[img]1192|left|Dr. Pam Magee||no_popup[/img]Unsurprisingly to many, Dr. Pam Magee, principal of Culver City High School is moving along — to a charter school in the Palisades — four months after an explosive triggering event seemed to abruptly change her career plans.
Once graduation is conducted tomorrow and other details are cleaned up, Dr. Magee will enter a substantially different phase of her professional life, as Director/Principal of Palisades Charter High School, formerly Pali Hi.
“She will have considerably more responsibilities and autonomy in her new job,” Culver City School Board President Scott Zeidman said this morning. For example, she will be in charge of budgeting, a duty allocated to the School Board in this district.
Although no one is saying so for the record, a widespread conviction is that what Magee supporters think of as the Silver Fiasco is the reason for the principal’s departure.
Following months of noisy off-stage confrontations with and warnings to extremely popular drama teacher Sheila Silver last winter, Dr. Magee fired her in early February, applicable at the end of the school year.
But it didn’t really take.
Professionally for Dr. Magee, an educator of stature and accomplishment, such a public reversal was strongly embarrassing and mortifying.
Directly after the pivotal showdown between Ms. Silver — who carried drama students to unprecedented heights in her two years on campus — and Dr. Magee, her backers swung into action.
A huge and loud public protest movement was organized by theatre students and their parents.
Their fury and their reasoning worked.
Weeks after the firing, the School Board, out of schedule sync, met with Ms. Silver and Teachers Union President David Mielke on a late Friday morning in the Board Room at School District headquarters.
Following a 45-minute huddle with the two of them, the teachers left the grounds unaware of a final accounting.
Only after they were gone did were Board members polled.
Steve Gourley, Kathy Paspalis and Karlo Silbiger voted to reinstate Ms. Silver.
Mr. Zeidman and Pat Siever dissented.
And then there were none. Ms. Silver has been reported on medical leave for months. But Mr. Zeidman said he knows of no reason that she will not return for the new school year.
