Here Comes the Bride
The Super is better taken care of by this Board than a new bride. Secretively, they have enrichd her so much it makes a guy suspicious. Clearly, the Board members are drinking from the same bottle of Medicine Man elixir as the arrogant, power-drunk Mayor Wrong of Los Angeles. They believe they can do anything they want, including tripping over each other’s shoestrings to shower a proposed 25 percent raise on the Super one minute before her “retirement.” Can they be forced to pull it back? As you will hear at Tuesday night’s School Board meeting — at the Lin Howe School — fifteen other members of the School District’s management team also are in line to receive raises, up to a staggering 43.8 percent. Every degree of heat the Board takes at the meeting will be deserved. The cloudy-thinking majority of the School Board obviously felt one more irresistible temptation to demonstrate to the community that it is irretrievably tone deaf. With the members of the Teachers Union ending their second consecutive year without a contract, the School Board, by this singularly abrasive act, has thrown dirt into the already angry faces of the Union. This suggests that Board members possess the dimmest comprehension of class, of communal responsibility, of mature judgment, of public relations. What could the School Board have been thinking? Couldn’t they have waited until the body was cold? Do you yuck it up with the bereaved widow at a funeral, jocularly slapping her on the back? Has anyone in the room seen taste? Or did it slink out the door? Grace and dignity died of boredom. Couldn’t the School Board have shown the slightest sensitivity by deferring the raises — the second of the year — until the Teachers Union gains a new contract?
One Member’s Sagacious Advice
Too bad there aren’t replacements waiting just off-stage for some members of the noble School Board. The community is not interested. In the last two elections, when all five members ran for second terms, only two challengers have walked in from the neighborhoods, the brave Roger Maxwell and Brian Block. Both lost, but barely. Some members of the School Board are very impressed by their own muscles. Member Dana Russell, the Board’s Vice President in Charge of Scolding Pesky Critics, rebuked reporter Martha Tucker of the Culver City Observer yesterday in a letter to the editor. Picking what he deemed a winnable fight, he directed Ms. Tucker to write “constructive” stories. I was pleased to see that he had taken a well-deserved break from his criticism of Board President Saundra Davis although he closed his eyes and tucked in an anonymous jab against her.
Not One Truck in Sight
You may recall that in her retirement announcement, there was an awkwardly long pause when people started to total up the Super’s achievements over, lo, these many years. Each person looked toward another. No one could think of anything. In the Super’s defense, historic figures only come along sporadically. Not everyone who retires can be credited with founding a country, saving a life, coining a memorable phrase. I see no need to spray a whole garden hose of praise all over the Super just because she is quitting. People quit jobs every day. I may have the positions juxtaposed, but my office is in the shadow of the Super’s, only several hundred yards away. Longingly, I peer out my window. Yet I have not seen any trucks backing up to unload a fresh supply of midnight oil. Never have I heard anyone accuse the Super of overworking. Psychologists who study short-term administrators say there is no chance a new work habit will be born during the last months of pre-retirement employment. In the rawest language, this period is known as a freebie.
With the greatest curiosity, we reported last month that the Super (discreetly, of course) disclosed her retirement plans literally minutes after being granted a disputed amount of bonus money she had sought. I said at the time, why should she retire when the seemingly obsequious School Board dutifully dumps off a bushel of bucks at her doorstep every morning? Not only would I not retire, on the day of my funeral, I would order the ambulance driver to stop by my office and scoop up one last bundle of bulging bucks before going underground.