To the surprise of none, the pleasure of many and disappointment of isolated curmudgeons, popular Patti Jaffe, Interim Superintendent for the past 9 months, will be the next permanent Superintendent of the Culver City Unified School District.
It is not official yet but the contract is posted on the District’s website (ccusd.org).
“I am elated, excited — I just can’t think up enough adjectives to say how happy I am that we have the opportunity to have Patti Jaffe as our fulltime Superintendent,” said Scott Zeidman, President of the School Board, who led a late drive to make her a contender.
“Her experience in the District, her rapport with the District’s partners, with the staff, the teachers, make her the best choice at the right time.”
This morning’s revelation is the celebratory equivalent of a marriage between New Year’s Eve and Mardi Gras.
If the race to find a new Super had been between Santa and Ms. Jaffe or the Easter Bunny and Ms. Jaffe, Mr. Bunny and Mr. Claus would have walked away with second-place prizes.
Roughly one year ago, Ms. Jaffe, at the time a low-key, barely noticed Assistant Super, announced her intention to retire in June to a more sedentary lifestyle.
Fate had a secret plan for happily turning her life upside down.
On a Friday afternoon at the end of last May when the community was otherwise distracted, Supt. Dr. Myrna Rivera Coté shocked — but emphatically did not disappoint — the School Board when she told members she was moving to Pico Rivera to superintend.
For reasons that appeared unanimous, no one tried to change her mind.
Dr. Coté and the Board had been slogging grimly through a bumpy relationship that periodically threatened to capsize for two reasons:
- Her alleged refusal to carry out direction from the School Board and;
- Her rollover contract, which District sources say she wrote, whereby firing her would have been so financially imprudent that the District would have been more broke than Wisconsin.
After 41 years in Culver City Schools as teacher and administrator, the broad embracement of the winsomely smiling Ms. Jaffe probably is unsurpassed.
As eagerly spirited and co-operative with all levels of the education community as a hungry freshman teacher, Ms. Jaffe rode to victory on the crest of a late-developing tsunami of support that only gathered and surfaced at the end of a months’ long, much publicized Super search.
Finalists from a professionally conducted statewide hunt were interviewed and being permanently evaluated when Ms. Jaffe, not only a dark horse but presumably an ineligible party, emerged as a last-hour contender.
Once that word fired across the community like a rifle report, loud, enthusiastic backing coalesced. In a jiffy, Ms. Jaffe whizzed past the grey-faced outside finalists. There might have been a slightly inland tsunami of a different kind if she had been passed over for an outsider.
The reasoning of a Board majority is uncomplicated:
Ms. Jaffe not only is known and liked by nearly all in the community, she long ago mastered her profession, performs consistently at an A-plus level, and follows directions of the Board faithfully and in good cheer.
The decision to hire will become formalized on Wednesday afternoon when the School Board meets in a special huddle at the Middle School, a campus that represents heartbeat of the District, at the eye-catching hour of 4:40.
The five members will vote at that time on Ms. Jaffe’s one-year contract, which carries a $201,000 salary, a symbolic $1,000 increase over the contract she has held since last June as the Interim Super.
Mr. Zeidman, who believes no contract should be longer than two years, said the one-year terms maximize flexibility on both sides of the table.
The Jaffe agreement grows to about $217,000 when medical benefits are added and to $237,000 when her longevity pay (that all longterm employees receive) is factored in.
Sources said the value of Ms. Jaffe’s total package represents a 10 percent savings over the so-called evergreen deal of her predecessor.
