Why Not Stand on a Street Corner?

The impulsive — and in this case misguided — School Board would have advanced the community good by a far simpler act. Open the telephone directory and hand out the same fat-cat bonuses to the first 52 pharmacists whose surname begins with the letter “K.” These 52 random souls merit the mana from School Bored (yes) heaven as much as the 52 District employees. The truly galling dimension of this drunken giveaway is that the raises are retroactive to last September. Why? None of your business, is the Board attitude. This is on an ethical par with me increasing alimony payments to one of my former wives to, say, 10 years before we were married because, well, shucks, she is such a darned nice girl. Both Ms. Davis and Dr. Russell would have gone along with the three-member majority if only the raises — up to 43.8 percent — had not been retroactive. Where did that concept come from? An obsession with awarding pay increases retroactively — just because it can, not because it needs a reason — is the latest example of the moral confusion with which the School Board sometimes operates. Where does it say that a raise must be backdated? Maybe the Board shovels out raises to those persons to whom members are physically closest for the same reason I used to buy clothes for a onetime wife on the same outing where I was shopping for myself.

A Drunk Walked Into a Bar…

With increasing frequency, when the School Board sits down and starts doling out money as if it were not theirs — it isn’t — members are seized by a desire of epidemic proportions. They keep trying to loot the District treasury and give away all of the money. They act like a friendless drunk in a bar late in the night. Buying drinks for the gang, he reasons, will acquire new lasting pals for him. The Board thinks the same way. Sensitive to the drumbeat of criticism from the Teachers Union for the past five years, Board members reason that they can buy personal respectability by enriching certain staffers at the expense of members of the Teachers Union. In normal times, I would be the last defender of union members anywhere. This, however, is a worthy exception.

We Have It, Let’s Spend It

Where, you may wonder, did the School Board, overseers of a School District chronically strapped for dollars, find the money to throw a second retroactive raise of the school year at its friends? Several months ago, it came from a District refinancing project that the School Board negotiated. What followed the receipt of that little bundle from heaven is instructive with regard to the way that members of the School Board rationalize. The Board’s relations with the Teachers Union are in tatters. The validity of the School Board’s image in this scenario can be debated. If the Board felt compelled to pass along the money, it had two options — offer raises to the teachers or offer raises to the District team. One choice was marked Good for Public Relations. The other was labeled Bad for Public Relations. The Board paused before rendering a decision.

Let’s Look in the Suggestion Box

By email, by Pony Express and by even snailer mail, we are told that suggestions came pouring in. From west Culver City came the notion of buying 750 string bikinis for working poor Eskimo girls weighing at least 180 pounds. A gentleman named O’Brien urged the Board to invest in giant-sized bargain boxes of bullets to distribute to underprivileged Hispanic youths recruited by the sinless leaders of the anti-white humanitarian organization MECha. As you can see, even the community is starting to think the way the School Board does. Stroking their chins and glancing to the perpetually azure skies over Culver City to gain inspiration, the members of the School Board voted this week to drive by the teachers and place the gold on the doorsteps of the District team….

Ironic Postscript

Around the Police Station, they were chuckling over taut and tart remarks by the retired Police Chief Ted Cooke on Wednesday afternoon. The chief cracked that sometimes he would drop in at Dear John’s, a house of serious libation, in order to make out the department budget. “Good thing the Chief wasn’t at Dear John’s on Tuesday night when they were robbed,” one of his former officers laughed. “We might have an even bigger budget deficit than we do now.”