While most of the small crowd at retiring Supt. Patti Jaffe’s final School Board meeting last evening was in a sentimental mood, the sobering fiscal realities were not.
Alan Elmont and George Laase monitor School District finances as closely as anyone inside the building. Both chided the Board and the District over deficit spending the last three years at the rate if $5 million annually.
Not sustainable, said Mr. Elmont.
“In the past four years,” said Mr. Laase, “I have seen the District spend more on its employees, giving them a bigger piece of an ever-shrinking budgetary pie.”
He suggested that instead of following a roadmap, the District lurches from crisis to crisis without a comprehensive spending or saving strategy,
What irritated Mr. Laase most was that the budget for the new fiscal year, like recent ones, is map-less, devoid of a comprehensive monetary scheme.
When he asked, “Can anyone explain to me what the long-term fiscal strategy is,” he swiftly tacked on, “That is not a rhetorical question.”
In the absence of a stampede to respond, Ajay Mohindra, interim replacement for the resigned principal business officer, said that, for funding purposes, the District is at the mercy of the state Legislature. It is impossible, he said, to predict the size of the stream from Sacramento.
With no competition for speaking next, Board member Prof. Pat Siever stepped in to boast of accomplishments.
“We are more stable than most districts in the state,” she said. No one has been fired, “we have kept class sizes pretty small,” and furlough days will be non-existent next year.”
In defending the Board’s lack of a roadmap in recessionary times, Ms. Siever added: “At times when you are in rocky water, you are holding onto the ship, but at the same time you see where you are going.”
She did not identify the destination.
Mr. Laase wore a skeptical expression. What he had just heard, he said, were outcomes not strategies.
Patti Cake
Otherwise, it was Patti Jaffe Time, and the Super, who is in her final 48 hours before retirement, broke down several times, when she and others were speaking.
Asst. Supt. Eileen Carroll, who also was tearful, will serve as Interim Super at least for the month of July. Ms. Jaffe’s successor has been rescheduled to start Aug. 1 instead of next Monday, the previous plan.
Besides commendations from City Hall, state Assemblyperson Holly J. Mitchell (D-Culver City), former Board President Scott Zeidman and the Culver City Educational Foundation, the two most noted tributes were from Board members Laura Chardiet and Ms. Siever.
Ms. Chardiet, a once (and future?) entertainer, reprised her smashing Scarlet O’Hara role from last April’s PTA Council extravaganza.
The line of the night came from Ms. Siever.
Joking with the Super about how both are known for reliably dressing in black, the West Los Angeles College professor demurred on wishing Ms. Jaffe a happy ride into retirement.
“I hope that you are miserable so you will want to come back,” Ms. Siever said, and they both laughed.
