Monthly Archives: April 2010

MVCC Elections 4/11: Meet The Candidates

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I encourage you to vote in the Mar Vista Community Council election this Sunday from 10am – 4pm at Mar Vista Park, 11430 Woodbine. The Council does great work for our community and I salute all the people who volunteer their time. The Green Committee, the Arts and Education Committee, there are great things that happen because of the council.

There are many great people running for the board, all with different skills and strengths. That made the decision of who to endorse a tough one, but in the end, I had to make choices. Here’s my list:

Zone 1 Director:  Babak Nahid

Zone 2 Director: Bill Koontz

Zone 3 Director:  Kate Anderson

Zone 4 Director: Stephen Boskin

Zone 5 Director: Maritza Przekop

Zone 6 Director: Marilyn Marble

Community Director: Alex Thompson

At-Large Directors: (You may vote for up to 6 of the 9 people running.)

Laura Bodensteiner

Sharon Commins

Peter Hills

John Kuchta

Albert Olson

Joseph Treves

Please do vote on Sunday. It’s quick and easy and it helps our community. Thanks!

LAUSD Permits Update: The Story From The School Board Meeting

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I attended the LAUSD School Board meeting in downtown LA this afternoon and it was a very interesting session. I went, along with about 150 other parents from all over the district, to hear what would happen with the famous Zimmer amendment, which was intended to allow high school students out of the district on a permit to remain there.

But we we were all surprised by Superintendent Cortines announcement at the start of the meeting that the permit issue was to be rendered basically moot this year. He said that basically all permit applications from students currently out on permits would be granted. Game over. Just like that. All the hand-wringing and Facebooking, well, depending on how you look at it, was either not necessary or very effective.

What will that mean for people like me, applying for the first time? Hard to say, but probably the odds are not in our favor. For people already in the system, their troubles seem to be over for this year.

Here’s what it looked like today:

More check-ins at LAUSD headquarters
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Mar Vista Farmer’s Market Wrap-Up 4-4-10

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Today my shopper was Stephanie Astrow, a good friend whom I’ve known since we met in college, and she’s a customer of JR Organics’ CSA program. Each week she receives a bin full of a variety of fresh, organic fruits and vegetables and she and her whole family love it. She appreciates the variety because it’s then a bit of a challenge to decide what to make with what she’s been given each week, and she rises to the occasion. She also appreciates the ease of coming to the market and having her bin all ready for her to take. She’s giving us the recipe for her signature Crispy Kale: Rinse the kale, remove the stalks and coarsely chop the leaves. Toss them with olive oil and coarse salt and put them in the oven at 425 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until crispy. Sounds really good — thanks, Stephanie! Today in the Green booth, the guests were Elise London, Louca Mee, Edward Anastas and Jen Baers from eBikeLikeMe.com, whose mission is to promote electric bikes as a way get from point A to point B faster, cleaner, cheaper and healthier.

Chipmunks The Squeakquel: A Mom and Sons Review

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The Chipmunks are back in a Squeakquel and it’s now out on DVD – and this time they’ve been joined by the Chipettes. My kids and I have seen the Squeakquel, and they really love it. They thought the little furry creatures were cute and funny and they loved seeing the Chipettes doing “Single Ladies”. I think it’s really not very good, but the movie was meant for the kids, not me.  I recently had the chance to speak with Director Betty Thomas, which was a bit of a trip in a time machine. Back in my former life, the one prior to having children, I was a Script Supervisor and actually worked 2nd unit on Dr. Doolittle, which Ms. Thomas also directed. The state of visual effects art has come a long way since Eddie Murphy needed to act with a tennis ball in place of the Tiger they would add in later in post. In the Squeakquel, the actors would rehearse their scenes with stuffed animals (affectionately known as the “Stuffies”) and then they shot the scenes with nothing there so that the visual effects team could digitally animate in the Chipmunks and Chipettes later. They didn’t even run a 2nd Unit. Things have sure changed since I was “in the Biz.”

Home-Based Business: Buy Books, CDs and DVDs From Tim Wurtz

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I met Tim Wurtz the other day and he showed me his home-based business, BuyBooksCDsandDVDs. (He also sells through his Amazon store.) And let me tell you, this may be the tidiest and best organized group of books I’ve seen outside of a library. Basically, Tim has created his own Dewey Decimal System to keep track of the nearly 4200 books, cds and dvds in his stores. And it’s very impressive. Tim and his wife Pam scour garage sales for items to sell. They also work with Food on Foot, a non-profit dedicated to helping feed and clothe the poor and homeless in Los Angeles. Food on Foot volunteers donate books, CDs and DVDs to Tim, which he then sells in his online stores, and then he turns around and donates some of the money he earns to Food on Foot. It’s a great system and helps out a worthy cause.

Tim finds some items from estate sales as well, and he also does some consignment sales, where he helps people sell their old items and splits the proceeds with them. The business fits in Tim’s worldview in the way it re-sells existing items and helps connect people with hard-to-find items, and he has recently switched to recycled shipping materials to make his business as green as possible.

Check out the inventory at BuyBooksCDsandDVDs — it’s eclectic and I bet you’ll find something you like!

LAUSD Permit Application Done! (An Update)

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I finally got my LAUSD Inter-District Permit for Transfer Application filled out and submitted today — and I can assure you it was much less heinous than I thought it would be. Then again, I thought it would PRETTY AWFUL. So anything less was actually still a little painful.

Here’s the background: My kids go to an LAUSD school that offers Dual Language Spanish immersion in a 90/10 model. That’s jargon-y and I apologize, but the basics are this: there are basically only 3 elementary schools that offer it on the Westside of LA: Edison in Santa Monica, El Marino in Culver City, and Grand View in LAUSD. But there are only 2 middle schools that continue the Dual Language Spanish program — one in Culver City and one in Santa Monica.

So if I didn’t want to drop my kids off a proverbial cliff in their education, I needed to apply for a permit out.

Culver Middle has never posted vacancies we knew of, but John Adams has had a bunch of empty spots and recruited Grand View students, albeit on the down-low, for the past 4 years. Well, they still have spots for our kids — fewer this year than in past years, which means not all of us will get in — but to complicate matters, this year LAUSD decided to close their budget gap in a number of ways, including declining out-of-district (aka inter-district) transfer permits. Yes, even though they don’t offer a comparable middle school — or for that matter High school — option.

So for that reason alone, we gave it a shot. The entire 5th grade of Grand View had a tiny window of opportunity to apply for this permit. This may be the last year it’s even remotely considered for our unique possible exception — and we have no guarantees as it is — and so we all met today to apply together.

For the first time, the permit application was to be online only. And, for the first time, it was only in English.

(Apparently, like Bulworth before them, LAUSD officials don’t care about constituents who don’t contribute heavily to their coffers — and though the District is populated mainly with Hispanic parents, the online-only form was actually geared only toward affluent, English-speaking parents, since you had to have an internet connection, an email address and time on a weekday during Spring Break to apply. Not something most of our parents have.)

So we all gathered and we all helped. Those who had laptops brought them. Those who spoke English filled out the forms and those who spoke both languages translated. (Oh, to be Bilingual! I mourn the fact that I am not, which is why my sons are going to be.)

So I have applied for an exception to LAUSD’s new rule. And so have my fellow 5th grade parents. We are hoping for a chance at a good school, a continued Dual Language education for our kids, and a chance to get out of LAUSD to do it. We have probably no better odds than if we’d bought lottery tickets, but hey, someone’s gotta win, right?