[img]1|left|Ari Noonan||no_popup[/img]Unlike the generals in World Wars I, II and III, no arcanic strategizing need go into Tuesday night’s 7 o’clock School Board meeting in the Board Room.

This is dried, cut and basted with pretty darned dry cement.

If the contract of popular Interim Super Patti Jaffe is to be amended to allow her to compete with the finalists for the Fulltime Super position, the votes will come from President Scott Zeidman, Immediate Past Prez Steve Gourley and Kathy Paspalis, whose vote was pivotal two weeks ago in placing the subject on tomorrow’s agenda.

Based on their statements following the last meeting, San Diego will have to freeze over to convince members Karlo Silbiger and Patricia Siever to convert from their firmly held convictions that to insert Ms. Jaffe at this hour is unfair to the previously determined finalists.

My question for them is uncomplicated: Why is it unfair? Their reasoning is extraordinarily baffling.

This Is a Terribly Easy Call

Both seemed to pin their criticism on a potential late-stage change in the rules. Fine, but: It is not as if the Board were throwing open the finalists’ pool to every Culver City resident with fewer than three eyes.

Is it fair to me that the freeway is crowded when I drive up a ramp?

This is the easy stuff.

If the Super field is widened by one person, kindly identify the element of unfairness.

Presumably, the finalists do not know who else is in their select pool?

Let’s say they do know.

What conceivable difference could that make?

Let’s say the candidates were told originally that Ms. Jaffe — who knows the territory better than all 20 or so applicants multiplied by 457 — was not allowed to compete for the vacant position because she took the Interim chair.

So what? Would they have interviewed differently if they had known she was a candidate? Of course not.

I am utterly baffled that either Ms. Siever or Mr. Silbiger thinks it would be unfair to enter the much-loved 40-year Culver City veteran in the sweepstakes.

Both have professed or indicated their regard for Ms. Jaffe.

Her, they know.

Comparatively, they don’t know the finalists from my aunts, dead or alive.

The only question to be decided tomorrow night by the five-person School Board is whether to the rules to allow Ms. Jaffe to be considered.

Since the actual hiring of Ms. Jaffe for the Fulltime gig prudently has not been agendized, it cannot be voted on until another time.

A 5 to 0 vote supporting a rules change is eminently sensible, rational and, yes, loudly fair.