Re “Change of Plans for Culver Park High School” and “District Touted Bungalows as Fit for Students Without Ever Verifying”
Little did new Supt. Dave LaRose realize he was hiring into a public relations train wreck that was swept so vigorously under a raggedy carpet that School District officials broke the broom. Mr. LaRose’s first moves have strongly suggested he is committed to openness.
Not that the District has an option at this moment. The American Civil Liberties Union is peering through all of the windows. That pending intimidation will make anyone walk quite straight.
After the last two days of stories, the now evident intolerable sloppiness in the final days of retired Supt. Patti Jaffe strikes like a thunderclap of disappointment this morning.
[On the subject of new openness, it must be reported that Asst. Supt. Eileen Carroll’s revealing reply to the ACLU was provided by Mr. LaRose, to his credit, in response to a request by the newspaper.]
I don’t know the breadth of Ms. Jaffe’s direct and active role in the cartoonishly bollaxed forced transition of Culver Park High School from a lovely home in Sunkist Park to a parking lot where they ain’t standing in line to learn or to live.
It is not relevant.
As the person at the top, it was Ms. Jaffe’s responsibility to see that what began as a public relations nightmare (Don’t noise it around we are throwing them out) was converted into an open record available to the community.
Instead, the opposite – mischievously÷ – was done.
Deny, deny.
Hide, hide.
When I made inquiries of the District about the suitability of the antique bungalows (not to mention the desolate landscape), I was told, impulsively and inaccurately:
“Everything is fine, pal. You are getting upset over nothing. We have control of the situation.”
Oh?
It was bad enough that the supposedly compassionate School District was yanking the already fragile Culver Park students by the scruffs of their quivering necks and booting them into a parking lot to make way on their old campus, their true home, for a bunch of kindergartners.
May my self-esteem soar to the skies.
Where are all of my liberal pals who scurry about town daily worrying about students’ self-esteem?
Two problems to ponder:
• These 16- to 18-year-old continuation students already have been singled out by being dispatched to Culver Park.
• On the same day last March, the supposedly sensitive administration of Ms. Jaffe told the Culver Park faculty and students first that they were remaining on their home campus only to reverse themselves hours later and tell them they were being thrown away, or at least thrown out.
The next misleading words were rubber-stamped on the lips of every District leader who spoke publicly:
“The bungalows will be perfect, once fixed up,” when they were unusable, and District people should have known that.
Their sin: Unacceptable sloppiness.
No brave member of the School Board seized the opportunity to act transparently and inform the community what was going on.
Public relations? Who cares?
The administration played it as if the unpopular transfer of Culver Partk students to a down-setting were a private card game that was not anybody’s business.
The insensitivity and carelessness with the way the transfer of those unfortunate Culver Park students was purposely mangled should embarrass the School District into instituting an immediate reform of policy and conduct.
For shame.
