Kent, Burke, McVarish – Take Your Pick

Impressions from last evening’s well-attended League of Women Voters forum for School Board candidates in Council Chambers:

Entering the final month of a seemingly abbreviated campaign, Anne Burke, Prof. Kelly Kent and Scott McVarish all crested on one of the blue-ribbon evenings of the election season.

When Culver City voters go shopping one month from tomorrow for two new School Board members, they will stand at the calorie-less candy counter and choose from the maximum of variety.

One of the few similarities is that all are parents of grammar school students – 11 and younger. They are more deeply involved in their children’s schools than beads of perspiration.

The three contenders are markedly distinct from each other with both the styles and the cerebral remedies they would bring to a 40 percent restructured School Board. They love Common Core, and their accent marks are similar on spending the $107 million that Measure CC will bring in.

Two of the three candidates see themselves as intellectuals, a welcome change. All three could dominate a talent contest, another welcome upgrade.  This field was not collected from a random sampling of crosseyed students of ceiling fabric,  hanging out overnight on a park bench.

Just because Dr. Kent, Ms. Burke and Mr. McVarish generally agree how to cure what they believe ails the School District, and just because the three could team up for a cross-country ride and not spark an argument, observers still will notice differences that will sway their votes.

Like their personalities.

All of them have gone to pains to stress that they will carry the interests of students-teachers-parents at every campus in the School District, not just the school their children attend. This charge bounces out at every election season.

Although the attorney Mr. McVarish counts his as the longest term of service with schools, 10 years, Dr. Kent’s involvement started the moment after she arrived in Culver City with her young family five years ago, and Ms. Burke has been a permanent qualitative contributor to the scenery since her son grew to studenthood.

All three are immensely informed, thoroughly prepared and without an evident weakness.

Perhaps you are gathering that if you close your eyes and hurl a dart at the board, it is bound to land on an unbashful, resourceful candidate.

What are they like?

• By training and by disposition, Ms. Burke brings the managerial model to her campaign, a doctor, a fixer, but also a supervisor who comprehends the wide-screen picture.
• Mr. McVarish fancies himself as the most qualified, most confident. He is the hurricane in the field. Few would doubt the assertions, but he also is more brash than the two women. That may, but should not, cost him votes. He bills himself as one who is a magnet for capital ideas. Last night he promised, if elected, an air conditioner in every classroom in the School District.
• The brainy Dr. Kent may or may not be cerebrally superior to her rivals, but from the audience it sounds that way with her crackling, restless mind relentlessly pouring out tinglingly creative futuristic ideas that will work in a classroom. She plays more inventively in the way that a 160-mph Porsche seems to smoothly blur right past two Mercedes Benzes.