By Jeannine Wisnosky Stehlin
Re “A Fundamental Disagreement” and “Questions About UPCC Petition”
After reading George Laase’s bombardment of blog posts about United Parents of Culver City, the facilities bond, voting, the intention of the Founding Fathers, and the power of the people, it’s a great time to re-state why United Parents of Culver City was founded and continues to thrive.
United Parents of Culver City (UPCC) was founded in May 2012 to bring parents from all Culver City schools together to promote an educational culture that places the interests of students before those of adults. Our impressive group of parents and community members works on issues that directly impact the students. UPCC’s No. 1 priority is, and always has been, to advocate for the students and to ensure and remind that all decisions in the Culver City Unified School District are made from this point of view.
We are 100 percent CCUSD parent-run and democratic. By banding parents together from all schools, we amplify our voices and maintain a consistent presence. We honor and support the differences and successes of each school while at the same time work together on common goals.
We’re very proud of our accomplishments. In just a little over a year, we have gathered an impressive membership who work on issues identified by them in our meetings. Our parent teams take the time to research the issues. If the members agree that issue needs attention and further action, we vote on the best way to accomplish the task. Our parent teams include UPCC Student Well-being Team, UPCC Educational Excellence Team, UPCC Traffic & Parking Team, UPCC Bargaining Team, and UPCC Secondary Parent Engagement Team.
Some of our issues are solved with one meeting with Supt. Dave LaRose. Others take more time. For example, our members identified that booster clubs at each school site were being charged different rates. When we brought this to the attention of the District, a new, fair policy was put in place. Some issues involve the entire community coming together. After the Sandy Hook tragedy, we organized and brought the District, the Culver City Police and community together in a Safety Forum. UPCC parents continue to work on longer term issues, such as anti-bullying, parking and safety at each school site, and education excellence.
Regarding the facilities bond, after careful research and involvement, our member representatives voted to support the bond and to help the District and community get out the vote to pass the bond in November. Parent representatives have attended each meeting at every school site during the process and were pleased to find out that over 67 percent of Culver City voters said in a scientifically conducted survey with a 95 percent accuracy rate that they would support a bond in the election.
However, we were disappointed when three School Board members thwarted the process. One Board member, Karlo Silbiger, read a statement that he wrote before he knew the results of the survey. Putting parent-power again into action, we formed a new team, the “Let the Voters Decide Bond Committee Team” to encourage the School Board to meet at a special meeting to rightly put the bond measure on November ballot. The team organized a petition that has, as of this writing (within one week), gained over 500 signatures of Culver City parents and community members urging the same thing.
Our petition and letter from our Bond Committee can be found on the UPCC website: http://www.UnitedParentsCulverCity.com.
Jeannine Wisnosky Stehlin, President, United Parents of Culver City, may be contacted at
President@UnitedParentsCulverCity.com
