Their articulate, heartfelt voices rang out with bell clarity, snuggled under a blanket of absolute unanimity, when a small knot of parents stood before the School Board at a special meeting in the Robert Frost Auditorium last night and urgently pleaded for relief from overcrowded conditions that they claim are caused by the School District’s supposedly indiscriminate thirst to attract permit, or out of town, students to fatten enrollment and, therefore, the District coffers.
The sad result, all 20 speakers seemed to acknowledge in varying degrees, has been an unmistakable erosion in the quality of education being offered in Culver City’s public schools, especially in the Middle School and at Culver City High School.
With 10 members of the School District seated at a rectangular table across the stage of the Frost, led by Supt. Dr. Myrna Rivera Cote and the 5 members of the School Board, the faces of the District sat silently, almost resembling a jury, for all but the final minutes of the 2 1/2-hour evening.
Bearing the outlines of a typical community meeting — a clutch of veteran activists leading the charge to the microphone — between 75 and 100 persons rattled around the spacious Frost for the 6 o’clock gathering that was partitioned into 3 fairly evenly divided elements:
The School District explicating its complicated permit policy, the public talking back in an unorchestrated but singular voice, and divided School Board members reacting to what they had just heard. Some were cool. Some were warm, but the fissure was undeniable.
Evening Worked Out as Planned
First-year Board member Scott Zeidman, organizer of the evening and a muscular advocate for thinning out enrollment in the upper six grades, resembled a man who just had blown out the candles on his birthday cake. He was happy. “What we heard was a good representation, a good sampling of what the public thinks,” said Mr. Zeidman, convinced that his venture into the community for broad opinion had succeeded.
He was not surprised that virtually all speakers seconded what the persons preceding them had said. “The public is aligned,” he said, “because reducing enrollment makes sense.”
Mr. Zeidman wanted to clearly label the battle lines for the brewing reform strategy and avert confusion of terms. “This is not residents vs. permits,” he said. “We want to do the best we can for every student. What we are saying is that the high school and the Middle School may have too many children. Let’s gain control of our enrollment,” a position that most parents, in their 3-minute pitches, identified as a necessary goal.
Not that those pushing hard for shrinking the upper-grades’ enrollment, with an accent on students who live inside of Culver City, should leave their engines running while reform is enacted. It will not happen soon. School Board President Dr. Dana Russell, who may represent a majority view on the Board, struck an historic perspective. His children have graduated, Some of the problems cited by parents of current students were spotted in the ’90s, Dr. Russell said. The concerns were so serious that he and his wife were not sure their children would remain in Culver City schools through their secondary education. Improvement came but not an ultimate solution, he suggested.
Having been roughly where you are, he said, don’t be in a hurry for answers. “This is not necessarily an immediate problem, and there is not necessarily an immediate solution,” Dr. Russell said.
Mixed Results
As for the remaining Board members:
Steve Gourley, allied with Mr. Zeidman in seeking reform, said flatly: “I did not hear anything tonight that I disagree with.”
Saundra Davis, who has not indicated her position, is regarded, however, as a fighter for the rights of permit students. Toward the end of the evening, her eyes suddenly brightened when Asst. Supt. Andrew Sotelo announced — practically as the audience was ready to spill out the door — that despite scattered but accumulating criticism of the report cards and behavior of some permit students — permit students in the upper grades generally and specifically outperformed hometown students.
Ms. Davis looked tempted to quip, “See, I told you so.”
She said there is a major barrier to rearranging enrollment to a desirable level because Culver City is locked into a relatively confined area with no room to build more schools. “I like smaller schools,” she said. “Nationally, that seems to be the trend. But I don’t know how we can get smaller when we don’t have the land.”
Tellingly, she closed by saying, “We need to work on issues that we can handle.”
Ms. Beagles Roos did not overtly lean for or against either side of the debate.
No Rain in Sight
This left Mr. Zeidman, who was ecstatic over the outcome. He raved about a surprisingly strong turnout from City Hall, with all 5 City Council members and 3 former mayors in the crowd. Their presence took on an acute significance in the second half of the program when one of the speakers, George Laase, dwelled at some length on the historically prickly relationship between City Hall and the School District/School Board. Most leaders in the school community have regularly felt brushed aside by City Hall, in part because schools never are talked about in City Hall’s corridors or meeting rooms.
None of this, however, dampened Mr. Zeidman’s upbeat feelings — although the freshman Board member commonly is sunny and smiling all day and all evening long.
His suggested resolution is to determine the total number of hometown students in the Middle School and in the high school. In conjunction with those two totals, he believes a “reasonable” enrollment ceiling should be established in each school. If for example, said Mr. Zeidman, it would be decided that 1400 students is a reasonable limit for the Middle School and there are 1350 hometown students, that means 50 slots would be available for out-of-town students.
By that formula, he said, enrollment would be stable and consistent from year-to-year. No longer would the District be a prisoner of volatile enrollment totals whereby masses of teachers would be suddenly hired one year and suddenly laid off the next when enrollment receded.
The Format of the Evening
For the first 50 minutes, School District officials Mr. Sotelo and Rose Ecker delivered densely detailed, sometimes arcane, text and data on all dimensions of the concept of accepting, embracing and occasionally evicting permit students. Their power-point program was larded with acronyms and hundreds of numbers and a score or more of graphs.
The next 60 minutes were consumed by 18 well-prepared parents and two students who graduated last week from the Middle School , all of whom carried the same 3-point message:
The number of permits granted seems to have grown exponentially in recent years.
The School District seems to be steadily lowering the academic threshold for non-resident students, and
The District’s allegedly unseemly attempt to court and welcome all non-resident students — “just to pay your bills” — several speakers said — has led to intolerably crowded conditions that have diminished the quality of education dispensed, notably, in the last 4 or 5 years.
Board members reserved their comments for the final 40 minutes when the spirited Mr. Zeidman put in a plug for the key element in his solution, a parcel tax. Reasoning that if enrollment is reduced, state funding will decline in direct proportion, new money will need to be found to maintain current programs, services and staffing.
His answer is to place a “small” $200 a year per household parcel tax, with senior citizens possibly being exempt. When Mr. Zeidman asked the audience how many agreed with him, nearly everyone affirmed his suspicions. When he asked how many would vote for it, about as many said “yes.” When he asked how many would help him campaign, the response was a little lighter but still encouraging.
Which was his mood when he drove home last night, strongly encouraged.
