Sixth in a series
Re “What Culver Park Used to Have in Golden Days, but No Longer Does”
Gathered around a table in a soon-to-be-abandoned Culver Park High School classroom were teachers Karen Lanier, David Mielke – both of whom joined the faculty 26 years ago – and Leslie Johnson, who pre-dated both of them, arriving early in the 1980s.
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Classrooms Culver Park involuntarily is giving up
They form the historic spine of the 34-year-old continuation school.
It is a feather-light aside that Mr. Mielke, who went on to become President of the Teachers Union longer than FDR, Teddy and Eleanor Roosevelt were in the White House, departed Culver Park after 19 years, leaving his heart behind. In a gleaming classroom, especially gleaming because within a few weeks the school, over protest, is due to have its campus shifted to a parking lot behind Farragut School.
They likely will move unless the ACLU engineers a legal action over conditions in the parking lot.
Mr. Mielke thanked a visitor for coming to the leafy campus Culver Park shares for a few minutes more with prestigious El Marino Language School in Sunkist Park.
“You are showing more concern for Culver Park than we have seen from anybody else in the District,” he said.
Why is that?
“It is sort of a common thing to consider the continuation school last,” Ms. Lanier said. “Unfortunately, we have had great support over the years. But in recent years, we have lost more and more each year.
“Why is that happening to us? I think it is because they can. We don’t have a PTA that goes to School Board meetings and screams. We don’t have students winning scholarships to Harvard.
“We are not considered,” and here she hesitated, briefly, “because we are just not as important and as noisy as a lot of other kids.”
“Another part of that,” spoke up Mr. Mielke, “is when we have gone through the accreditation process, the Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges, when you look at the report, they would always say ‘We want to commend the District for making such a commitment for alternative education.’ So there was a history of support, whether it was Board members, the Superintendent, or others I am not sure. But there was a sense, ‘We are not going to put this population into a bungalow in a parking lot. We’re going to have a commitment.’
“Why that has gone away, I’m not sure.
“The leadership,” asserted Mr. Mielke, “has not kept Culver Park a priority.”
(To be continued)
