If you are an excited parent planning to attend next week’s bright-lights School Board meeting to root home freshman Board member Laura Chardiet’s star-spangled resolution from last week protecting adjuncts, language teacher assistants, at El Marino Language School, fuhhhhgetttitttt.
Go to a movie.
You will enjoy it more.
Ms. Chardiet’s wildly cheered proposal for tightening Board policy toward parent-funded groups while shielding the El Marino program that is in its 26th year, is in the same condition as A. Lincoln’s body, unrecognizable pieces.
You may recall she received a highly unusual ovation from the capacity parent crowd in Council Chambers when she introduced her four-point plan.
Simultaneously, several of the Right Reverend School Board members were horrified. They did what their big brothers in Congress do when they want a proposal to disappear. They talk about Valentine’s Day in Albania
After several years of pious, strike-up-the-band popcorn from the Right Reverend School Board members about – genuflect first, kids – how they would heroically lay down their lives before foregoing their bloody pledge to be transparent, welcome to reality.
Disneyland is dead.
Mary Poppins is fake.
So, evidently, is their vow to us virginal believers.
The Right Reverend School Board members just stuffed their perfumed pledge in a stinky garbage can, and the stench is destined to celebrate a lengthy life.
You, Dear Parents, can jump over the moon as far as believing the Right Reverend School Board members.
One District official, not the Super, said this afternoon: “If we had to wait for a meeting for every little procedural thing like this, business would slow to a glacial pace (as opposed to its current molasses-in-January pace).”
Precisely my point. The flap over Union vs. El Marino is the Story of the Year. You don’t crouch under a dusty desk and discuss it out of the public’s view. If you want to shmooze about whether pink pencils should be banned at La Ballona, fine. But when you a subject this sizzling, you are obligated to handle it in public, not treat it like last year’s trash.
Where are the geniuses who have been pounding their fists on tables the last several years saying the public must be kept informed.
You just blew it.
On Thursday, Supt. Patti Jaffe and Board President Karlo Silbiger are scheduled to meet in her office to review and set the agenda for next Tuesday’s remarkably closely watched meeting at District headquarters.
They will be adhering to Board policy, which was reported as follows by Ms. Jaffe:
“Any Board member may submit an item for the Board agenda anytime before the agenda is posted. Such items shall first be referred to the Board President who will contact the Superintendent and determine the appropriate Board meeting date for the agenda. When an item properly posted for a regular meeting is continued to a subsequent meeting, it does not have to be on the agenda if the subsequent meeting occurs within five days. The Board shall publicly identify the item before discussing it.”
Bet your Aunt Tillie’s next discount girdle from the Gap that Ms. Chardiet’s proposal will be from here to Pakistan away from next week’s School Board agenda.
That would have been perfectly fine if the honorable Right Reverend School Board members had lived up to their Mama, I’ll Never Let You Down baloney pledge. Pass the Swiss cheese, Murgatroyd.
Last Friday, we are told, Ms. Jaffe polled the Right Reverend School Board members on how they felt about agendizing Ms. Chardiet’s popular plan.
Ms. Jaffe told me this afternoon she did not have complete results.
Perhaps some of the Right Reverend School Board members were too busy choosing their ensembles for the Culver City Youth Health Center fundraiser on Saturday night to bother with such a critical response.
We know how Ms. Chardiet feels and we know how Mr. Silbiger feels, leaving us Prof. Pat Siever, Kathy Paspalis and Nancy Goldberg.
