Part 1
In her kitchen yesterday afternoon, Ronni Cooper could have passed for any other matron along her sloping street in Ladera Heights.
A portrait of serenity, for just a moment it was difficult to believe the president of the Ladera Heights Civic Assn. was discussing the most volatile issue to roil the fashionable neighborhood in awhile.
Whether she was talking about the state’s denial of Ladera’s transfer petition a fortnight ago or Culver City’s determination to keep its school doors closed to Ladera, Ms. Cooper spoke as calmly as if she were comforting a grieving friend.
For 30 minutes, there were two developments that perhaps should be noted by those who hold a different view of the proposed transfer. Ms. Cooper’s gaze never wavered from her visitor, and her strong voice maintained its unerring tone and cadence.
Positioning herself as a realist without ever deviating from the center of the road in her locution, her approach was direct and clear-eyed: “This is the way it is.”
Ms. Cooper knows whereof she speaks. Her two grown sons graduated from Inglewood’s schools when the system, debatably, was slightly more tolerable.
Intimate Familiarity
For decades, she herself has tightly, unsparingly, studied the Inglewood district. It seems likely she understands the full DNA, the critical and the nuanced problems of Inglewood better than any member of the School Board — and she had plenty to say later about school boards.
In full command of the regrouping situation, Ms. Cooper only says that the families in the Ladera Heights association are fed up with decades of educational decay in the Inglewood District, and they are determined, this time, to find a route out.
No bravado.
No threats.
Just steely resolve.
Ms. Cooper’s message: The fight, in gentlemanly terms, has just begun.
“Inglewood got what they wanted,” she said, “in that the State Board isn’t going to let us leave the way we originally tried — which is to be removed from the Inglewood system and be put in the Culver City system.
“However, that doesn’t mean that we’re going to stop looking for other alternatives that would work for our community to leave, whether it be by permit or anything else we can come up with.
Little Will Change — for Now
“Most people here don’t use the Inglewood public schools anyway. We already have students who attend in Culver City, both on permits, and, I’m sure, illegally, as they do in other school districts.
“We will continue to work with the surrounding communities. We have attempted in the past to work with Inglewood. It certainly has not been successful for our community.
“The fact they have had six principals in seven years, five superintendents, fiscal mismanagement, a school they tore down in La Tijera three years ago and have not even begun to reconstruct…
“None of this lends itself well to an upwardly mobile community that is looking for top quality schools when they pay all this money for these houses. They will find other alternatives, which, of course, many of them already have.
“We are not talking about that many kids to begin with.”
Question: Why do you think the state School Board Assn. turned down Ladera Heights’ request for transfer?
“According to the attorney we hired, the grounds under which people can leave a school district have nothing to do with education. They have to do with territory, and this-and-that.
“Truly, we didn’t meet the required qualifications, technically. However, out of 10 people, four voted to abstain, which is like voting not to approve the decision. This means we only needed one more. Then there would have been a tie.
“My guess would be that of those 10 people, the four who voted to let us leave were from somewhere in Southern California. I think they understood what Inglewood is like. They have some history of what our community has been through, trying to improve the schools and to work with them.
“Meanwhile, I think the other six looked at the legal box and stayed inside of it, not knowing any of the history. They made an arbitrary judgment,” Mrs. Cooper said.
(To be continued)
