Monday, April 28, 2014

[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."


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