Patti Jaffe is halfway home toward her objective of becoming the next Fulltime Superintendent of the School District.
What she achieved at last night’s emotionally electric School Board meeting was, however, the easier 50 percent.
The hard-rocks part of the proposition is landing the job, which the buzzingly popular Ms. Jaffe will if last night’s Board coalition — Scott Zeidman, Steve Gourley, Kathy Paspalis — holds together one more time.
Rockin’ and cruisin’ on a sea of communal support so strong it might have reversed the direction of the tides, the drive to gain the Super job for Ms. Jaffe scored a 3 to 1 to 1 victory. Karlo Silbiger voted a flat, firm no while Prof. Patricia Siever demurred by way of abstention.
Here is another perspective on the much-anticipated opening hurdle:
The three attorneys on the School Board nodded yes, while both academics resisted.
This was a night to semi-remember with the jumbo evening on deck.
Filled to Overflow
Normally 50 chairs are placed in the compact rectangular Board Room, with the decision-makers seated at a semi-circular desk in front.
Last night, they squeezed in 80, and unfolded an overflow section in the hallway.
With a vast and voluble collaboration of teachers, parents, students, ex-students and plain community members providing a hefty wind at their backs, the emboldened Board easily overcame a spate of internal objections to eliminate a pesky clause from the Interim Super’s contract that held she was ineligible to apply for the permanent position.
For weeks, if not longer, Board President Mr. Zeidman and his predecessor Mr. Gourley have been cheerfully, enthusiastically and kind of casually driving a campaign to assemble popular support for disposing of the debated clause that did not previously enjoy much sunlight.
Since their elected arrival on Irving Place, not a single schools’ watcher has doubted that Mr. Gourley and Mr. Zeidman are the faces of the Board, are the engines of the Board, are the public relations consciences of the Board, are the fuel that make the motor purr like a contented baby kitten supping from a can of Carnation milk.
However, when their laser-focused but subtle drive became airborne last month, they still needed one more ally to dispose of the contentious clause. Ms. Paspalis, to the heaving relief of more people than anyone may realize, became the crucial third vote for the second meeting in a row on this delicate subject.
Eighteen persons — 17 smilingly advocating for Ms. Jaffe — spoke out with technicolor recollections that would have made MGM’s lion blush. The only objections were filed by community activist George Laase and Classified Employees’ leader Debbie Hamme, who sent a letter read by Prof. Siever.
It seems that Ms. Jaffe has spent her entire 40-year career in Culver City, attracting only heartfelt friends from every decade available in the community.
There was a moment to remember: A cancer-battling teacher, Liz Mejia of El Marino Language Immersion School, recalled, movingly, that Ms. Jaffe saved her life, which, naturally, ignited the ovation of the night.
The puffing and huffing straight uphill portion is under way now.
The labored breathing will continue to crawl around the minds of the five School Board members until their next meeting, likely in Council Chambers, on Tuesday, Feb. 22, which schoolchildren of a certain age used to celebrate as Washington’s birthday — George’s, not Denzel’s.
