“All we want is a fair hearing, not the wave of malicious misinformation that was used to sabotage our efforts.”

            After this is over, Ladera Heights families may feel they have walked throw a snowstorm in their bathing suits.

            For months, they have been pelted not only with labels that are unflattering but worse.  A Los Angeles Times essayist, who is black, called the Ladera families racists.

She wrote that they were traitors for trying to abandon the Inglewood Unified School District, which for years has been regarded within the education community as broken down, bordering on unfixable.

 
The Preferred Choice

 

            Culturally diverse Culver City, by contrast, rates among the most attractive public school locations. It also is closer to Ladera Heights than Inglewood.

            “Prior to the hearings,” Ms. Cook said, “the Inglewood Unified superintendent sent an automated telephone message to all teachers and parents in the district. They were warned that schools would close and teachers would lose jobs if the transfer occurred.

            “Rowdy, overflow crowds showed up for the public hearings, which forced a cancellation.”

            Ms. Cook recalled that public hearings were scheduled for early last October, both in Inglewood and Culver City.

            “But in the interim,” she said, “the campaign of misinformation, emanating from the Inglewood District, continued. There were flyers, and newspaper articles that grossly exaggerated the number of students involved in the transfer. There were false warnings about school closures and lost teaching jobs.”

            Additionally, “dire fiscal and educational impacts” were predicted.

            Such false assertions, along with the insertion of hot-button, fear-driven words, such as “busing,” “gangs” and “security problems,” Ms. Cook said, have poisoned the environment against Ladera Heights.