This was not the only emotionally frail moment of the night in the tattered relations between the warring parties.
Bizarre faceoffs pitting the Board President against some or all of the other Board members have become a staple of the last fifty months of meetings.
Tracking Itinerary of Mystery Tape
Ms. Davis, the only black elected official in the history of Culver City, believes the twin causes of the animosity lie in her muscular personality, where by she vows never to sound Retreat, and the color of her skin.
Tracing the trajectory of the spotlighted tape, the Board President obtained what she was told was the original recording from the School District office. Presumably, following completion of the Jan. 24 meeting, the audio tape traveled no farther than the few feet from the Board Room to an outer office adjoining the office of Dist. Supt. Dr. Laura McGaughey.
Called away from the School Board meeting early in the evening of the twenty-fourth by the death of her father, Ms. Davis learned later that Board members Stew Bubar and Dana Russell were involved in late-evening ruminating over her recently conferred honorary degree. When she tuned in the tape for a first-hand airing of the explosive dialogue, however, she said the tape was silent in the section where the criticism took place.
At this week’s meeting, Ms. Davis did not inquire further, beyond the observation that the obviously hot tape curiously was missing the most colorful part. The tape in question was one of four tapes the School District employed to transcribe the evening’s discussions.
The School Board President was disappointed but not surprised that the only unavailable dialogue concerned the criticism of her when she was not in the room.
Similar scenes have played out before.
Given the regularity of these melodramas, Ms. Davis was asked if she ever had considered walking away from the Board.
“No, because I hav e a purpose in being here,” she said. “I am here for the kids. Even though there has been plenty of opposition to me on the Board, I have gotten things done. Programs and money are here because of what I have done. These accomplishments bother some people (on the School Board). But that is okay.”
‘The Craziest Stuff’
Assessing the conflicts that have littered the School Board landscape since 2001, Ms. Davis said that “this is the craziest stuff, the most ridiculous, that I ever have been involved in.”
She said that the calm expressions on the faces of fellow School Board members during the public portion of meetings often is supplanted by fierce criticism and voluble opposition when the Board goes behind closed doors.
Highly personalized spats, targeting Ms. Davis, have grown into the dozens, possibly the hundreds, over the past four years, whether it is four members, three members or two against Ms. Davis. ..
Typically, the most combustible moments have come when Mr. Bubar and Dr. Russell have disagreed, volubly, with Ms. Davis.
In the third month of Ms. Davis’s second four-year term, she has become the final member of the Board to enter the titular rotation that traditionally grants one year as president to each member.
As if the Board members had not quarreled enough for one night on Tuesday about personal matters pertaining to Ms. Davis, they fit in one more before going home. Strenuous objection was raised, it was reported, to the duly elected president’s use of the title “president” on her School Board business cards.
She said she was going to be identified on the cards as the Board president even if she had to bear the payment herself.
Following earlier — but apparently defeated — objections by Board colleagues to Ms. Davis’s requests for a cell phone and for office space, the protest over using her official designation as leader of the Board on business cards may go to the same, tranquil final resting place.