As a state-wide recognized success story and influential public education leader, Joanne Culverhouse earned the praise she is receiving after the announcement of her retirement as the popular superintendent of La Habra City School District.
When I saw this in the news, it made me reflect on how much better our schools would have been if Culverhouse had not been driven from our school community by the School Board and senior district staff jealous of how beloved she was in our town. Thousands of students were deprived of the enlightened mentorship and pedagogy she nurtured in our schools for so many years.
Our school board has done many good things over the years and we thank them for their service. But we know it’s the professional classroom educators, students and parents who make our schools as good as they are, even in these difficult times. Unfortunately, we have systemically degraded school governance preventing greater social cohesion supporting our schools. This deprives the school family and larger community of the open deliberative process and positive civic order of small town public school system. Instead of today’s staged booster-ism, we had stronger community spirit in our schools again. Starting by restoring fairness and even-handedness—denied since school board proceedings and protocols were revised starting in 2002—de-institutionalizing due process and equal protection protocols we had under school board rules in the past. Culverhouse was a casualty of education consulting industry takeover of our schools. Instead of following state education code governance model, our school board’s democratic representational role has been diminished by over-delegation of its responsibilities to education bureaucrats. Local property owners and taxpayers are paying the bill for usurpation of school board powers by predatory lawyers and consultants who now run our schools. Culverhouse had professional skills and judgment to support both excellence in classroom learning and robust democratic school governance. After being a highly successful principal at El Morro, Thurston and Laguna Beach High School, if promoted to superintendent she would have prevented the most destructive and demoralizing episodes for our schools over the last 20 years. Don’t believe revisionists, our schools lost out big time when the School Board failed to retain the top performing educator in history of local schools, at the prime of her career and ability to make a difference for our students, teachers and families.
Howard Hills, Laguna Beach
