Grading Time: Evaluating the 2009-2011 Culver City School Board Term

Karlo Silbiger

On December 8, 2009, Kathy Paspalis, Patricia Siever, and I were sworn in as new members of the Culver City School Board. We joined Steve Gourley and Scott Zeidman (who had both joined the board just 2 years earlier) as the first Culver City School Board in at least 25 years where all members were simultaneously in their first terms. In those same 25 years, that has never happened on our City Council. I was a bit nervous that the lack of experience, of long term memory, would hinder our ability to be as productive as we could be.

On Tuesday, we will once again start a new School Board term with the swearing in of two new members, Nancy Goldberg and Laura Chardiet. And for the second time in as many years, all members of the board will be simultaneously serving our first terms. Before we begin that transition, it may be instructive to look back over the 2009-2011 School Board term to identify both the successes and the lost opportunities that accompanied this relatively unique level of new energy, or inexperience, depending on your perspective.

Meeting Location
Success: The board gained a more transparent operation by moving 1 meeting per month to the City Hall Council Chambers, where the entire community could participate and meetings are broadcast live on TV and streaming on the internet

Lost Opportunity: Half of the meetings are still held at the highly inadequate District Board Room where overflow crowds cannot participate, see, or hear, and where broadcasts are done well after the fact. This is a shared lost opportunity with the city council who have not pushed hard enough to find a way to make their facilities available to their colleague elected officials.

Committees / Community Participation
Success: Two years ago, CCUSD had no functioning committees appointed by the board or Superintendent. We all know how important it is to systematically engage all stakeholders in the decision-making process, so it is significant that we have added an Environmental Sustainability Committee and a Measure EE Oversight Committee in addition to fixing the Community Budget Advisory Committee.

Lost Opportunity: Where to start! We have gone through 2 years of budgeting during the most difficult fiscal environment in California public education history with no budget committee or avenue for public input (the committee was just appointed last month). There are so many stakeholders searching for an avenue to fix issues (school lunches, the arts curriculum, the natatorium, and English Language Learning immediately come to mind), yet no committees have been appointed for that work. The Environmental Sustainability Committee has run up against a brick wall consistently during the past year as they have not received the support necessary to do their work well. And then there are those other capital improvement projects (which I won’t get into here).

Enrollment
Success: After years of expanding district enrollment (especially at the secondary level), we had reached a breaking point. Not only were our schools incredibly overcrowded, but we were relying on permit students from other neighboring districts for over 25% of our enrollment. As soon as LAUSD threatened and then attempted to take them back, we realized that this had to change. The board began the process of capping secondary school enrollment at 500 students per grade level, starting with last year’s 6th graders and continuing until the policy was in place through grade 12.

Lost Opportunity: While a middle school of 1500 is better than 1900 and a high school of 2000 is better than 2300, this ignores the more significant change needed. Research has consistently shown that small schools and small learning communities produce better retention rates and better academic results because students know the adults on campus and there are fewer cracks in which to fall through. 2000 is still a very large high school. Members of the board brought up 3 potential solutions to help fix this problem: move 6th grade back to the elementary schools and 9th grade back to the middle school to create a more balanced secondary division, create a series of K-8 schools while eliminating the middle school all together, and keeping the current configuration but with highly developed small learning communities to better connect students and the adults on campus who are supporting them. None were researched, none were discussed, and the large secondary schools remain intact.

Immersion
Success: The immersion programs at El Marino and La Ballona are among the most successful programs in our district. That definitely continues and while the board cannot really take credit for the work that has been done over the past 40 years, we have done everything we can to support it. The board has stood steadfast in continuing to allow almost 200 kindergarteners to begin instruction in Japanese or Spanish each year, even with repeated calls to reduce the size. We even passed a resolution finally stating our unanimous support for immersion and the benefits that it brings to our community.

Lost Opportunity: The immersion programs at the middle school and high school have never been good. There has been a struggle to find a way to continue building fluency in the target language while simultaneously teaching a curriculum that gets much more difficult and a schedule that now includes athletics, arts, and other electives. This board had an opportunity to fix this 40 year old problem by using the federal FLAP grant to build a curriculum that allows students to be taught content in a foreign language for 2-3 periods a year rather than the current one Spanish/Japanese elective. However, no changes were made and the problem persists. Actually, one change was made. Our students were losing so much of their language skills in middle school due to their lack of immersion caliber instruction that we had to add a new Spanish 1 class at the high school to allow them to start learning the language all over again.

Budget
Success: At a time where so many millions of dollars have been cut from our school district that I lose count, we have been able to maintain a relatively good quality education for our students. We have lost a few teachers, but kept the vast majority. We lost a few days of instruction the past 2 years, but have kept class size much lower than most of our neighbors. We have cut administrative and support staff, but have prioritized maintaining academic staff likes aides and librarians who work closest with our students. Have our budgets been perfect? Absolutely not and there’s a lot more that needs to be done to ensure that smart fiscal decisions are being made. However, given the circumstances, it could have been a lot worse.

Lost Opportunity: The board has spent nearly every month of the past 2 years fighting with our unions and cutting a variety of positions before finally coming to an agreement. While it is great that we have been able to bring back most of the cut positions, our poor relationship with both unions is causing unnecessary turmoil in the lives of all parties. Both sides own some of that responsibility, but it has to get better. We are all on the same team. While most positions were retained, some of the lost positions really hurt. The board approved a 25% cut in the size of our music program, far higher than any other academic department in the district. This is not due to a lack of student interest, but a poor understanding of the value of music to our students’ education.

So, I guess it’s not all good or all bad, but somewhere in the middle. A lot was accomplished, but so much more could be done. As we install a new board, I hope that the same level of energy will be present, but that a new level of organization will allow us to deal with bigger issues more quickly, involve the community at all levels, and find new ways to improve the education provided to the students of this city.

Karlo Silbiger is the Co-Editor of the Culver City Progress Blog, the Vice President of the Culver City School Board, and the President of the Culver City Democratic Club.