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Here is a fragrant bouquet of April flowers for those critics of the School District who complain that personnel cuts too often are made from the bottom up rather than off the top.
At the height of budget-cutting season, the citizens committee advising the rejuvenated School Board has produced an imaginative recommendation concerning the District’s campus security staff:
Unload the expensive Security Director, the expensive Director’s expensive deputy and slash the office’s mysteriously bulging “operating expenses” account by about 40 percent.
However, the 12-person security staff would remain intact — the workers are crucial, the boss isn’t, it was decided.
This is a whopper of a development.
Funny, in an ironic way, how the mood of some people has dramatically changed in the several months since this round of Sacramento-triggered budget cuts began.
In the opening sparring, the security staff was stamped sacrosanct, by family fiat.
Taking a Second Look
Eliminate teachers, eliminate administrators, axe certain programs if you must. But, parents said in a united voice, the security staff should not be disturbed, whatever the price, because safety of the children trumps every consideration.
Until members of the Community Budget Advisory Committee scooted their chairs nearer to the screen for a closer look at the Security Director’s day-to-day movements.
This citizens group has concluded that if he were sent on an enforced permanent vacation, it would not make a drop of difference to the state of security on any campus in the District, including Culver City High School.
Marking a Change
This is the reverse of the tune that instinctively was hummed by resistant parents in the beginning.
What kind of organization is it where the top dog can be vanquished, without anyone noticing, without affecting the efficacy of this crucial group?
Who did the Security Director know to land a job that pays him $119,590 — more, I believe, than any of the 300-plus teachers in the District and more than some administrators? His job seems to be the Culver City corollary of the County Board of Supervisors, where old pols go to die and, perhaps, enrich themselves.
Remember why the Security Director’s immediate predecessor was canned? As I recall, he was discovered out in San Bernardino in the middle of the work day.
Whose Job Is It?
You would think after that misadventure someone in the District office surely would have trained a tighter eye on the security office so they would not be embarrassed two times in a row.
It is said of the Security Director’s deputy, called a secretary or dispatcher, that when elementary schools have called for security, on occasion she has turned them down. Her draw is $50,560 a year.
The Security Dept.’s $82,000 “operating expenses” budget, which puzzled members of the citizens committee, already has been shrunk. Asst. Supt. David El Fattal found a way to reduce it to a more palatable $47,000. The citizens group recommendation to reduce the summertime security staff from nine officers to four has been approved by the Board. If the Board agrees, at its May 13 meeting, to eliminate the Security Director and his aide, the grand savings will be just under $224,000.
The Security Director still is working, but perhaps he should not send his laundry out.
Making a Difference
Were this the old School Board, the Director well might be safe, because that was the reputation and attitude of the Board.
But these are changed times.
Steve Gourley and Scott Zeidman, the two new Board members, have re-introduced a long-missing sense of energy, a practical optimism and renewed determination to the formerly sagging Board.
Just like installing a new battery in your car, they have put a fresh charge in the District.
Whether by accident or otherwise, the voters’ choice of replacements on the Board last November is turning out to be more inspired with each meeting. Mr. Zeidman and Mr. Gourley are very different personalities with similar objectives, a successful formula for marriages and school boards.
