The School Board continuously bemoans the fact that the state and Federal governments drastically underfund education. Yet they are willing to take a pass on adding one billion dollars to the School District’s tax base and and an estimated $17.2 million in savings that it would bring to Culver City property owners.
We now have one hundred and forty-eight outgoing permits, that is, students who live in the School District but attend private schools or public schools in other districts. Legally, the District is obligated to take them back anytime they wish to return.
Our Own Little White Island
In the 1950s and 1960s, the School District was pretty much all white. By 1984, white enrollment had declined fifty percent, to forty-seven point fifty-five percent.
As of ’04, whites comprised only twenty-three point forty-eight percent, one-fourth of what it was in the 1960s. The School District still tries to minimize this effect by bringing in more outside transfers to fill the vacancies left by white flight.
In the current school year, the School District accepts one thousand, one hundred thirty-nine outside permits. That is a forty percent increase from just four years ago.
Seats for Sale
If this monumental shift in student population isn’t curtailed, Culver City property owners will find their tax dollars funding a School District that is teaching more outside transfers than resident students, a district in the business of leasing out its seats of learning to transfer students just for their Average Daily Attendance money.
We will be running a seemingly for-profit educational enterprise for the teaching out-of-district transfers. Shouldn’t we be searching for additional permanent students and the benefits they will bring — such as our neighbors in Ladera Heights — instead of accepting more and more out-of-district permits?
Lions, Tigers and Fears
At the last School Board meeting on Feb. 14, after listening to a call for revisiting the Ladera Heights transfer in a more informed manner, Board member Stew Bubar responded.
He voiced concern over the number of Ladera Heights students, beyond the three hundred and thirty-seven in the County Education Committee’s report, who might transfer in and overwhelm the District.
This was another example of how certain School Board members play on community’s fear, which such statements will cause. All that the School Board has to sell are doubt, uncertainty and fear in order to derail the transfer.
Average household income in Ladera Heights is almost twice that of Culver City. It is less likely that the well-to-do Ladera Heights parent would uproot a child’s education and school social life just to attend a Culver City public school.
Financially, it actually would be more likely for some of the School District’s own one hundred and forty-eight outgoing students to return and skew the District’s finances. Yet we do not hear any Board member express concern about this possibility.
Why? Because it is not likely to happen. Just as with the Ladera Heights transfer, it is not very likely to happen.
Oh, the possibility always exists. The chances vary greatly with each student and the family’s financial situation. But what are the real chances of having Ladera Heights’ privately schooled children returning, en masse, to public education? Probably less than the odds of the District’s own one hundred and forty-eight outgoing students returning.
The percentage of students who leave public education for private school and return is very small.
Does the School Board have a contingency plan in case the one hundred forty-eight students return, en masse, and devastate the District? Probably not. Then why is the School Board showing so much concern about Ladera Heights’ privately schooled students?
A Loss for Culver City
Culver City is categorized as a "District in decline," meaning it is losing student population.
If he Ladera Heights transfer is approved, it would bring in at least three hundred thirty-seven permanent students. Which is cheaper to process during registration, an interdistrict (incoming) permit or a continuing resident student?
Ladera Heights students would bring with them an added value o the District’s tax base of $975 million.
Ladera parents would have to pay on the District’s Measure T indebtedness, which parents of the eleven hundred thirty-nine out-of-district permit students do not do.
Simple calculation shows that Ladera Heights would save Culver City taxpayers about $17.2 million in taxes, eighteen percent of the Measure T indebtedness.
A Different Scenario
If the three hundred thirty-seven transfer students were coming from Beverly Hills, the School District probably would have already laid out the red carpet, through Century City, all the way down Motor Avenue. They would have hired a brass band to lead the parade. But they are coming from Ladera Heights. "There/their lies" the difference.
It is a sad commentary on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King that in my fifty-five years as a Culver City resident, the only thing my city seems to have learned is how to use new, more acceptable, politically correct rhetoric to sustain the antiquated order of past generations.
Laws may change, altering the way we interact publicly. But laws cannot change overnight the way we think and feel about each other. That will take many generations. We must remember change is a slow process. It only can be accomplished one relationship at a time.
Don’t Call Us — We Will Call You
Black voters comprise ten percent of the electorate. Most campaigns understand that a candidate — black, white or Hispanic — does not need to capture the black vote to win an election.
The addition of Ladera Heights would change this for School Board campaigns. The candidates would have to pay attention and actively court this emerging, growing part of our electorate. Apathetic residents would have to participate if they wanted to maintain the city’s longstanding power structure.
A Memorable Night
As I sat through a January School Board meeting late into the night, listening to the members Stew Bubar and Dana Russell belittle Saundra Davis’s honorary degree, I could not believe what I was seeing or hearing:
Their Mona Lisa-like smirks and the intonation of their voices.
By feigning ignorance, they thought they could question the credibility and the validity of her award, its significance and its worth.
Their tone suggested a sense of personal pettiness.
If this is what Ms. Davis’s fellow School Board members are capable of saying publicly, behind her back, one can only imagine what kind redneck rhetoric she has had to endure in closed sessions during her four-plus years on the Board.
The two men put both their feet into their mouths only to find that they didn’t have a leg to stand on.
Their uncouth rantings, in the guise of frugality, must have had to be removed from the School District’s tape. If the recorded evidence became public, there would have been a large community call for them to apologize.
The taped portion had to vanish to hold onto what public integrity the School Board and the District Superintendent have left.
A Class Act
Mr. Bubar and Dr. Russell should not have publicly questioned the honor for Ms. Davis. Discreetly, they could have questioned the source on the reasons for the award. They might have discovered, to their surprise, how classy she is and how much she does for all students on the Westside, particularly Culver City.
The audio cassette tapes used to record the public sessions of the School Board are not saved and archived for future public reference. What was forgotten by the person(s) who may have tampered with the tape was that the tapes used by the recording secretary to check her active meeting notes legally constitute a public record. By law, such tapes must remain intact for thirty days. Only then can they be erased or destroyed.
Tampering with or falsifying the public record is a serious offense against the community.
Will anyone turn out to be the School Board’s version of Rosemary Woods, the Nixon Administration secretary involved in a famous blank tape moment?
Will anyone take the blame for the tape gap and leave the reputations of the principal persons — still in need of public repair — unscathed?