Doyle Park controversy

EDITOR: Paul Gullixson's column Sunday ("When schools are mired in the middle"), coming a few days after he had a chat with Santa Rosa School Board President Larry Haenel, keeps the pot boiling over the district's controversial efforts to close Doyle Park Elementary School.

Consider this paragraph: "Did the school district handle this well? No. In retrospect, the school board probably should have been upfront from the beginning about closing Doyle Park and replacing it with the French-American charter."

Two words intrigued me:

• Upfront. Webster's first and second definitions are "very honest or forthright; open; candid" and "in or into the public eye."

Are we to assume that Haenel acknowledged to Gullixson over coffee that the district had not been upfront on this matter? It seems so, but will we ever know? Perhaps it would have been well to give Haenel and his colleagues a chance to discuss this in open court and under oath.

• Probably. Is Gullixson suggesting there are acceptable options to being upfront when the school board discusses public business? When is it probably a good idea for the board not to be upfront with the public?

BOB KLOSE

Sebastopol