CWC parent caught vandalizing neighborhood with his children in the car (short version)

Yesterday, we saw one of the saddest episodes in this adventure in charter school co-location. A CWC parent was seen and documented by residents driving around the neighborhood with his children in the car while he stole, destroyed and trashed lawn signs from multiple neighbors yards.

Lawn signs in the CWC parent's car

    The man was genteel enough to give me his name and his phone number, which, as a good citizen, I promptly reported to the proper authorities.

    A longer (very, very long, director's cut) version of this story will be released in a bit.

 

Missing signs were found in near by trash cans.

[Flashback] CWC teacher marchs students over Stoner kids belongs

This is one top disturbing incidents with this co-location, probably just behind the segregated rock concert and the Stoner students bullied in the bathroom by CWC students.

     A CWC teacher took their class out to the playground during a time designated for the Stoner students.  When the Stoner teacher requested that the CWC class yield the playground, instead of leave the playground in an orderly and civil fashion, the CWC teacher marched their student straight through the group of waiting Stoner students, and trampled over the Stoner students' backpacks and sweaters in the process.

    I cannot believe that there would be so little space on the ample Stoner ES playground that the only path off the playground was straight through the Stoner students and over their belongings. Was it necessary to trample the Stoner students belonging when all they were asking was to use the playground when it was their time?

   ...and so what was the lesson imparted here to CWC and Stoner students:
That CWC students should be able to do whatever they want regardless of the rules and that if anyone speaks up for their rights, CWC students should continue to disrespect them and trample over them.

Facebook account hacked, Online bullying from CWC continues - LAPD investigating

Just a few days ago, I saw more personal information about my family posted online, including screen shots of my wife's facebook account, by someone from the CWC community. It's sad that someone from their community would continue to use anonymous, cyber bully tactics to try to scare me and my family. This is the same person (or people) who harassed me and tried to intimidate me from speaking at the Del Rey Neighborhood Council.
   I'm not posting a link to the comments, because the comments have tracked links. In a lapse of judgement, my wife clicked on one of the links from an email this person that said "Log in to your FB [Facebook]...and you will see what I mean." Of course, it was a tracked link and next thing she knew, her facebook account had been hacked. It was few days before she had realized the breach and changed her account settings.
   Is this really how the CWC community conducts itself? Cyberbullying and hacking people's accounts? As "true" citizens wouldn't you want to engage in our democratic process and encourage dialog, not silence opposition by harassment and hacking.

   On the plus side, since the harassment and cyber bullying from the CWC community has continued and only gotten worse, LAPD has opened an investigation on the email threats we have received in relation to Citizens of the World charter school.

[Flashback] CWC admin meets with Stoner parents, refuse to answer questions, parent demand an "Answer, answer!"

Stoner community turns out to voice concerns about CWC

After five months of being on campus, three protests and multiple complaints from the Stoner and local community, CWC administration finally decided to meet with the Stoner community to listen and respond to their growing concerns regarding CWC. The meeting was disaster, but on multiple occasions, I have heard the CWC executive director cite the meeting as a success and an example of the progress and outreach that CWC are making to help solve the problems they caused. So, I'm here to do a flashback so that we can see what CWC considers a success.

FLASHBACK -- FLASHBACK

    On February 13, 2014 LASUD hosted and moderated a meeting between Citizens of the World Charter Mar Vista administration and the Stoner Elementary community. The meeting began with CWC reciting platitudes about their commitment to community, diversity and education.  It sounded like a good spiel, but once Stoner parents began asking questions, things went downhill fast.

    Eighteen minutes in the meeting, I finally got the microphone. I had a list of prepared questions for the CWC admin. However, I never got past the first one because the principal and director could not respond to my first question.

CWC admin, not answering and not looking too happy

     "Who authorized giving the combination to the lock to all the CWC parents?" This was my first question.  I wanted to know who was responsible for such a poor decision that put all out children in danger, because I wanted to ask that person what they were thinking, and also find out what if any disciplinary action they faced for such a dangerous decision.
      Principal Kerr and Director Held looked at each other with a deer in the headlights look, stunned by the questions and didn't say anything. I waited and still no response. They just kept looking at each other, while the audience sat in stunned silence. The silence was getting uncomfortable. So, I repeated by question  "Who authorized giving the combination to the lock to all the CWC parents?" At this point Director Held began speaking and dancing around the question, but never gave an actual answer to the question.
     Since they would not answer, the moderator decided to continue to more questions and passed the mic to the next person, my wife, who repeated the question a third time and still, the only answer we received was more silence while the Principal and Director looked at each other.
     The crowd was incredulous and began chanting "Answer, answer!"

