Hundreds of angered Teachers Union members and their supporters marched in to the Auditorium to challenge the most unpopular Culver City politicians of recent years.
Routinely, Board members are being treated by adults and children these days as if they were the town villains, as if they had broken into homes.
A month after the School District and Teachers Union thought they had struck a deal for a small raise before teachers voted it down, the wounds are still tender. Anger in the community is running hot, like an overheated radiator.
And so, the bargaining teams from both sides will have to try again. Almost hopelessly behind, they are trying to craft a contract for last school year. No one knows when they ever will get around to doing a deal for this year.
Teachers Union President David Mielke would not predict whether the emotion that filled the Auditorium like a giant balloon would persuade the Board to grant raises to teachers. “But if they don’t,” he warned, “there will be a new Board the next time there is an election (in two years).”
Now the five School Board members know how George Custer and his barber felt after Little Big Horn.
A Time for Pickets and Protests
After weeks of marching with picket signs every morning on campus before the start of classes, the Teachers Union was facing its moment of confrontation with the School Board.
In an extraordinary demonstration of organized community spirit, perhaps four hundred enraged teachers, eloquent students and motivated parents excitedly filed into Frost Auditorium.
The scene in no way resembled a fair contest where some members of the audience would root for one side and some for the other.
All four hundred were implacably against the School Board. If there was even one Board sympathizer, he was disguised, crouched under a table.
The setting was classic: Board members took seriously the notion of maintaining their distance from the masses. Uniformly mute except for new President Saundra Davis, they sat stiffly in a semi-circle at the rear of the stage, elevated well above the crowd. The Board was positioned so far back on the stage that members practically could have played hop-scotch on the sidewalk on Elenda.
Anywhere but Here?
Board members looked as unhappy as a man crowning his ex-wife Miss America. They could have stayed home by the fireplace and achieved as much.
Perhaps understandably, all of them looked bored and distracted throughout the evening’s main event:
For two hours and ten minutes, forty-eight persons, imaginatively speaking from the heart, paraded to the microphone. They pleaded for what they called the logic of granting salary increases.
Students, undeniably, were the stars of the night. With elegance and elan, a dozen boys and girls probably could have convinced the waters to part with their unscripted oratory. If they had been in a bank, the manager might have unlocked the vault and handed them all they could carry.
Each adult and child who spoke appeared primed to verbally punch the School Board in the nose. They accented their side’s central talking point, that the Board has denied Teachers Union members a raise for the last four years running.
A surprising number of speakers sternly rebuked Board members for accepting healthcare benefits while refusing pay increases for teachers.
Many had warmed up for the outsized showdown by participating in a student-led concert and rally during the afternoon at Vets Park.
Communally speaking, the war between the Teachers Union and the Board has galloped into many Culver City neighborhoods. In these times when a citizen stands before the Board, civility is displaced by a vitriol that commonly peppers the rhetoric. Acerbity is almost as visible as the Southern California smog, and a warning probably should be issued to asthma-sufferers.
Any trace of good-natured dialogue blew away months ago.
Just How Successful?
A jubilant Mr. Mielke, the longtime president of the three hundred and sixty-member Teachers Union, pronounced the evening an artistic success. But that was the only part that his side could control.
But the euphoria of cheering for the underdog will dissipate if the meeting does not lead to a raise.
While awaiting the final score, Teachers Union backers will reflect on some of the evening’s finest lines.
A creative Middle School student earned an ovation after cracking, “Forget No Student Left Behind. How about No Teacher Left Behind?”
A Culver City High grad, now the mother of two students, said she appalled by the burgeoning incivility, which she blamed on the Board. “I am embarrassed for your embarrassment,” she said.
It came a little early, but the symbolic denouement for the evening was delivered by teacher Andrew Smith. After announcing he needed to hurry home to his pregnant wife in Long Beach, he declared his puzzlement. “I am a simple farm boy from Iowa,” said Mr. Smith. “I don’t understand this whole haggling process.”
