[img]1131|left|Patti Jaffe||no_popup[/img] The induplicable ineloquence with which the official school community responded to Supt. Patti Jaffe’s abrupt, prosaic resignation at last night’s School Board meeting obviates the need to pose the obvious inquiry, why?
The reason screamed out.
It was written in indelible ink last Nov. 8, Election Day. The old Board that had whisked her from almost unnoticed retirement and stunningly elevated her to the pre-eminent position of her career, Super, was gone. The new environment, the new Board makeup, was chilly enough for the Super to wear a parka all day and all night.
Resignation has been on her mind each of the 98 days since.
Thirteen minutes into an expectedly raucous meeting that would be monopolized by parents irate over a unionization attempt, Ms. Jaffe launched into a string of routine announcements. At the end, without altering her tone and absent emotion, she skated into the jarring personnel story of the year, a 65-second bulletin.
“As of June 30, 2012, I will be retiring.”
Something about this being an optimal time to depart to protect her pension benefits – only because when people end a high-profile job, it is traditional to give an explanation, no matter how creative. “I have been advised (by pension mavens) this is the year” to get out with maximum advantage.
“It breaks my heart after all the support I have received from the community.”
This was where someone in the Board Room might have shown or done something, anything overt.
The gap, however, merely yawned.
The jammed room and the School Board reacted identically.
With invisible, inarticulated emotion. No Board member acknowledged that Ms. Jaffe had said anything worthy of comment.
As in Zero
No applause. No outcries.
How dramatically the personality and the times have changed in the transition from the previous Board to the present one.
The putatively popular Super, who triumphantly rode into office 11 months ago on a surging avalanche of hosannas – albeit under unusual circumstances – leaves amidst thundering silence.
At the end of Ms. Jaffe’s abbreviated declaration, awkwardness stepped in. There was a hole in the script.
If this had been a divorce scene, the departing but lingering spouse would have said, “Okay. Well, all right, I must be going. I am leaving now. There is the door. I think I am going to walk through it. I must be leaving. I am not going to be here anymore.”
When Ms. Jaffe reached the end, she ad libbed:
“Anyway, I just wanted to announce that so that the Board will be able to find a very, very good person to step in this spot.”
Next, as if the Super had mentioned she was excusing herself briefly to purchase a ham sandwich, Board President Karlo Silbiger said, “Okay, thank you very much. Eleven point two is the Assistant Superintendent’s report, Ms. Carroll,” and the evening went on unabated.
The overwhelming kudos of last March that surrounded Ms. Jaffe’s celebrated coronation following a 40-year classroom and administration career in Culver City must have been written in the wind.
The single rose extended to Ms. Jaffe for her lifetime of service to Culver City came from Teachers Union President David Mielke. He said she has been “the best Super” since he came to the District in 1979.
It will echo across the community this morning as the loneliest accolade.
