[Editor’s Note: The President of the School Board made the following statement at last night’s meeting.]
I imagine that being a statewide or countywide elected official is a challenging position. With so many constituents, how do you or your staff respond to all the requests for meetings?
State Sen. Curren Price has been excellent in this regard. When we were working on Measure EE, there was Sen. Price leading the charge. When we had questions regarding the budget, the Senator made arrangements to meet personally with me, Steven Gourley and then Supt. Coté. When we recently had comments about the Romero Bill and other school-related issues, Sen. Price came to the District office to meet with me, Drew Sotello and Supt. Jaffe.
While Sen. Price has been extremely accommodating, County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas has been anything but.
As you might recall, this Board denied Building Bridge International’s charter school petition. The denial was based in part on a 29-page opinion letter from the District’s legal counsel, identifying numerous areas wherein the petition did not satisfy the requirements necessary for a charter school petition. As expected, Building Bridges appealed our denial to the Los Angeles County Office of Education.
Last month, we received notice that Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas had sent a letter to the Los Angeles County Office of Education in support of Building Bridges’ appeal, and ostensibly opposed to our denial.
I was not contacted by Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas prior to his sending that letter. As far as I know, no Board member was contacted prior to the Supervisor’s letter in opposition to our denial.
Immediately upon receiving Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas’s letter opposed to our denial, I contacted Supt. Jaffe to find out if the supervisor had contacted her or her office. The answer was “No.”
Apparently, the supervisor failed to contact anyone from CCUSD prior to drafting his letter in opposition to our denial of the charter petition.
Upon learning this, I immediately telephoned Supervisor Mark Ridley- Thomas’s office. I was told that any request to meet with the supervisor or his staff had to be made via email. So, I emailed Supervisor Mark Ridley- Thomas, seeking a personal or telephonic meeting. Supt. Jaffe did the same. Time passed. Neither of us received any kind of response at all from Supervisor Ridley-Thomas or his staff.
One week later, I emailed Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas yet again, identifying this as my second attempt, and again seeking a personal or telephonic meeting. Again, time passed and still I received absolutely no response from the supervisor or his staff.
One week after my second request, and two weeks after my and Supt. Jaffe’s, original request, I emailed Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas for a third time. Yet again, I received no response to my email.
Thereafter, I telephoned again, explaining that perhaps the supervisor’s email must be down, as we had not received any response to our multiple emails.
After some discussion, I was able to set up a telephonic meeting with Nedra Jenkins, Chief of Staff for Supervisor Ridley-Thomas, and the supervisor’s Education Secretary, Alex Johnson for this past Friday.
The meeting was remarkable.
Jenkins and Johnson admitted that neither Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas nor anyone at his office had read the Building Bridges International Charter School petition, the very petition that Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas supported in his letter to the County. Jenkins and Johnson claimed that it “wasn’t necessary,” and they didn’t believe that “it would be helpful” to read the petition prior to writing a letter in support of that very petition, as writing such a letter was within the supervisor’s discretion.
While the supervisor met with representatives from Building Bridges on at least one occasion (Johnson was either confused or playing coy as he couldn’t remember when the meeting or meetings took place, or how many meetings there were), the supervisor did not think that it would be helpful or necessary to contact anyone from CCUSD to discuss the supervisor’s decision to write a letter in opposition to CCUSD’s denial of Building Bridges’ petition because writing such a letter was within the supervisor’s discretion.
While someone from Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas’s office allegedly read some or all of our legal counsel’s 29- page letter delineating the numerous reasons to deny the charter petition, apparently the supervisor did not believe that it would be helpful to meet or contact the authors of the 29-page opinion letter to discuss the reasons for denial, because, well, writing such a letter was within the supervisor’s discretion.
Jenkins and Johnson, Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas’s chief of staff and education secretary, respectively, could not understand our disillusionment. According to them, the letter wasn’t a really a strong letter, and that such a letter was within the supervisor’s discretion to write.
Obviously, Jenkins and Johnson missed the point. The issue isn’t whether Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas wrote a strong letter in opposition, or whether such a letter was within the supervisor’s discretion.
No one is, questioning the supervisor’s discretion or whether the letter was strong or otherwise.
Common courtesy dictates that if you are going to write a letter in opposition to a school district’s position, you ought to contact that district first and see if perhaps there might be more to it than you believe that you know.
Common sense dictates that the supervisor or someone on his staff would actually read the petition before writing a letter in support of such petition.
Clearly, at least in this instance, Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas was lacking in both common courtesy and common sense.
As a post script, despite the supervisor’s letter in opposition to our denial, the County denied Building Bridges’ appeal.
Mr. Zeidman may be contacted at scott.zeidman@laslots.com
