School Board candidate Alan Elmont has been exploring options for making Board members more available to inquiries from the community during the school year, since interactive dialogue is not permitted at Board meetings.

A Fundamental Need for Change

The impediment, he said, is that neither side knows enough about what the other is thinking.

“We can engage in ongoing community forums, and we can have regular meetings at school sites around Culver City,” he said.

“We could have one or two Board members at these meetings, to engage, to force people into dialogues.”

Setting an Example

Mr. Elmont brings an expert’s perspective to the subject.

He and his wife Teri have attended virtually every School Board meeting since their college-age elder daughter was in kindergarten. That spans about 15 years. These days, even with the starting times moved up from 7:30 to 7, it still is midnight before Mr. Elmont gets home.

He says with pride that no one can outlast him. He is in his seat until the end. “I am invested in our schools,” Mr. Elmont says. “I will be there for the entire meeting as long as my (fifth-grade twins) are in school. It is just a question of which side of the podium I am going to be sitting on.

How to Learn

“I pay attention. I read the material. I am a quick study. I am a fast reader, and I usually catch something to comment on or to recommend at almost every Board meeting. I take advantage of the opportunity for public input. Over the years, it is not uncommon to hear various Board members say:

“ ‘I hate to agree with Mr. Elmont, but…’” He chuckled. “I don’t know why they say that,” he said. “Maybe because they didn’t think of it first.”

Like Coming Home? No

Even though only several regulars can be counted on at every meeting, Mr. Elmont said there is nothing intimate or disarmingly familiar about walking into the cozy meeting room.

He said he does not feel any more of a connection to the School Board members than to the City Council, whose meetings he does not attend.

Over the six years that the present five School Board members have governed together, Mr. Elmont said he has watched them become “a more cohesive and more effective group. In some areas, they have performed well.

Most Vulnerable Spot

“But they have failed to engage the public in dialogue and to provide adequate information to the public beyond the four walls of the School District headquarters.

“I get a sense from Board members they feel it is up to the public to come out and to engage them rather than the other way around. I don’t agree with that.

“A basic tenet in marketing,” said the management consultant, who also has a law degree, “is that bad news travels five times faster than good news. Unless you come to meetings on a consistent basis, you don’t get those five pieces of good news to balance the bad.

“It is the School District’s responsibility to outreach, aggressively, to find ways beyond agendizing and posting notice of issues from the ground up.

Sprucing up Another Area

“We need to engage our Administrative staff, that doesn’t have regular contact with our student groups, our parent groups as to the impact of their individual actions so they become sensitive to public awareness.

“This lack of communication is what leads large groups of people to walk into School Board meetings wagging their fingers. They don’t understand why certain decisions were made.”

From years of observation, Mr. Elmont has developed a list of priority interests that he hones in on.

Candidate’s Priorities

“The first thing I do is listen to is the professionals advising what is best educationally for the kids,” he said. “Second is the financial impact of Board or District decisions. When the Board adopts a program, I ask, ‘What is the source of income?’ and ‘Is it sustainable?’

“It has not happened so much recently. But the School Board has a history of adopting programs for which funding ends. So often it comes to no money being available and the programs get into trouble. Programs have to be adopted from an economically sustainable perspective. First, of course, programs have to be educationally good for the kids. That includes safety, and health and well-being.”

High Ratings

Like the other four candidates for the two Board seats Stew Bubar and Marla Wolkowitz are voluntarily giving up with the Nov. 6 election, Mr. Elmont is high on Culver City schools.

“We have great schools,” he said, slowly emphasizing each word. “We have great teachers. We have great programs.”

“But there is not good communication,” he said. “That is the problem.”

Mr. Elmont wants the community to gain at least an inkling of the storehouse of District knowledge and insights he has accumulated since the early ‘90s.
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