After what was described by a School Board member as a positive reaction initially to the transfer, the Board caved in to the seemingly overwhelming knee-jerk response of some parents. These families did not want the predominately black students of Ladera Heights transferred into this School District.
The School Board still is on record as opposed to the Ladera Heights transfer. I can understand the Board’s initial reluctance in voting in favor of the transfer late last October when it did not have all of the facts.
To continue to be opposed, by refusing to revisit the issue after most of the earlier concerns had been addressed by the County Education Committee’s Report in January, requires a different explanation.
Was the School Board’s original reason — lack of information — a ruse for an unspoken reason?
Distorted Logic
I guess the Board doesn’t want to revisit the transfer because it doesn’t want to have to make the following explanation:
During these tough financial times, it will pass on adding almost a billion dollars to the School District tax base ($975 million) and is against saving Culver City property owners more than $17 million in taxes.
Racism — Where It Lives
A lingering undercurrent of racism still runs through our community. This point of view is well represented on the School Board.
Racism is racism — whether the blatant, Southern-style, in-your-face intimidation practiced until the 1970s or the subtle, modern, more politically correct, type practiced today.
I don’t know which is worse to contend with:
The open-faced confrontational racism of the Southern governors George Wallace and Lester Maddox of the 1950s and ’60s when people spoke exactly what was on their minds or the passive racism now practiced to legal perfection. In the latter concept, one hides what one really thinks behind a facade of civility and political correctness.
We’ve Got Enough Now
The School Board seems to represent the view that as a community we already have a politically acceptable amount of blacks. That is, enough not to be seen as a racist community. The number of blacks we have serves that purpose — we don’t want or need more to prove we are no longer the racist community we once were.
Blacks vote in our elections but not in numbers large enough to be a factor. And so they are silently disenfranchised. All that would change with the addition of Ladera Heights. Not that all blacks would vote as a bloc. But as a political group they would have to be acknowledged.
Culver City never has elected a black City Council member. We have elected and reelected an African-American woman to the School Board, Saundra Davis.
In both elections, she received the largest number of votes. Yet look at the way she is mistreated by some fellow Board members. She is looked on with personal distrust. Her every move, it seems, is scrutinized.
Ms. Davis may not view it this way, but her personal struggle with Board members is not unlike the predicament of Ladera Heights.
Both want acceptance. Ms. Davis is demanding it. Ladera Heights is asking for it. Personally, Ms. Davis is being verbally beaten up, both publicly and behind closed doors. Politically, Ladera Heights is receiving the cold shoulder of political correctness.
Nowadays, political correctness has nothing to do with honesty and integrity.
The chances of receiving a good education in the Culver City School District far exceed chances in the Inglewood School District. This is a statistical fact. It used to be the other way around. Ladera Heights’ parents are asking for a better education for their children than they are receiving now.
Thanks but No Thanks
Let’s not continue to have the School Board insult our good neighbors in Ladera Heights by shunning them. Let’s not give them cause to reassess their spending habits and decide to take their business elsewhere.
If we don’t give their request a fair hearing, we will be saying to them, "We don’t want your kids. But we still want your business and the money it brings in to our city."
Doesn’t this sound like the same Inglewood School District attitude these parents are trying to escape? The community should not let stand the premature, uninformed decision made by the School Board in late October to be our final answer for the State Board of Education to consider.
If the transfer proposal is rejected, along with the millions in savings that will come with it, let’s do it after fair, open hearings. The School Board’s decision should be based on the known facts, not on the prejudices and inflamed opinions of a vocal few.
