Two faces of the School Board at last night’s meeting, held once again in the emotional heat of the budget-slicing, probable-layoff season.
No. 1:
Let there be no question of who is in command of the five-member Board: The equally dashing and supremely confident President Steve Gourley and Vice President Scott Zeidman.
Together, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid will remind you of major motion picture stars from the 1950s and ‘60s. Smiling, fast-moving, hard charging, strongly outgoing, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, and creatively handsome, their appealing qualities are designed to engender support from the remaining players.
The divide is so firm, they would be in charge even if they weren’t in charge.
Sometimes. meetings feel as if show business is in the air.
Lawyers both, they live by the clock, not the calendar. Not next week. Next hour.
Their thinking is so remarkably co-ordinated and similar that if one were female, they could be married to each other.
When the President, known for his shards-of-glass style, was not in sight at the appointed hour last night at packed Lin Howe School, silkier, smoother Mr. Zeidman seamlessly swung to the microphone. He declared the meeting needed to start punctually, and that Mr. Gourley would appear shortly.
Precisely three minutes later, at 7:06, an aging frat boy — attired in a casual navy blue jacket, St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap at a rakish angle — materialized in the wide doorway. As if rehearsed — no, it wasn’t —Mr. Gourley slid behind the wheel of what felt like a Mercedes Benz that invisibly purred around a go-kart track. A front-row wit observed that either Mr. Gourley owns 15 to 20 white pullover sweaters or this one has been laundered 285 times.
When Mr. Gourley runs a School Board meeting, you, as a Board member, find out fast what it feels like to serve in a one-man army. Or you are shortly left in arrears, coughing dust clouds. If Napoleon had led his troops the way Mr. Gourley does, he might be king of France, Russia, Germany and Sacramento today. Mr. Gourley runs meetings as if he is double-parked, the parking cop is a half-block away and gaining steam.
Face No. 2:
The rest of the School Board, all elected last November, reading, from the left, Patricia Siever, Kathy Paspalis and Karlo Silbiger.
It is not exactly that they could send portraits in their places or mail in their votes. Nearly, though. There is no question about who the performers are on stage and who plays the role of the audience.
In recent years, the main function of school boards up and down the state, at every meeting from February to May when the state’s budget is finalized, has been to execute tentative teacher layoffs and trim their fiscal sails.
If the new Culver City members don’t conduct a hard-nosed hunt for severely missing backbone this month, they may still be pondering last night’s intended cuts next year. With 13 recommended cuts listed on a not terribly sensitive agenda, Board members — the newcomers, that is — wrinkled their noses and chorused in unison, “This is too tough.”
So saying, they pushed back from the table, a remote position from where they spent the balance of the meeting.
On one memorable vote, Ms. Paspalis mysteriously voted Decline to State, mindful of the former Sen. Obama’s numerous votes of Present when the subject in Congress became too hot. Pressed, she declined to explain.
The Board would have been in a pickle if the 3 to 1 to 1 vote on reducing the nurse budget instead had been 2 to 2. The unabashedly annoyed Mr. Gourley was incredulous. He looked at her so coldly she must have been tempted to reach for a parka. But she did not budge. Nor did he, calling for a clarification at the next meeting on Robert’s Rules of Order.
Preferring prevarication over prudence, the School Board hop-scotched around the agenda, ducking into a doorway whenever possible, to avoid the rain or a decision, deliberately delaying decisions instead of confronting and deciding.
At the end, the tote board resembled a cat that had just been turned inside out by a blind vet on a picnic tablecloth. Overwhelmed, members acted as if their chore had been to find the only13 grains of pepper in a barrel full of salt.
They showed little timorousness, however, in revamping the Adult School and Security Dept. lineups, but those moves consumed most of their courage supply.
They voted to retain both nursing trims on the list, along with an elementary library media clerk, teachers’ aides and a music teacher.
After repeatedly expressing sympathy for anyone losing a job or suffering a salary reduction because of the budget crisis, Board members soft-heartedly even voted to retain a clerk typist’s position at Culver City High School. The chair is vacant. Even invisible people, someone said, should not go unemployed.
