By SUZANNA AKINS
Mirada Staff

Some strange things are happening at Rio, but it’s not because of the full moon.
Some students are hoofing it farther to catch a school bus. Some students are having trouble seeing the teacher from their desks at the end of a long row. Rio students are wondering if their education is secure.

State budget cuts are causing some turbulent times. In California, political leaders have cut programs of all kinds. One of the major targets for cuts is the public schools.

The California Budget Project has estimated that the cuts to the San Juan Unified School District will amount to $777 per student over two years. This is about an 11 percent cut from the $6,800 per student that the state provided in the 2008-2009 budget year, according to Vice Principal Shelly Friery.

“I know that California ranks about 48th out of the 50 states in per pupil spending,” Friery said.

But being near the bottom does not mean that the funding level can’t sink even lower.

“It is ironic, that in a state which already funds education so poorly, we would even contemplate taking money away from our schools,” former San Juan Unified Superintendent Steven Encoh told The Sacramento Bee. At Rio, some school bus stops have been eliminated.

“San Juan Unified school officials could save $2 million annually by making students walk farther, by waiting longer to replace buses, and by lay
As a calculus teacher, William Dunkum knows something about the laws of motion. But on a mountain bike vacation in Canada this past summer he got a real life lesson on what happens when your foot is at rest and your bike keeps moving.
The answer is you wind up in surgery getting a metal rod hammered into your leg to repair a spiral fracture in your tibia. And you thought derivatives were painful.
“It was day five of a seven day camp, so that was good,” said Dunkum, eager to look on the bright side.
He got a lot of quality biking in before his accident, which happened when least expected.

“We’d been doing some pretty gnarly stuff, creek jumps, and drops. We were out with the coaches for a morning lesson, and we were on our way to lunch down a little trail, and my back end went out, my body went down, leg twisted, my foot didn’t twist.”

Dunkum immediately knew something was wrong when he picked up his leg with his hands and his foot flopped down.

“It actually didn’t hurt at all because I was in shock,” Dunkum said. “I knew immediately it was broken, so I called for help and the coaches came back and carried me down.”

He clearly needed medical help, so he was carried to a cart which took him to an ambulance that drove him to a clinic.

“I was taken to Lionsgate Hospital in Vancouver, which was a two and a half hour drive in the ambulance,” Dunkum said.

Once he arrived at the hospital, they got him an X-ray.
“The X-ray showed a spiral fracture, which needs serious help,” Dunkum explained. “They told me I would be operated on the next day.”

In Canada they have a national health care system, meaning everyone is covered by taxes and gets free attention, which has its advantages and disadvantages.
“The day after my wipe-out, I didn’t get breakfast or lunch because I was going to be operated on that afternoon,” Dunkum says. “Then, the doctor comes in around three and tells me someone with a more serious injury came in and needs to be taken care of first and that I would be operated on the next day. So, I got dinner. The next day, Sunday, the same thing happens. I don’t get breakfast or lunch because I’m going to have surgery. Then they tell me I have to wait until the next day, so I get dinner. The same thing happens on Monday.”

Meanwhile, Dunkum laid in bed on meds and starving, hooked up to IVs.
“Finally, on Tuesday, the doctor comes in and tells me that they are ready,” Dunkum said. “I actually teared up. Finally!”

Four days after his accident, Tuesday August 12, he was taken downstairs to be operated on, and got left in the hallway thinking, “Is this a bad joke?”

“The doctor came and got me a few minutes later, and took me in for the surgery. They offered for me to stay awake to watch it, but I didn’t want to. They cut me open below my knee and drilled my fibula hollow to put in a metal rod that’s 13 mm in diameter,” Dunkum described with math terminology. “They put the 320 mm long rod into the hollow bone using a hammer.”

There was also something broken in his foot, but it is minor compared with his intense leg fracture.

“The metal rod is held in place by four metal nails that go through my bone. My tibia is also broken,” Dunkum said.
There is no cast because casts are used to hold the bone in place, but the rod does that.

“I actually like it better this way,” he said. “It’s easier.”
His stay in the hospital clearly had advantages and disadvantages relating to Canadian health care.
“There just weren’t enough doctors or nurses and it was too crowded,” Dunkum said. “They didn’t have enough storage space. The nurses were great, there just weren’t enough of them. The bad economy is effecting them too, and they have to cut back operations.”

He wasn’t let out until the Monday following his surgery, and in the meantime had physical therapy and was taught how to use a wheelchair and walker.
“I flew home Monday, and my leg was still swollen and bruised,” Dunkum said. “I had big purple, yellow, green, black, and blue bruises. I guess you get these things called fracture blisters. They were blisters as big as your hand on my leg.”
Right now he’s on his way to healing and hopefully will be riding his bike to school again by New Year’s.

“I’m doing ultra sound 40 minutes a day and taking bone growth hormones,” Dunkum said. “I can’t put any weight on it until Halloween, and I probably won’t be off the crutches until Thanksgiving.”
He missed a week of school because there was too much pain, but Robertson taught for him.

“The math department did a really good job getting classes started and getting all the sub stuff set up,” Dunkum said. “Mr. Robertson got me my Elmo, this cool overhead projector. The math department did a nice job taking care of me and rearranged my room.”

Dunkum can’t wait to get back on his bike and start racing again. “I have to use a trainer first to rebuild my muscle, but I will definitely be racing again.”

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