Last winter’s bitterly fought, months-long flap over whether El Marino Language School should be regarded as more equal than other schools in the District was supposedly settled last night.
The School Board ratified a six-page agreement between the El Marino’s sui generis adjunct program and the District, approving the scheme that has been criticized strongly by parents from other schools.
The Board vote was 5 to 0.
A union-fueled dispute exploded on a day last February when allegedly it was learned for the first time by the official and District communities that El Marino – privately since the 1980s – has been hiring teaching aides through its unique ALLEM arrangement, Advocates for Language Learning El Marino, operating out of allegedly admitted view of the School District.
When at least one other school attempted to emulate El Marino last school year, it was sharply rejected by the District.
What galled critics of El Marino when the supposed discovery was made – and still vexes them – was that all schools, ostensibly, were instructed to play by the same rules, except for El Marino.
Equal or Something Else?
Was that notion formalized in last night’s six-page agreement?
Community watchdog George N. Laase thinks so.
“If ALLEM gets to hire adjuncts, then why doesn’t another language program, such as English as a Second Language (at La Ballona) have access to the same kind of program?” he asked.
Before the ALLEM agreement was formalized, the School Board approved Board Policy 4400, an update to its “Board Policies/Administrative Regulations that are significant to the operation of the District on a regular basis.”
Importantly, one sensitive paragraph was stricken from the section of Board Policy 4400 headlined “Use of Private Funds for Supplemental Employment.”
First, the two paragraphs that were approved that, according to critics, would clear the way for El Marino to operate independently, as it has been:
“The Board recognizes and encourages the financial support of District programs and services by private entities. The Board also recognizes that such private entities might wish to provide financial resources to allow the employment of additional personnel to supplement services to students.
“As provided by law, the Board is required to manage and control all District operations and may not transfer that authority to a non-District individual or entity. This control requires that the Board hire, train and supervise all persons employed in the District and to make all final decisions on employment and termination. Nothing in this policy shall interfere with the Board’s rights and obligations.”
However, curiously deleted from the original document was the following dynamite-loaded sentence:
“The Board is required to ensure that all District schools are treated equally and fairly in order that all District students have equal access to District educational programs and services.”
Mr. Laase protested.
“By passing BP 4400 and the Memorandum of Understanding formalizing the adjuncts, the Board and the District have formalized what we parents have known for years –there are certain rules for El Marino and different rules for the rest of us.”
Silbiger Returns
Leading his first meeting in three months, School Board President Karlo Silbiger said last night that in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, “it was very difficult” to defending the summertime crosstown transfer of the Culver Park High School campus to the wider community.
“As many of you know, I was very concerned about the move to begin with.
“I want to make sure it is really clear to everyone that, as I have said a number of times, this is a temporary move,” said Mr. Silbiger. “This Board determined that this fall we will evaluate it. Maybe they will stay. Maybe we will find a better place.
“There were other conditions the Board placed on the move,” but he did not identify them.
Appearing at the new Culver Park campus – or the “Waterfront Bungalow,” as Supt. David LaRose cheerily portrays the Ballona Creek-adjacent setting – Mr. Silbiger said he was pleased with the state of the school he found last week on Opening Day.
Two elements are missing, he said, and hopefully will happen soon:
• Recreational equipment for students and
• A little carpentry, carving out windows in each of the classrooms.
Mr. Silbiger said he hopes both are possible.
Meanwhile, while returning Teachers Union President David Mielke and others remarked about steaming (and overcrowded) classrooms during the present month-long siege of heat, students of Culver Park, a continuation school, are basking in the comfort of air conditioned classrooms.
Mr. LaRose, on the job for six weeks, participated in his first School Board meeting.
In a restrained but energizing way, he made a splashy technicolor debut, reminding the Board Room audience of a concert of smooth jazz, setting a far different tone from his most recent predecessors:
Soft-spoken, relaxed, entirely at home, inarguably in charge with a detailed map to reach the destination.
Making a Proposition
Easier than snapping fingers, the Board unanimously back the highly charged ballot initiatives that allegedly will pour gallons of funding into California schools, Props. 30 and 38. They also endorsed Culver City’s Measure Y, the half-cent sales tax increase.
Schedule Change: Because of the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, the date of the next Board meeting has been changed from Tuesday, Sept. 25, to Wednesday, Sept. 26 – time and location to be determined. Yom Kippur ends at 7:29 p.m. on Wednesday the 26th.
