to the high paid employees at the district office? Why aren’t we looking into programs such as the organics program offered by Republic Services as the Benicia School District and many restaurants in the area have adopted to save money? Why do our students have to suffer?

Our students will lose instructional assistants, reading teachers, librarians, and more. Out of 92 classified classifications, librarians will take 29% of the hit?

Do not sit by and just watch this happen. Let your voice be heard at the meeting Wednesday night. Afterall, We are AUSD.

To view the agenda item (14-B), please visit the AUSD Website

Thank you,

Samantha Loza

Lisa Dianne Norrell

Dear Editor:

It is a downright disgrace what happened, as explained below.

In early November 1998 the 15-year-old Pittsburg teenager Lisa Diane Norrell left a friend’s party held at the Antioch Veterans Hall by the City Park. She decided to walk all the way home by herself, a two-plus miles distance to her home. Sometime that evening she went missing and never reached her home, was found about 8 days later Murdered, and her body dumped/hidden outside a local landscaping business yard. The actual responsibles have yet to be concretely identified or charged. (See related articles, here, and here.)

My Reliable Informant (RI hereafter) shortly contacted me and reported knowing who did it and gave further credible information. The RI agreed to meet with and to disclose the vital information to Law Enforcement I knew would act on it (or so I thought then). Lisa’s case was one of several Murders in a two-month period that occurred from Bay Point thru Antioch (a potential killing spree, not serial killings).

I in-person spoke to the then CCC District Attorney’s Chief of Inspectors at that time, Gene Greenwald, and passed on the information, name of the RI, the RI’s phone numbers, etc. He did not contact the RI, so I then again contacted the Chief and questioned why he hadn’t on such serious matters. He said he would and guaranteed me that he would asap. After a week or two the RI said that the Chief and no one from there had contacted the RI at all. The RI reported to us that he/she then personally went to the District Attorney’s Office and wanted to speak with the Chief, or another Inspector, and was there to provide the information he/she had that would help solve the case. He was questionably ignored and just told to go home! The RI reported that he/she was never contacted by the Chief or anyone else thereafter.

After I had personally informed the then Chief Greenwald I had also contacted one of the Pittsburg Police Department’s Detectives assigned to Lisa Norrell’s murder investigation, giving that Detective the aforementioned RI information, info I was told, RI’s contacts info, etc. Neither the RI nor I were ever contacted by that Pittsburg Detective or anyone else from that agency’s assigned Investigations personnel. I do not know if either Antioch PD or the Sheriff’s Department assigned Investigators were ever given the information, etc.

Within other matters I had later communicated with and passed on formally to a Federal Agent (in early 2011) the aforementioned information, along with additional unrelated reported Police misconduct. Due to that agency’s secretive and confidential regulations whatever was or was not done in reference to those things I am uninformed of.

Recently there was a newspaper article published wherein a Pittsburg PD Detective, Jacob Stage, was assigned to pursue some cold cases – including the highlighted Lisa Norrell 20 years old Murder. I was very happy to see such and contacted him and provided to him the above information. I have come to know that he is actively pursuing the new and previously unknown potential leads and related information. I encourage anyone else who may have any information or leads that may finally help solve Lisa’s and/or anyone else’s still unsolved Murder case to contact that Detective and to provide whatever they can to help him in his pursuit of justice for the Victims, their families, friends, etc. His contact number is with the Pittsburg PD communications center. Do it, now!

NOTE – I have repeatedly called and left phone messages, and my contact info, for the East Bay Times Reporter Nate Gartrell (who co-authored the recent cold cases 12/28/18 article) and he too has failed to contact me in any way whatsoever! I suppose he is no longer interested!

Yes, I am more than angry! It is a tragic set of circumstances that very poorly reflects upon them and their apparent uncaring demeanors, ineptness, etc., that we all are exposed to in our daily lives. Kudos to PPD, Detective Stage, and the Antioch Herald’s Allen Payton for providing their obvious time, space, and interests in these matters.

Anonymous

Antioch

Editor’s Note: We don’t usually publish letters from anonymous sources. But, due to the nature of this matter and on-going investigation the letter writer has chosen not to be identified.