Long after the members of the School Board have retreated into professional retirement and are bouncing crying grandchildren on their arthritic knees, they may look back on last night’s valiant last stand by parents of Lin Howe School as their most poignant memory.
The fear of losing one of three kindergarten classes to a rival school drove stoutly loyal Lin Howe family members to scale the heights of heartfelt, unscripted eloquence.
In a cynical world, such inspiring moments may come along less than every decade. Deeply committed mothers and fathers, untrained in professional oratory, stand before the most powerful body in the hometown, place a microphone over their hearts and plaintively pour their pleading passions into a partisan meeting room jammed with supporters.
When the popular Lin Howe kindergarten teacher Vivian Chinelli, the 19th of 20 speakers, closed, anguishingly, by saying “We are begging for mercy,” the compact room at School District headquarters exploded into the loudest, longest ovation heard there in years.
And then the crowd topped itself when Culver City High School senior Carter Vanderbilt pitched the Board through first-person experience at Lin Howe.
A Magical Transformation
A month before graduating and heading for Bard College on New York on a full scholarship to major in physics, Mr. Vanderbilt said he would not be the student/person he is becoming without having begun under the tutelage of Lin Howe kindergarten teacher Joey Taylor a dozen years ago. Once again the enthusiastic crowd almost lowered the ceiling with its applause.
Tussling and arguing publicly, privately and heatedly are nearly an every-year ritual in Culver City even though the debates tend to be viewed by participants as unprecedented crises.
Despite errant indications from the School Board last night, kindergarten assignments for the 363 applicants to date will not be made at or before the next meeting on Tuesday, May 24, in Council Chambers.
Placing the Students
The decisions will not even be rendered by the School Board, unless in a peripheral manner, and not in the near future. Last year the assignments went out in July.
Supt. Patti Jaffe emphasized the volatility of the numbers. She said they reliably grow in late summer, sometimes restoring classes thought lost.
Given the liquidity of the transfer-policy situation at LAUSD under new Supt. John Deasy, Culver City’s kindergarten enrollment status is in even more flux than normal for this time of year.
In the past,100 prospective transferring kindergarten students from LAUSD has not been unusual. To date, there are 34.
Of the 363 applicants, many have declared a preference for one of the five schools.
Traditionally, El Marino Language Immersion School and Farragut School have been the most sought after. They hold lotteries to stock their kindergarten classes. One of the first actions is to “look at all the requests that have been put in by families for intra-district transfers,” Ms. Jaffe said. “They want their child in a specific school.”
In placing them, the only formula applied to the decision-making, said the Superintendent, is to count off 22 students per class. Until a year ago, the formula was 20 to 1, “and there was a huge penalty if you went over it. Some classes could go to 23 or 24 because kids move in during the year. Some move out. Some move in. We try to even it out.”
El Marino, at the moment, has 6 kindergarten classes, 4 in Spanish immersion, 2 in Japanese immersion. Farragut had 4 classes last year, presently is tentatively scheduled for 3, and that is as far from final as Christmas.
“This is a little early to make any final decision,” Ms. Jaffe said. “Last year we added a class on Sept. 15.
“The first thing people should know,” she said, “is that the Board has not cut anything.
“Second, (she and administrator Drew Sotelo) take a look at the numbers every week. We try to figure out the best way to do this.
“At this point, as Drew said last night, we have enough students for 17.8 classes. That could change. I am sure it will, but probably not as much as it has in the past because of fewer (LAUSD) permits.
“Maybe in June, we will have a better idea. Right now we have a lot of (transfer) appeals going with LAUSD.
“This happens every year.”
