Part III
Re “Great Grandmother Goldie Roaring with Motivation and Reason”
[img]1218|left|Nancy Goldberg||no_popup[/img]Two days before the formal unveiling of her hundred-day run for the School Board on Sunday afternoon at the Bauer home in Culver Crest, you can tell from Nancy Goldberg’s answers that she is a just-retired teacher.
Question: What do you bring to this campaign?
“The awareness that the whole child has to be considered. When they come up with a program that doesn’t address all the issues of puberty and the pressure of socialization as they get into high school. Middle school is a really rough period. I want to be aware of each one of these stages.
“Now I am a little removed from them, but I have been doing my homework.
“There is a music proposal now that we end all elementary music and start it all over.
“I am thinking now as a grandparent to kids in the Irvine school system. What would I do if suddenly my granddaughter were taking flute and they said, ‘We’re going to end the program this year. There will be no more lessons. We’ll start it up next year’?
“Well, she will be a whole year without that.
“My sixth sense is that this (policy) is going to harm the students. I don’t oppose (music director Dr.) Tony Spano on many things, but I don’t think the whole program should be undone. I think there should be a segue at first. That way the present students wouldn’t suffer.”
Have you begun campaigning?
“I really don’t know.
“I had this compunction that I shouldn’t do anything until I was at least two weeks off the job. I figured sometime in July I would start. Then people said, ‘You have to get out there, you have to start getting names. Do this, do that.’
“I said, ‘Oh, my gosh, it is a different world than I am used to.’”
Knocking on doors is central to every electoral campaign in Culver City. Does that appeal?
“Yes, I like to harass people,” she says with a laugh. “But you know how many of them are going to say, ‘You had my daughter.’ ‘You had my son.’ And I have got the ones with the mothers and the kids I have taught.”
Numerous early-campaign stories about the four announced Board candidates for two seats in the Nov. 8 election have accented the impressive number of endorsements being lined up.
Ms. Goldberg recalled a recent conversation with former Board member Dr. Dana Russell.
“He told me, ‘I am sorry I can’t support you because you don’t have any kids in school. That is one of my criteria.’
“I felt like saying, ‘But I did. They are gone now, and they are making their way in the world.’
“But I understood what Dana was saying.”
Parenthetically, two of the five current School Board members are parents of school-age children.
After pausing for a reflective moment, Ms. Goldberg threw one more log on the fire:
“If you are going to put someone on the Board with a vested interest, it should be their children, and all children. By extension, people do. They feel strongly about their own children, they are going to take care of them.
“If not me, (vote for) someone who will advocate for the kids.”
Ms. Goldberg wanted to return to the subject of campaigning one more time.
“This is hard for me,” she said. “I am intimate with so many people in the community. If suddenly I start calling somebody, I don’t want the person to think that is why I am calling. It’s not. I would be calling anyway.”
How do you make the distinction between a regular friendship call and a campaign contact?
“If there is a high road to take, I will take it. I will always err on the side of not doing something rather than doing something, especially where people’s feelings are concerned.”
