Oak Park schools good the way they are

Highest combined API score in Ventura County for Oak Park Unified School District of 891. Medea Creek had the top middle school score and Oak Park High jumped 40 points over last year to 878. Red Oak Elementary rose 22 points to 905 and Oak Hills increased by 7 to 934. All reported in last week's The Acorn proudly on page one. Higher than Las Virgenes, Conejo Valley and Santa Monica-Malibu unifieds.

Our school district officials and teachers deserve all the credit in the world. Residents and home owners in Oak Park should be beaming with pride of accomplishment by our very own school district. Somehow they were able to accomplish this without the expenditure of $29 to $30 million dollars from Measure R. Somehow our existing properties, classrooms, and infrastructure were able to nourish the OPUSD to the highest scores in the county. And all this while accepting transfer students.

Can you imagine? How can our home values not be favorably impacted by the outstanding results just attained by our schools? And just think this was accomplished somehow without increasing our property taxes.

We are all familiar with the saying, "If it isn't broke, don't fix it." Not only are our schools not broken, they are producing outstanding API scores. I for one did not vote for the last attempt to have property owners pay for a tax increase, and I certainly will not vote for Measure R this time either.

Our schools' results speak for themselves and obviously spending millions of dollars on them will not make them any better at producing API test results than they can right now. You can put lipstick on OPUSD but it is still OPUSD and that is good enough for me. Richard Newman Oak Park