      At that point, the meeting was basically over. If CWC could not give us a truthful answer to a straight forward question, how could we trust anything they were saying. Ultimately, we never received any answer to our straight-forward question  about who was responsible for creating a major serious safety issue on our campus and yet the CWC director ended the meeting by claiming it was a success.
     Obviously, we have a different understanding than CWC of what constitutes "success."

Cyberbullying: CWC a community of cyberbullies or just regular bullyies?

Bullying in schools is a big issue nowadays. You fear you child may face bullying at school, but as a parent you never expect that you would be a victim of cyberbullying by people on your own campus. Yet, this is what we have seen from the Citizens of the World Charter Mar Vista community.
    When someone raises concerns about CWC Mar Vista, instead of addressing the issues directly, CWC administration minimizes the problems, scapegoats the person raising concerns and labels them as anti-charter/anti-CWC. Then, the CWC community responds by directing online anonymous personal attacks against the person and their family. I know this because my family and I have been attacked by the CWC community for voicing our concerns. We have seen this behavior over and over again over the past few months.  Is this really how citizens of the world behave themselves?
     Sometime the attacks come as emails, sometimes posts on blogs and sometimes as comments on news stories about CWC.
   In October 2013, the Argonaut wrote a story about the traffic woes cause by the co-location of CWC on the Stoner ES campus. In the comments section, you can see that the CWC community, over many months, overran the comments section and attacked me and my family with ridiculous claims and even posted links to assets held by family members in the area.

    The attacks not only happen online, but in the real world too. CWC community members and supporters have called my brother's work and demanded that he be fired. They have dropped off letters at my parents house.  They have even handed out fliers blaming me for all the problems with the co-location and at the same time making my daughter a target.Stoner parents have been followed home by CWC community members and harassed in the street by CWC founding parents for documenting the problems with the co-location.

   Check out the comments section to any article (like here, or here) that shows CWC in a negative light and you will see that the comments quickly devolve into personal attacks against the author from anonymous individuals. It's very sad to see that this is how these citizens choose to conduct themselves, but I won't be deterred.
   They have attacked me and my family, and have only steeled my resolve. I will stand strong to defend myself, my family, my community and my neighborhood school against these bullying attacks.

   ...and so I say, it's time to end the bullying from the CWC community. If they want to talk, they know where I live (since they posted that information online).

[Flashback] CWC makes Stoner parent a target, parent received threats from CWC/CxC, CWC gets tagged

In my dealings with the CWC Mar Vista community, I have found that they have been less willing to talk about real issues and more inclined to engage in personal attacks and scapegoating, and as such make targets out of people who voice any concerns about the charter school. This post is about how the CWC community made a target of my family for raising concerns about the co-location, and how CWC end up raising the ire of the local gang.

   On Friday, February 7, three members (shown in the pictures above) of the Citizens of the World Charter School Mar Vista community were seen in front of Stoner ES handing out out fliers containing a CWC logo that responded to the petition and 187 letters sent to CWC and LAUSD from the Stoner ES community. As you can see in highlighted section of the flier, CWC minimizes the complaints of the entire community and places the blame for all the problems on "the neighbor...who is a the preschool parent organizing the Stoner parents against CWC because he doesn't want traffic on his street.. "

   After handing out their fliers, the three CWC members were seen at the CWC entrance on Lindblade fraternizing with the CWC principal and other CWC community members. In an email response to questions about this flier, the executive director denied that these people were affiliated with CWC.
    Unless there is another neighbor that I am not aware of who has a daughter who is in pre-k and who lives on Stoner, Lindblade or Wagner, then they could only be talking about your humble blogger here. Why was it necessary to mention that my daughter was in pre-K and thus making her a target. After that CWC flier went out is when we started receiving anonymous threats from the CWC community.

