I have no idea what Jim Trageser is trying to do with his "Unions care about salaries, not students" column of Aug. 10. He vilifies teachers unions as being only interested in their members' salaries, not the students that they spend hours with daily.

I have to laugh at this idea. I actually spend time at my kids' school and see what teachers do every day of the week. Big surprise -- they don't do it for the money. It takes something special to live with our children every day, five days a week, and try to reach through and turn that spark living in each of them into a glowing ember. That ember has been known to progress into blazing fires of knowledge and imagination. Not bad work, if you can get it.

And why does Trageser have to drag up all those bad feelings about the VUSD recall of 1993?

In case some of you newcomers don't remember, back in 1993 three conservative Christians were trustees in the Vista Unified School District -- John Tyndall, Deidre Holliday and Joyce Lee. They formed a majority.

From Day One, they immediately started pushing a no-sex-education, anti-school breakfast, pro-prayer and very pro-creationism agenda in my school district. This is a fact, as many of us recall (heh).

Every school board meeting was us-versus-them. Very divisive, as you can imagine. The national news media descended on Vista. It was sad, in a way. Does Trageser really want to bring this all back up again?

Was he really bored last week? Is he feeling especially self-righteous and holy this week? Because I can remember this, and I am just as ready as I was then to stop the intrusion of Christian fundamentalism into my public school system.

It made me angry then that these born-again types were trying to force their beliefs about sex, God and morals on mine and everyone else's school kids. And it still makes me angry now that Trageser wants to challenge us again.

Do you just want to do away with public employee unions? Do you really want a theocracy, or a democracy? It is not American to govern by religious law. If you want to, pray in your own closet with your own door closed.

Thankfully, all this trustee stuff is all water under the bridge now. We will hopefully get rid of Jim Gibson when he is elected (or not) councilman of Oceanside. Guffanti is harmless by himself. But we seem to have to get all this dredged up again now by some old newspaper hack in the pursuit of controversy and divisiveness.

For Trageser to even suggest that my children's schoolteachers here in Vista "don't give a darn about the education our children are getting" -- well -- that is just shameful, especially from someone who claims to be a public part of our community.

You can't get nastier than bad-mouthing our teachers.

Eric Parish is a Vista resident.