Anita Avrick has been an ardently constant presence in RBUSD schools and at board meetings for the better part of two decades.
Avrick has served as PTA president at Beryl Heights Elementary School and Adams Middle School and twice served as Redondo Council PTA president. Last year, she was named the district’s Educational Advocate of the Year. She has missed very few school board meetings in the last 15 years, and has offered her input from the podium on most major decisions the district has faced in that time.
Now she feels ready to sit at the table and more directly make those decisions.
“I always thought I could do more damage – or help more – by sitting on this side of the table,” Avrick said in an interview last week. “But with some of the stuff that has been done, I realize that is not true. I need to sit on the other side to make decisions.”
Avrick has degrees in business administration and law and worked as a stage manager for television shows for 30 years (including Soap, the Fresh Prince of Bel Aire, Mr. Belvedere, and This Is Your Life). She also held leadership positions with the Director’s Guild and twice chaired a labor group that represented associate directors, stage managers, and production associates throughout the west coast.
“I’m a big union person, as you can see,” Avrick said.
Avrick is the candidate most critical of the current school board. Many of her concerns revolve around the board’s communication, or lack thereof, with the community.
“I think it’s awful,” Avrick said. “Look, 85 percent of our community does not have children in the schools, and we are not listening to them. We have passed huge bonds twice in the last decade with the support of the 85 percent of our community who do not have children. So if we are not going to listen to them, how are we going to exist?”
Specifically, Avrick believes the board has mishandled its attempt to generate more income from its surplus property at 320 Knob Hill. She argues that the district should have made more of an effort to reach a compromise with its current tenant, the city. Avrick said that the mistakes began from the very beginning of the process – when the board set minimum bids at $1 million, a number that has since been halved – and culminated with the recent acceptance of a moderate-housing bid.
“Those families out at Knob Hill are up in arms,” Avrick said. “Listen to them. I was at that meeting – it didn’t sound like the board listened to them. They had their minds made up already…At that point, you’ve got to say, ‘Alright, let’s put it out for rebid. None of these options are working for our community.’ What would have been the big deal of making a decision to wait? The city is not going to rezone that property, anyway. So we are wasting money. We should have worked something out with the city, and we didn’t.”
Avrick takes particular aim at a board majority that formed on many decisions after the election of board members Todd Loewenstein and Drew Gamet in 2005. Later that year, along with board member Carl Clark, the majority forced the ouster of former Superintendent Carol Leighty. Avrick contends Leighty was wrongly forced out despite broad community support on her behalf.
“The firing of Dr. Leighty, I think, was when I first started thinking about running for school board,” Avrick said.
She has quarrels with many decisions this board majority has made, such as its approval of a kindergarten Spanish program a few years that she argues was wasteful and made little educational sense.
“They spent $60,000 for kindergarten kids to get Spanish with no follow up – we didn’t have the money to put Spanish in first, second, third or fourth grades, so these kids never got Spanish again,” Avrick said. “It was one year. One year, one time money. How do you do that?”
She stressed that she supports the current administration.
“I do like Dr. Keller and I think he is trying to do the best he can,” Avrick said. “I think he brought the district back together when it was so split, so I have a lot of respect for him. I like the way he trains and manages his team.”
Communication, Avrick said, is a problem on several fronts. She said that the partnership between the city and school district in general needs to be improved. She noted that in addition to endorsements from the entire City Council, she has also been endorsed by City Attorney Mike Webb and Police Chief Joe Leonardi.
“We need to be working better with the city,” Avrick said. “I’ve had a lot of dealings with the city…I’ve done this for years, and they still want to work with me, so there has to be a way to do things.”
Avrick said that communication has been lacking with the high school teachers who have voiced concerns about the International Baccalaureate program. The program, a separate degree program that emphasizes a more international curriculum, critical thinking, and community service, has been opposed by several respected teachers who question its cost and applicability for the so-called “middle student” who may not be going to college.
“These are not fly-by-night teachers,” Avrick said. “I don’t think the communication is there, and that is big for me.”
She also thinks more information was needed before applying for the IB program, both about the program itself and possibly a study that gauged just how many students would be attracted to enrolling in it.
“None of this was done, as far as I can see,” Avrick said. “And I like the International Baccalaureate program – I think it’s a phenomenal program – but I would have liked more information, more research on it, before we jumped into it.”
Avrick also believes more focus needs to be put on reaching the “middle student.” She said too many high school students are graduating without meeting the “A through G” requirements necessary to enroll in a state college.
“All kids should have met A through G requirements so they have a choice if they want to go to a state college,” Avrick said. “I think we are losing them somewhere, and I’m not exactly sure where, but we need to work with our teachers….We need to do a better job with these kids.”
Another of Avrick’s priorities is finding more outside funding, through grants and community support, so the district isn’t left relying solely on unpredictable state funding. The education of children in Redondo Beach, she said, must be protected by any means possible.
“Children are our future, and if we don’t protect our children and make sure they get the best of what they can, where are we going to be in 10 years?” she said. “They are going to be taking care of us, so we have to make sure they have the ability to make the right decisions. They are going to run this country.” ER
