Re “Parents Vow Not to Rest Until School Board ‘Leads’”
Of the 41 protesting parents called to the speaker’s podium at last night’s School Board meeting, apart from those who shlepped their sleeping children with them, the most intriguing non-solo visitor was the second parent invited to the microphone, Jeannine Wisnosky Stehlin.
A mother of three, Ms. Stehlin was accompanied by a medium-sized black box.
Holding it aloft, she said it contained the signatures of 969 supporters of her online petition (http://signon.org/sign/culver-city-board-of)“to protect volunteers and parent-supported services throughout the School District,” to retain parent-funded programs the way they are.
By early this afternoon, the count was 1,009 and rising.
The 41 independent-minded moms and dads packed oratorical charm into their 2-minute presentations. They were creative, often original, eloquent and unanimous, not nasty or bitter, just grittily determined.
They urged the mainly quiescent School Board to protect parent-funded enterprises at all schools, but especially the 20 part-time non-union language specialists at El Marino Language School whom a union would love to recruit.
For almost three weeks, School Board member Laura Chardiet has watched the stentorian feuding over the recruiting intentions of the Assn. of Classified Employers and the resistance of parents grow noisier and more raucous.
An optimist by experience, she speculated that a darkening spectacle still could be averted, if a longshot happens.
“ACE could just decide not to push this issue,” Ms. Chardiet said. “They could say ‘We didn’t realize…’
“They could get out of this so gracefully. They could say, ‘We didn’t realize what the unintended consequences were of trying to bring all of the parent-funded programs under one system.
“‘Now that we realize how passionately people feel about this, we are not going to pursue this.’
“ACE could decide to do that,” Ms. Chardiet said. “And I hope they do.”