  A few days after the CWC flier was circulated, I received an email threat from someone representing themselves as from the CWC community and part of the Culver City gang (we'll have more on this in an upcoming FLASHBACK), basically, saying that if we didn't cut out what I was doing, they were going to organize "los del jarin" (Mar Vista Gardens) against us. There is only one way that I know of that gangs organize and that's not for a petition signing, protest or cupcake sale.
   I was scared. I have lived in this neighborhood my whole life. I know these people don't joke around. I took this threat very seriously. We took the threat to the police, but they said they couldn't do anything because there was no direct threat. Yes, there was an implied threat, kind of like if the mafia showed up at your house and said "That's very nice family you have there. It'd be a shame if anything happened to them." There is no direct threat to your family, but you know what was meant.
   We installed security cameras and upgraded all our locks, but we still did not feel safe with this threat hanging over our head. For the next month, we tried to stay out of our house as much as possible. When we were home, we stayed in doors with all doors and windows locked or in the backyard. I even considered pulling my child out of school and moving my family out of Del Rey.
   Scared and not knowing where to turn, we reached out to the local community and let them know about the threat. These gangstas are people in our neighborhood. They are brothers, cousins, neighbors, former classmates, and people we go to church with, and while we do not love the sin, we still love the sinner. These people are part of our community. So, people who know people who know people who know people asked around about the threat. We eventually heard back that no, this threat was not from the gang. However, now, the gang was aware that the CWC community was using their reputation to menace and intimidate local residents and community activist who are working for the good of their neighborhood.

    When the first tag went up, I freaked. Sometimes gangs will tag to show what is their turf. Was the message that CxC stood with CWC? Should I leave with my family and never return?
     The next set of tags went up and I still didn't know what to make of it. When the third and worst set of tags went up, I thought oh no, but at the same time, I breathed a sigh of relief to see the messages "F--- you" with a tag of "CxC MVG" (Mar Vista Gardens). This, hopefully, meant that the threat against my family was not real, but sadly and unfortunately, this also meant that danger the CWC created was real, and that is not good for either school or the local community.
     After having experienced over a month of insecurity, fear and doubt in my own home, I would not wish this upon anyone.  My sympathies go out to the CWC students and families who have had to face this.

Enlightening conversation with CWC parent last night

Informational flier on car

Yesterday, evening I had a very enlightening conversation on Stoner Avenue with a CWC parent who was volunteering for an open house that night.

_____
    Early in the evening my family started noticing traffic on our residential street. Car were speeding, driving erratically, driving in the middle of the road, make fast U turns in driveways. When you see this kind of dangerous driving on our street, it can only mean there was a Citizens of the World Charter Mar Vista event going on. I pulled my daughters inside the house and told them they would not be able to play outside that evening like we usually do because of the traffic danger.
    I went to see what the activity was all about and saw CWC was having yet another open house. I decided to distribute some informational fliers to those attending so that they could have a broader understanding of what was going on with this co-location.
   As I was distributing fliers, a CWC parent called out to me "You are only hurting the children!" Oh on, I thought. Anytime a CWC parent has talked to me on the street, it ends with them yelling at me. I responded with a question "What about our children and what your school is doing to them?"
   I reached out my hand and introduced myself. "Hi, I'm A--- Benitez. I live where those palm trees are." She gave a look of surprise like she had just seen the devil. She obviously knew who I was. So, I continued, "Yes, I'm that neighbor. The one CWC is placing all the blame on for the problems. I'm the only one with a yard sign. I'm the only one who signed a petition. I'm the only one who was present at all the demonstrations. The only one who is causing problem. I'm that neighbor." I took a breath and calmed down.
  I told her I was well aware of what was being said about me and my family by the CWC community, and told her that the CWC community had made my family a target and that we had received gang threats and threats from the CWC community because of this.
   She was surprised "Wait, I thought we [CWC] were the ones receiving gang threats." I explained to her the threat I received from some one who was representing themselves as part of the CWC community and the Culver City street gang. I explained how that threat from their community ultimately resulted in the graffiti on their school fence. She had no idea of any of this. I told her to check out my blog. I hope she's reading this right now. (Hi! Thanks for the conversation.)
   We continued to talk about other issues with the co-location including the competition for resources on campus, the separate entrances, the parents in the bathroom, the spikes left by the CWC parents and a few other issues.  It seemed like this was the first time she was hearing any of this. She didn't believe the spikes and I told that I could probably point one out right now. We walked a few feet before we found a spike inside campus under a CWC lunch table. I told her about the ordeal with the spikes.

   The more we talked, the more I realized that the CWC community is not being told the truth.  They are receiving a whitewashed, varnished version of the truth where anyone who brings up a problem is made a scapegoat for bringing up their concerns and this is exacerbating the problem with the co-location. Just like the April 8th CWC communication about the gang activity and traffic problems minimizes both problems and places the blame for the traffic problem on "A resident", CWC is sending a distorted message to their community about what is really going on and is trying to shift blame on to others. This is helping to fuel the tensions between the communities and is creating more problems for both communities.