Re “District Says ‘No’ to ACE, and Union Ready to Prepare Grievance”
Tonight’s 6:15 School Board meeting in Council Chambers may remind you of an exceedingly unattractive girl optimistically entering a beauty contest ¬– creatively configured.
Since the Board is back in the business of window shopping and Super shopping – Patti Jaffe’s last day is three months from Friday – four headhunting firms will make their pitches to the five Board members.
Each will be allotted 30 minutes, killing the first two hours.
Here is where the unattractive girl enters the room.
When the Super lobbyists have run out of gas, time or both, the School Board will repair to Closed Session for reasons President Karlo Silbiger and Supt. Jaffe were not clear about.
Subjects listed are “Public Employee Dismissal,” which sources said is not Ms. Jaffe, and “Superintendent.”
Since the discussion of which firm to choose – for the honor of paying at least $20,000 – is supposed to be in public, Mr. Silbiger said he did not have an answer to two questions:
• Why wretchedly inconvenience a crowd and stage a private session that could last 30 to 60 minutes in the middle of a public meeting?
• What will you be talking about?
Closed Sessions normally precede meetings. Since tonight’s assembly starts almost an hour earlier than usual, pushing Closed Session up to 5 o’clock, Ms. Jaffe said Board members were unable to rearrange their schedules.
Mr. Silbiger disagreed with last Thursday’s report in the newspaper (see the headline above) where the District’s lawyers concluded that the union-disputed adjuncts at El Marino Language School generally are beyond the reach of the District.
“I believe that (the District lawyers’ ruling) is not saying that the Board and District have no say over the issue,” Mr. Silbiger said. “Instead, they are saying that negotiation is not the appropriate venue for the discussion. PERB (the Public Employees Relations Board) might be the appropriate place. I don't know.
“We still need to work on crafting a policy on April 10 at the study session that reflects the Board's opinion about our parent-funded positions. We also must decide what uniform steps need to be taken so the District feels comfortable with the process.”
