by Mark McDermott
Wysh Weinstein’s passion for education was sparked by two educators she encountered early in life.
The first was her second grade teacher in Pennsylvania, Mrs. McCracken. She was a teacher who somehow had the ability to have a relationship with every single child in her classroom. She gave each student a sweet nickname. Weinstein was “Boots” because of the cowgirl-style boots she wore to school.
“She just made school so much fun,” Weinstein said. “I know this is cheesy, but I knew in second grade that I wanted to be a teacher…I even remember the way that she structured the classroom. I just knew — that’s what I wanted to do forever.”
Weinstein would go on to obtain college degrees in both her passions, dance, and elementary education. Then, just before her first day of teaching, her superintendent said something that has stayed with her since: “Make a difference. Every day.”
“Those are words I have lived by since then,” Weinstein said. “It applied when I was teaching and applies now as a PTA leader, and in the community.”
Weinstein taught first, fifth, and sixth grades in three different states, including seven years with the Los Angeles Unified School District. She was teaching fifth grade at Roscomare Road school in Bel-Aire when she had a revelation while helping parents.
“They were spending more time, money and energy applying to a private school for sixth grade than I did for college,” Weinstein recalled. “I wrote recommendation after recommendation and was happy to do it. But it just blew my mind. I thought, ‘This is not what I want for my kids.’”
In 2013, she and her husband, Dan, moved to Manhattan Beach. They were avid in their belief in public schools and in MBUSD found a K-12 system imbued with excellence at every level.
“We moved here for the schools,” Weinstein said.
As a teacher, as well as a mother of two young boys, Weinstein appreciated the high-energy educational environment and the way kindergarten and even preschool aligned with the curriculum in schools throughout the district. But what also struck her was the almost idyllic, small-town feel that informed the school experience for her kids.
“The community is what makes our public schools great,” she said.”It’s the one thing that private schools can’t compete with. If you drive to Chadwick every day, you’re not walking next door, on Saturday afternoon, to go hang out with your friends. You just don’t have that sense of community.”
Weinstein got involved. From preschool on, she volunteered.
“I just dove right in,” she said. “Every event, every fundraiser. Within the first year, I became the preschool parent coordinator.”
She would go on to serve as Pacific Elementary PTA president, Manhattan Beach PTA Council president, MBEF Board member, and MBUSD Budget Advisory Committee member. She already had first-hand knowledge of California’s chronic underfunding of schools, because as a teacher, she’d received pink slips several years, only to have them rescinded after the topsy-turvy budget process every spring. Now she began to see it from a policy perspective, and she acted. She was the volunteer coordinator for 2018’s successful Measure MB parcel tax, overseeing 80 volunteers in the door-to-door canvassing effort. She was also the co-chair of Measure A, the parcel tax that fell short at the polls earlier this year. Weinstein said she learned a lot from both experiences, but particularly the latter.
“The biggest takeaway is that we didn’t involve the community early enough in the process,” she said. “We spent several years polling, discussing it at the Budget Advisory Committee level, and having meetings with consultants. But that was just at the committee level.”
The sum total of her experience, Weinstein said, is that she understands every facet of the school district, from the classrooms to every line item on the annual budget. Weinstein’s closing statement from the MB Chamber forum sums up why she believes this experience will make her an unusually well-prepared school board member.
“No one can do this job alone. It requires collaboration and an integral knowledge of how schools function,” she said. “It requires us to be proactive and not reactive if we want to maintain the quality schools we have all come to expect here in Manhattan Beach. Being a school board trustee requires countless volunteer hours. I have spent thousands of hours working with all eight of our schools over the last eight years. I have an established rapport with principals, teachers, office staff, and our maintenance staff.
“I have spent the last 20 years in education,” she said. “I understand it from the classroom to the boardroom. The combination of budgetary and teaching experience combined with the relationships I have built over the last eight years puts me light years ahead in my understanding and insight into the world of education. On day one, I will be able to hit the ground running. I am built for this.” ER
