Yesterday afternoon’s school-driven rally at Vets Park to encourage Culver City support for Prop. 38 would have been fertile ground for a debuting magician. He could have bragged he made an audience disappear.
Don’t be impressed.
Despite days of drum-beating for the scripted rally by fervent school-oriented backers of 38, the whole audience forgot to report. Vanished. No trace.
The only humans who turned out were two journalists and a modest fleet of videoing persons alongside three pigeons, two sparrows and – altogether now – a partridge in a tree that sprouts pears, in pairs.
Not a single potential, persuadable voter found Vets Park with his newly upgraded GPS.
Does this suggest a majority already have reached their immutable decisions?
Or that lethargy is making a spirited – you will forgive the exaggerated irony – comeback?
School Board members Laura Chardiet and Nancy Goldberg, United Parents of Culver City leaders Steve Levin, Scott Kecken and Scott McVarish, and PTA maven Jody Reichel pleaded to the cameras for voters to respond to the latest Save Our Schools campaign.
Ms. Reichel suggested that voters harboring doubts about the superiority of 30 and 30 say yes to both, since the winner will be the prop that, strangely enough, collects more voters.
Nearly half of the 20 backers who stood before the cameras were students, including Martin Beer and Roy Gonzalez. They gave passionate pro-38 talks that are reprinted in full below.
Hometown backers of 38 are trying to stir at least a modest pool of interest if not passion for their proposition because it would send its tax-collected revenues directly to each of the state’s school districts. Written to bypass the feared Legislature in Sacramento, author Molly Munger said that provision was key because she did not want state officials to skim badly needed school funds for themselves.
However, Prop. 38 backers find themselves standing somewhat isolated inside of a political pickle.
Summoning the massive union, financial and pressurized power that is beholden to him, Gov. Brown has been trying to destroy 38, overtly and covertly, for six months.
He is shilling daily around the state for his rival school-funding measure, Prop. 30, which he connived to place at the top of a lengthy list of propositions. By quietly planned happenstance, Mr. Brown’s underlings plunged Ms. Munger’s 38to the basement of the ballot so it will be overlooked.
Mr. Brown did manage to co-opt one rival, educators behind a third school-funding scheme. They swooned and collapsed last spring when he wooed them. Ms. Munger, however, told him to get lost. The governor’s punishment of Ms. Munger turned her into a considerable underdog.
Students Speak Out
Roy Gonzalez
I am a junior attending Culver City High School. I am participating in a program called Youth & Government, hosted by California’s YMCA.
Last year I was a Legislative Analyst, and out of the love of that program, I decided to campaign for statewide Legislative Analyst this year.
I believe I have grasped an understanding of how much a fiscal impact is important to the changes in California. I learned to analyze how the many expenditures or statewide income, contributes to our state.
Prop. 38 is fantastic. It will raise over $10 billion a year for public pre-K through 12 education through a sliding scale state income tax. The funds would go directly to our public schools, where decisions on how to spend them will be made at the local level. Revenue and education – that sounds amazing to me. As a student, I grew up knowing an important fact that many students have disregarded today. I learned the importance of my education. I have surrounded myself with students who value their education as well. Through my years in K-12, I have valued the importance of my teachers.
My teachers hold values that I have kept throughout the years that I have grown into the man I am, and the man I want to be in the future. I have been blessed to have such influential models that I have looked up to. With your “Yes” on Prop. 38, many others, like me, will have those same models. Don’t let that “No” on the ballot keep you from changing a student’s life. Allow me to leave you with a couple stories. Lena Kettering, a student our high school, very dear to many of us Culver City kids, is a unique character. True to her morals and grateful for the opportunities, she takes pride in her school. She constantly finds contentment in challenging herself by taking rigorous classes and excelling in them.
As a junior last year, she decided to join AP Biology, one of the most challenging AP science courses our school has to offer. Excited for her first day in the class, she walks in the door figuring out that the class was crowded. Flooded with students, with the same passion as Lena, Lena had to resort to sitting on the floor. Due to the inconvenience of the overwhelming size, she decided to drop the class.
Or consider one of our most amazing teachers, Mr. Owens. Everyone wanted to take his amazing AP U.S. History class. Last year the demand was so great that he resorted to teaching five periods of the AP class. Stressed out by the amount of work, he cut back his beloved class this year to only three periods; even with the same large roster like the one he had last year. Overall, this outcome shouldn’t happen in any school. Students shouldn’t be jammed into a room like chickens in a cage; they should be content with their class sizes and have actual room for themselves.
Teachers shouldn’t feel stressed; they should be ecstatic to teach students. Students with the love of education, like Lena, shouldn’t resort to dumbing themselves down just because of a class size.
Getting dropped from a fun class because of the lack of classes due to the stress of the teachers shouldn’t happen as well. Prop. 38 is the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s the hand that will take students out of the muck and mire and guide them to success. It’s the creator of future bright students who will take charge of the world after us. If Prop. 38 passes, so will the students of today and the students of tomorrow.
[img]1579|left|Mr. Martin Beer||no_popup[/img]Martin Beer
I am Associate Student Body president at the wonderful Culver City High School, as well as president of the beloved Culver-Palms Family YMCA Youth & Government Delegation.
When I was a child, they told me there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. When they deemed me ready, they told me a rainbow is but a refraction of light. Therefore, it has no visible end.
When I was a child, they told me to reach for the stars. When they deemed me ready, they told me it is astronomically impossible.
When I was a child they told me I was the future and that I mattered.
Will Nov. 6 be the day they deem me ready to learn that that was also a lie.
That their wallet would not support that.
That there is a better way to spend our money than the education of our youth. I don't think so!
I never came from a school district that had money to spend. I would like to say I turned out all right. I just wish I could say the same for the other 40 students who sit in a classroom with me, making do with the 15-year-old textbooks we have on our desks.
If I wanted to, I could stand up here and make high school sound like the biggest nightmare in the world. The truth is, I had my fun. I have learned what I came to high school to learn.
I have watched my friends prosper and get ready to go to Ivy League schools.
But for every student I’ve seen strive, I’ve seen at least 10 go down the other path. A child is like clay. If you want it to be solid and useful in the future, you need to mold it correctly while it is still fresh.
It was once said that culture only progresses if each generation outshines the former. Far from inspiring, this quote simply makes me fear for my future grandchildren and their children.
Far gone is the luxury of believing in the safety of your future and far gone are the days where we can be frivolous with our money.
The education of our youth is priceless. But far too often have we confused priceless with worthless.
Yes, money will have to be spent, but no, never will there be a day where it was not worth your while.
Because never should there be a day where your child has to drink water from a fountain that leaks iron.
Never should there be a day where your child doesn't succeed for lack of attention.
Never should there be a day where your child isn't given the proper tools to prosper.
Sadly those days have befallen us.
We can’t go back in time to change it, but we can all make a vow, a vow that never will there be a day where we do nothing about it.
Never will there be a day where we do not fight for the future of our children, the future of our nation, the future of our world.
Never will there be a day where we do not honor our vow that in this country, no child will be left behind.
So vote “Yes” on Prop. 38.
