[img]9|left||remove link|no_popup[/img]Methinks the two new School Board members to be elected on Tuesday night will be stunned when they confront one of their campaign promises, reducing the number of permit students.
Freighted with personal complexities, fiscal and political considerations, permits is a large, stubborn, virtually unbudgeable bureaucratic reality of life in Culver City. It is Culver City’s Berlin Wall.
Our version of the Wall probably will be torn down some day, but not necessarily in this generation.
It Will Not Go Away
For obvious reasons, I predict this morning that the two new members who take office next month will run on the same issue four years from now.
I will be surprised if they are able to do more than make the slightest crease in the problem.
Candidate Alan Elmont, one of the stalwarts on the subject of permits, says the present number is unsustainable but must be addressed.
The Pace Is Crucial
To suddenly slash a large proportion of permits — which isn’t going to happen unless Iran invades New York City — would send shivering waves of “toxic shock” throughout the District, says Mr. Elmont.
Can’t ignore them, though.
“We need to look at permits as if they were a drug,” he says, “and gradually start a weening process.”
It is tough, no, impossible, to get any candidate in any race to truncate his view on a controversial subject into one sentence.
I think, though, I managed with Mr. Elmont. You will pardon me for a few minutes until I recover my breath.
A Formula That May Work
When I asked what number or percentage of permits he would seek to eliminate, he said the dilemma was too complicated to boil into a single figure.
Mr. Elmont said his starting point would be, and has been, to determine the optimal number of students for each school, and to check that against the enrollment.
I say “has been” because he reminds voters he has been trying, unsuccessfully, to obtain the “optimal number of students” data from the School District for several years.
One Fifth of a Problem
Greatly reducing the number of permit students — who represent 19 percent of the School District’s enrollment — is much more desirable than do-able.
Frankly, I do not believe either half of the popular equation — flushing out the permit students while encouraging Culver City students enrolled elsewhere in public and private schools to return home — is achievable.
Permits Ingrained in the Culture
Just the mention of permits has been a sexy subject for the past month at community forums because the granting of passes to out-of-towners looks and feels like an ogre of a problem.
Isn’t it fascinating that at the height of American society’s cultural diversity movement, Culver City chooses coziness, insularity, some would say isolationism?
There are more, and richer, arguments against mass permits than in support.
Fueled by Money
But boys and girls, the world runs by dollars. As long as Sacramento sends about $6,000 a year in Average Daily Attendance funding for every single student, the permit culture ain’t gonna change.
As they say in the Army, replacements unavailable.
If every permit student left town permanently this afternoon, there is no reason to believe any Culver City prodigal sons and daughters attending public schools elsewhere would suddenly decide to come home. The number is small anyway.
One Man May Know
Except for the candidate Roger Maxwell, who boasts of his research skills, I know of no one else who has any idea how many Culver City families have enrolled their children in private schools. They are definitely not coming home.
Factor in the biggest bugaboo of all, the much disputed concept of declining enrollment, and anyone trying to seriously reduce permits will be faced with a messy, messy pie — all over his face.
