[img]1994|right|Jeannine Wisnosky Stehlin||no_popup[/img]A certain golden glow wreathed Jeannine Wisnosky Stehlin when she lightly glided through the heavy doors of City Hall last evening to celebrate a most unlikely achievement by the parents union she helped co-found:
In a scant year and a half, United Parents of Culver City scaled a rock-strewn path to the top of a supposedly insurmountable mountain.
Their intact slate of School Board candidates, like cream, rose to the top.
A mere 18 months after being birthed in a modest but energy-suffused after-dark party in a vacant backyard – where enthusiasm almost trumped organization, UPCC managed to get all three of its endorsed candidates elected to the School Board the first time it turned on an electoral buzzsaw.
Ms. Wisnosky Stehlin is the president, who looks and acts the part, fittingly for someone whose entire professional life has been invested in the theatre.
Stopping by Council Chambers for the reorganizing School Board meeting to hail UPCC’s endorsees – Sue Robins, Kathy Paspalis and Dr. Steve Levin – en route, ultimately, to a UPCC Victory Party at nearby Rush Street, Ms. Wisnosky Stehlin talked about the breathtaking accomplishment.
Could she have foreseen this amazing outcome in a compressed amount of time, when the UPCC presumably still was in its infancy?
“When we came together the first time in the backyard, I had high hopes,” she said. “We had a fantastic turnout that night in May last year, and we had done quite a bit of organizing to get to that point.
“I had a great feeling we were going to do some wonderful things together.”
Is there a defining reason that Dr. Levin, Ms. Paspalis and Ms. Robins comfortably lunged over the finish line 1-2-3, ahead of a bulky field of seven?
“I believe voters recognized that Sue, Steve and Kathy were clearly the best of the field,” she said.
But there was a deeper reason, Ms. Wisnosky Stehlin said.
While parents always have played a role in School Board elections, usually amorphous and out there on the perimeter, this time they truly had impact for a different reason:
The moms and dads were organized. Instead of sallying desultorily out into the community, well meaning but in a helter-skelter fashion, parent leaders were designated at every school.
“Here are a few,” Ms. Wisnosky Stehlin said. “But there are so many more parents who put in a lot of meaningful time and positive energy to help get out the parent vote and support the three UPCC endorsed candidates.”
UPCC’s parent list, by schools:
Culver City High School, Jamie Wallace and Alan Elmont.
Middle School, Dan O'Brien and Jeannine Wisnosky Stehlin.
Culver Park, Maren Neufeld.
El Marino, Brian Tjomsland, Anne Burke, Ms. Neufeld, Jef Bontrager.
El Rincon, Steve Zee.
Lin Howe, Paul Walsleben, Laura Jane Kessner, Casey Chabola.
Farragut, Scott Malsin, Lillian Morris, KC Mancebo.
La Ballona, Scott Kecken.
As well as: Anne Malsin, Eugenie Lago, Mark Trapnell, Andie Rice, Michael Marrujo, Lisa Levin, Heather Moses, Andrea
Schrainen and Joy Kecken.
Later over at Rush Street, UPCC members and their supporters partied loudly and happily into the far reaches of the evening, honoring a quintessential, sui generis moment most people thought, wrongly, was beyond their grasp.
No one is planning an encore. Yet.
