Editor’s notebook: School board’s Evans does support Prop. J

By Kathy Day

Executive Editor

Stuff happens. But when it is an editing error that significantly changes the meaning of an opinion piece or a story, it is the editor’s worst nightmare.

Last week’s edition included one of those mistakes in the piece on Page A18 by school board vice president John Lee Evans, who was writing in support of Proposition J. The measure calls for a temporary emergency tax of $98 per parcel. It could generate up to $50 million to help the San Diego Unified School District avoid cuts that he wrote could mean increased class sizes, eliminating full-day kindergarten and possibly music and athletic programs, and could cost more than 1,000 employees their jobs.

Without going into the details of how it happened, a sentence was inserted at the end stating that Dr. Evans opposed the measure.

Nothing could be further from the truth. He joined all of the other board members in voting to put the measure on the ballot.

In a conversation after the mistake was brought to my attention, Dr. Evans noted that the unanimous vote “was very clearly the only way for our schools to avoid catastrophic consequences.”

“The board thought long and hard about asking voters for money and has been doing everything for the past two years to reform the budget without hurting our students,” he said. “We have reached the point where this is the only solution.”

He added that anyone interested in volunteering or donating to the campaign for Prop. J can go to the website at

www.yesonpropj.com

.

I hope Dr. Evans, the other board members and our readers will accept my apology for this error. We do our best with every edition to adhere to the highest standards of accuracy and fairness, but as I noted above, stuff happens.

We learn from it and work to see that it doesn’t happen again.