[img]1207|left|Laura Chardiet||no_popup[/img]Displaying the pep without parameters that she has promised to bring to the School Board, if elected about a hundred days from now, the educator and PTA maven Laura Chardiet turned out and turned on a large crowd of supporters for her official campaign opening event Sunday afternoon at the home of City Councilman Scott Malsin.
One of four announced candidates for two Board seats in the Nov. 8 election, she attracted the kind of crowd she will need to appeal to, a cross-section of what has become a quite diverse and multi-ethnic Culver City community.
Standing in the shade of a jacaranda tree that is everything she is not — tall, sprawling and old — Ms. Chardiet, part-infectious cheerleader, part-campaigner, opened her backyard speech with a lilting riff in Spanish.
An Early Hurdle
Board member Kathy Paspalis, one of Ms. Chardiet’s major endorsers, said that she has to overcome the same handicap she, Ms.Paspalis, faced two years ago, being little known to the wider public.
Ms. Chardiet has the advantage of being quite outgoing, her long red hair jouncing and her blue eyes flashing as she bounces from subject to subject.
After being introduced by her son Cole and daughter Isabella, Ms. Chardiet told her audience who she is:
“I come from a very large family, No. 5 of six kids. My dad was a high school teacher and my mom was a homemaker. As you can imagine, when I was growing up, we really didn’t have a lot of money. We had to eat everything on our plates. I wore hand-me-downs. I shared a bed with my sister until I was 11.
Firing an Imagination
“Not having a lot of money growing up has helped me become a more resourceful person. Nevertheless, I had one of the happiest and most adventure-filled childhoods of anyone I know.
“My brothers and sisters gave me the nickname of Laura Make-Do because I was so good at making things happen with nothing. And my parents gave me the nickname of the Golden Girl because of all the goals I set for myself, I was able to achieve with very little financial support.
“Fast forward 20 years, and,” said Ms. Chardiet, she found herself in a financial challenge that once again taxed her imagination.
“My son (was) in kindergarten at La Ballona, a Title I school. Here again I am in a situation that does not have a lot of financial resources, perfect for someone with my skill-sets to get involved. The PTA was on the verge of losing its charter. It was being held together by two teachers, the principal and one parent.
“I took my enthusiasm and pulled together other parents who felt the same way, who were happy to let me tell them what to do, and today the PTA at La Ballona is thriving.”
After ticking off a number of innovations in which she played a creative, take-charge role, Ms. Chardiet says she is proudest of La Ballona’s International Dinner, “which has 400 kids in the show. We have 800 people show up. This is not just a dinner, but a show with dances from around the world. I felt it was important that all the kids at our school felt represented. So now, in addition to South America, we have dances from Africa, from the Middle East, from India, from all over the world, to celebrate the culture that is La Ballona and Culver City.”
(Tomorrow: What her friends have to say)
