Letters: Pleasanton stands with its coaches | Thank you for finding my purse | 2025 achievement gap data worse than 2024

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Pleasanton stands with its coaches

As a parent who has had three children come through Foothill High School Track & Field, I am furious at how this lawsuit tries to rewrite reality. What happened to pole vaulter Aman Deshmukh was devastating. Every parent felt that shockwave. Every athlete felt it. Our hearts broke for him then, and they still do now.

But the portrait of Foothill Track & Field being pushed by attorneys is not just wrong — it is a complete distortion of the program we know.

Reckless coaches? Lax supervision? “Deteriorated” or “dangerous” equipment?

Anyone who has set foot near that track knows how absurd that is. This is a program that enforces its rules with precision. Parents are not allowed on the field — period — because the coaches take athlete safety seriously. They show up. They supervise. They train. They uphold standards that other programs admire.

The pole vault equipment wasn’t crumbling or unsafe. The school invested in upgrades. The area was maintained and used safely by athletes every day. These claims feel less like fact and more like legal positioning — allegations crafted to create leverage, not clarity.

A tragedy occurred. A young man’s life changed. But rewriting the history of a program known for vigilance and integrity will not help him. It will not make future athletes safer. And it will not produce justice.

Let’s focus on what actually matters: ensuring this young man receives the lifelong care he deserves, demanding accountability from the systems that failed him early on, and refusing to let a tragedy be weaponized into a false indictment of people who have done their jobs honorably.

Pleasanton stands with its coaches. Pleasanton stands with its athletes. And Pleasanton stands with truth — not with a convenient fiction crafted for the courtroom.

– Kim G. Van Horn

Thank you for finding my purse

I was out shopping on Sunday afternoon when I had put my purse on my car to show my son the clothes I had bought him. We got into the car and headed down the road.

We got to our destination a mile down the street and stopped the car. I had shut off the car and realized I did not have my purse with me. I frantically asked my son if the purse was in the back seat. No purse. I could not even start the car since the keys were in the purse. I had asked my kid to run back to the shopping center and look where we parked and to ask all the shopping associates if anyone had turned in the purse.

In the meantime I had gotten a text from a longtime friend asking if I had lost my purse. I had told her I had and that she told me that Susan Kendall-Jennings had posted on Rants and Raves that she found my purse in the middle of the street on Dublin Boulevard. She went out of the way to go to my house and the Pleasanton Police Department to turn it in.

I want to say thank you so much for being such a great Samaritan and would love to thank you in-person. I am very grateful for all she did. There are a lot of good people out there and we don’t hear about them. I hope that one day we can meet in person.

– Tracy Mitch

AI is at the stage where the news is not true

Friday evening, an online Pleasanton community was chattering about a shooting in Pleasanton, Englewood and Hopyard Road. A 24-year-old man shot his father.

I checked it out, listened to the report with an eyewitness commenting with a video of police activity at the scene.

Sunday, I was emailed another unrelated video of national sports stars disparaging sports officials. There was profanity, by the stars, obviously not an authentic video. Although the stars in the videos were real.

The reported shooting, with video and an eyewitness, in Pleasanton Friday evening appeared to be authentic; it was not.

Pleasanton police reported there were no shootings or reports of gunfire.

Now I am concerned with the onslaught of artificial intelligence (AI). We will be drowned in junk. How can we combat it, expose it?

– Michael Austin

2025 achievement gap data worse than 2024

In October, I shared data showing a troubling achievement gap in Pleasanton. While PUSD outperforms the state for almost all student groups, our African American students performed about as well as California overall. That was the 2024 data.

The newly released 2025 data is worse.

PUSD’s African American students now trail the state of California in both English language arts and math. ELA scores have inched up, but math scores have declined. Meanwhile, San Ramon – a comparable district with similar demographics – continues to make steady, meaningful gains. They are outperforming Pleasanton by a wide margin.

Over the past month, I have met with teachers, administrators, community members and parents. Everyone acknowledges the gap. Yet as a community, our sense of urgency remains low, despite the fact that kids are being left behind.

Two weeks ago, Amador students were the target of race-based hate vandalism. The notification went only to Amador families, but this should matter to all of Pleasanton. These students deserve a community that sees them, supports them and demands better outcomes for them.

We cannot continue celebrating our district’s overall performance while ignoring the students struggling the most. Closing this gap is not optional for our “community of character.”

Follow allmeansall.pusd on Instagram for more data.

– Christina Nystrom

The Spirit of Pleasanton

I nominate Workbench True Value Hardware for the Spirit of Pleasanton Award, and I highlight the store and their manager/decorator Lisa Miller as the Spirit Leader of Pleasanton.

Lisa is known all over town, by children and dogs, as the True Value Lady! The person who treats dogs with milk bones and customers with solutions to their DIY problems. Children on the street proclaim, “Look mommy, it’s the True Value Lady!” Like I said, the Spirit of Pleasanton!

– Bill Xenakis

Silent and invisible conflicts globally

I feel the constant reporting on war, trauma and conflict in our society has definitely increased awareness about foreign issues, but at the same time has made us less sensitive to the plight abroad.

Every single day, we see and read stories of conflicts in Africa, Ukraine, Israel and across the world, with the same story: countries engaged in prolonged conflicts while the world’s superpowers and institutions remain in retreat.

How many of us know what’s happening in Ukraine? We only care about the conflict when our politicians debate about military aid in Congress or when our president meets the aggressor, Putin, in Alaska.

Like this, so many conflicts have become invisible. Did you know that there were 59 recorded conflicts in 2024? 59 is like 30% of the world, not including instability, political corruption and other issues.

At the same time, foreign aid and U.S. leadership is being scaled back, putting the world at an increased risk of conflict. Just think about that.

– Aayush Gandhi

Ban brutal steer-tailing

Back in 1994, California outlawed the Mexican charreada’s brutal “horse tripping” event (AB 49X, Burton); a dozen other states soon did likewise. Accordingly, the U.S. Charro Federation changed its rules for the entire country.

Charreadas feature an even worse event, “steer tailing” (aka “colas” or “coleaderos”), wherein a mounted charro grabs a running steer by the tail, wraps the tail around his leg, then rides off at an angle, slamming the hapless animal to the ground.

Tails are routinely broken, stripped to the bone (“degloved”), even torn off. “Steer tailing” is not a standard ranching practice anywhere in the U.S., and is already banned in Alameda and Contra Costa counties (1993 and 1994), and all of Nebraska (2008).

Passage of a California ban would likely result in a U.S. Charro Federation rule change banning “steer tailing” nationwide. Even Cesar Chavez was an outspoken critic.

Let your county and state representatives hear from you! A few supporting editorials could really help, too.; your Pulitzer awaits.

– Eric Mills, coordinator, Action for Animals