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From the lofty perches of the power players, in their skyboxes and bank towers, the public may look very small, almost antlike. Deal and decision makers are elevated and segregated from the little people, whose lives they influence.

On Thursday, October 29, Mayor Kevin Johnson announced his "Rules of the Game" plan to build an arena and entertainment complex in Sacramento. The press conference was held 25 floors up, with a hazy overview of the city, extending from the historic rail yards to Cal Expo: two potential sites for a new and lucrative sports/real estate venture.

In that same sweeping view, the mayor could look down on the central city neighborhoods. From Downtown, Midtown, East Sac, all the way east to River Park and southward to College Glen, Tahoe Park and back around to Oak Park -- all of these neighborhoods are being intentionally and systematically deprived of a comprehensive, traditional, public high school.

This mayor has claimed to want to be an education mayor for Sacramento, even though public education is outside the duties and jurisdiction of the mayor.

So why? Why is a task force and "Rules of the Game" for placing a sports complex in the central city, more of a priority for this mayor than providing a comprehensive, public high school for the majority -- and historic center -- of the city's neighborhoods and families?

Would it help the mayor to see the big picture from up there, if there was a Sacramento High School Tent City, laid out in Fremont Park, Boulevard Park, McKinley Park and Bertha Henschel, Glen Hall Park and East Portal, Tahoe and McClatchy Parks?

A visit from Oprah's cameras might help draw his attention to the estimated 10,000 Central City students that have been displaced, abandoned and disappeared, since the closure of the real Sacramento High School in 2003. The disenfranchised are the rightful public school students and families of the Second Oldest High School West of the Mississippi.

How can it be so easy to overlook the reality that this student body, all these historic, central neighborhoods, do not have a comprehensive, traditional, public high school for their children to go to?

It helps if the local newspaper is complicit in crafting the story of how the public school was closed and reopened as a charter, in a continuous campaign of disinformation and incomplete reporting. Another puffy editorial was printed on Sunday, October 25 stating "On the scale of turnaround options, closing a school and reopening it as a charter is the most dramatic. It also is the most risky. But, as the Sacramento High experience has shown, it can bring big dividends for students in poorer neighborhoods, who too often are left behind."

Wait a minute. Who is being "left behind" here? 6 years later, -- after huge community outcry and advocacy, after a lawsuit and a consent decree of the court, ordering that the Sacramento City Unified School District provide a replacement -- half of the city of Sacramento's students still don't have their high school.

As the editorial said:

"Closing a school and turning it over to a nonprofit to run as a public charter school is not for the faint of heart" -- especially when it is done prematurely and illegally, as happened to Sacramento High School.

"It requires a strong school board willing to back an inevitably controversial decision" -- and complicit in the back room deals, dirty deeds, misuse of Federal funds and betrayal of the community will, all of which got that "strong" school board voted out of office.

"It requires a charter organization willing to withstand withering criticism in its sensitive startup years by those tethered to the status quo" -- the "status quo" being pesky, boring stuff like: the will of the parents, voters and taxpayers (who were forced to become litigants and WON), the history, traditions and needs of the whole community and -- oh yeah -- the law.

The editorial quotes, Tom Loveless, director of the Center on American Education at the Brookings Institution, who told The Bee when Sac High was closed, "It has never happened before where a large, existing high school closed in June and opened in September as a charter." The editor fails to mention that it will never happen here again. After the illegal handover of Sacramento's historic high school to Kevin Johnson, the resulting lawsuit led to a consent decree requiring a one year period in between.

This most recent in a series of misleading and enabling editorials continues. "Enrollment has stabilized at 1,000 students in the last two years and the school slowly seems to be getting beyond the intense conflict surrounding its founding. This is a school that could be even more successful if it had something more than a dismissive brush-off from influential parts of the community."

This is a school that is propped up with powerful media complicity and fudged statistics, packaged with the illegitimate use of the trappings of the historic public school: the mascot, the colors, team name, school name and the school nick name (which the SCUSD has unsuccessfully ordered St. HOPE to quit using). This sporty, peppy, purple and white sham of "Sac High," continues despite repeated public protests to the newspaper and the school board.

The sham, however, provided Kevin Johnson his springboard to the 25th floor press conference vantage and the Mayor's seat.

St. Hope operates "Sacramento Charter High School." It is not "Sacramento High School" or "Sac High." The only time the Sacramento Bee has consistently used the correct terms, were in the few unavoidable investigative articles, when alleged malfeasance by Kevin Johnson was too serious to gloss over. Then, the Bee referred to all the various other official entities of Johnson's St. Hope franchise and avoided any mention of him or of "Sac High."

"Getting beyond the intense conflict surrounding (St. HOPE's) founding," while pretending that central Sacramento should not have a comprehensive, public high school, is impossible. This fuzzy media blanket masking the truth and muzzling the public interest made Johnson's mayoral win possible.

This is a school that was paid for by the taxpayers, supported by the whole community for 147 years and valued for its diverse community-building aspect. This is a school that Sacramentans previously voted to approve bond funds, for renovations intended to serve the whole community, that ended up providing Johnson's boutique charter a $27 million renovation. This is a campus that belongs to the whole community, which is owed a consent decree high school after parents sued over the St. HOPE takeover.

This is a school that cannot justify its presence on the community's historic, upgraded, public high school campus without fudging the statistics, without cherry picking its student body, without the enabling of the local media and without excluding thousands of SCUSD students every year (including student families in Oak Park, who prefer a comprehensive, traditional public school to the St. HOPE charter). This is a school that owes the SCUSD $1,000,000 because it can't pay its bills.

So, who is really getting the "dismissive brush-off from influential parts of the community"? The highly insular, media fortified, privatized outpost of St. HOPE, squatting on the Sac High campus and the mayor with his lofty sky box view?

Or is it that vast, diverse Tent City of displaced high school students, spread out as far as the eye can see, spelling out the words, "Where's my High School"?

The bank tower skybox elites care about the bottom line. They are not accountable to -- or even aware of -- the community experience on the ground level.

It is up to the community to make sure that this mayor is not so blinded by the haze of powerful influence and the sport of politics, that he overlooks his duty to the the families and future of Sacramento.