If Karlo Silbiger, President of the Culver City Democratic Club, were in marketing instead of teaching, he would keep bringing back last night’s four headliners for juicy monthly encores.
Stimulating even if most of them were not organized, it was left for the always entertaining Ronnie Jayne, immediate past President of the Democrats, to launch the zinger of the night.
Still exhausted from competing last month in the L.A. Marathon, Ms. Jayne semi-proudly cracked that she managed 14 miles, barely half the marathon distance, leading to this drum roll line:
“I don’t know how our Founding Fathers made it all the way across the country when I couldn’t make it across Los Angeles.”
Returning to the program, leaders of two public employee unions — at City Hall and the School District — stepped away from their reluctant pursuit of new, skinnier agreements to face off against management adversaries to the delight of what seemed to be a school-tilted crowd.
Eschewing new territory, they were spasmodically provocative and even hypersensitive.
On one side of the podium in the Rotunda Room at the Vets Auditorium were David Mielke, President of the Teachers Union, and School Board member Kathy Paspalis.
City Councilman Andy Weissman and Desmond Burns, President of the Culver City Employees Assn., largest of the six city unions, were on the other flank.
Only Mr. Weissman came prepared with a written text. That allowed him to provide context and texture to the arcane budget process that many find offputting.
(See “A Steely-Eyed Look at the City’s Rocky Budget from the Inside.”)
Since it can be presumed that a significant portion of the senior-aged audience does not scrutinize day-to-day labor negotiations, the other three presentations may have given the impression of starting a motion picture n the middle.
Name, Rank and…
Context largely was absent.
Feelings were edgy.
When Ms. Paspalis’s turn arrived and she stepped to the microphone, an older gentleman asked her name, which appears in the newspapers only periodically and may be difficult to grasp.
She seemed to take umbrage, telling him that when Mr. Silbiger introduced the panel, he mentioned that her name was Kathy and since she was the lone female, didn’t it figure?
Helpfully, though, she repeated her full name.
The audience was hungry for cogent information, and they probably finished the evening with their rhetorical stomachs growling.
After establishing his longevity credentials, the always affable Mr. Mielke of the Teachers Union made news with a previously unreported statistic
Not only have 9 furlough days been proposed for next year along with 19.2 teaching positions that potentially can be cut, he said it was announced at a School Board meeting on Tuesday that prospectively 6 additional teaching slots could be trimmed.
A Victim of Larger Classes
The endangered 6 referred to a suggestion from Asst. Supt. Ali Delawalla that if class sizes were to be increased by one student, 6 teachers could be laid off.
Mr. Mielke returned to a favorite refrain that the administrative staff should be just as vulnerable to layoffs as teachers, but that, sadly, they are a protected class. He criticized the School Board for paying new Supt. Patti Jaffe “five times the salary of a beginning teacher.”
He also resurrected a line attributed to Helen Bernstein, former President of United Teachers of Los Angeles: “No administrator should make more than the highest paid teacher.”
Ms. Paspalis was equal to a snappy comeback:
“That is a cute sound bite, but it doesn’t make much sense.”
Hoping to leave listeners with a provocative thought, Mr. Mielke said that “a crisis is an opportunity to prioritize. The union and the District are not in agreement on how to address this crisis.”
Reaching into the Other Union
Mr. Mielke and Mr. Burns of the Culver City Employees Assn. both were strongly critical of policies allowing for highly paid managers to go about their business while numerous off-staff consultants are hired, almost whimsically. They are paid with money that could be channeled to workers, the two presidents argued.
Pushing back against the District’s resistance to slimming the administrative roster, Mr. Mielke asserted that teachers commonly multi-task. Administrators who survive cuts should be prepared to do the same, he said.
The system of advancement nettles Mr. Mielke: “I often have thought that for education we need to get away from the factory model where you move up and out of the classroom to make more money. We need to adopt the medical model where the pros stay in the classroom. And we need administrative support. The idea that (administrators) make much more than we do is a relic of a different model. We would be better served if we could move away from it.”
Not so fast, said Ms. Paspalis, as she identified 40-some administrative positions throughout the District, many of whom are specialists.
Seeking versatility from certain persons, she said, is as illogical as asking a physics teacher to also be a Japanese instructor. “They are both teachers, aren’t they?” she asked.
Preferring an evenhanded approach, Mr. Burns said he was as puzzled by management logic as the school people. “Our city attorneys do great work,” he said, “but $4 million has been spent in the last six years on outside consultants.
“That is a lot of money. When we are addressing these issues, I am not saying they are wrong, I believe we need to look at all unsustainable expenses.
“If we are saying that pensions and medical are unsustainable,” and here his Irish voice rose, “don’t tell me that kind of spending is sustainable.
“Something has to give. Last July at City Council, 60 positions were eliminated. Five minutes later, $378,000 was approved to fund the City Attorney. No one said a word about it. The money was not explained. What was the nature of it? Why do we need to spend it? But it was treated as no big deal.”
