For more than four decades, Nancy Goldberg has helped educate and nurture Culver City’s children and young adults. With her teaching career now behind her, she is exploring another approach to assisting a new generation of students, this time as a member of the Culver City Unified School District Board of Education.
Goldberg will be competing with challengers Laura Chardiet and Robert Zirgulis, as well as incumbent Scott Zeidman for two seats on the board next month, and the News will be conducting a series of profiles of the candidates.
The former Culver City High School teacher decided at the beginning of this year to seek a seat on the school board after talking with her Culver Crest neighbor and friend, Steven Gourley. “I asked him, ‘What do you think about me running?’” recalled Goldberg, who has known Gourley, a member of the board, for several years. Gourley, who chose not to seek reelection in the fall, says his friend has the intrinsic qualities that would make her an asset to the board.
“When Nancy first asked me about running for school board, I told her that she would be a wonderful board member and that she had my unqualified support,” said Gourley, who previously served as a Culver City councilman. “She brings patience and grace, and these are traits that will serve her well in this position.”
Goldberg said the decision to retire after 41 years of teaching came last spring.
“Someone once told me that when it’s time to go, you’ll know and it won’t be painful,” she said. “I didn’t want to give it up but I knew it was time.”
Goldberg said she feels that her years of teaching are a strength that only an educator can bring to the school board. “I listen to Professor (CCUSD board member Patricia) Siever and I know exactly where she’s coming from and I respect her very deeply,” she said. “She has a wonderful capacity to bring a certain insight to many [topics].”
The former high school teacher believes that insight brought by educators like Siever, who teaches at West Los Angeles College, and board member Karlo Silbiger, a charter school teacher at Animo Venice High School, provide what she calls “a path of awareness” to the other board members. “And I think that’s invaluable,” she added.
Besides the ever-present matter of grappling with the district budget, two things that Goldberg would like to see the school board tackle soon are student safety and student health. “For the last few years, our water supply at the high school has been nonexistent,” she said.
As the senior class advisor last year, she lobbied the district to have water delivered to the high school so that students returning from physical education classes could be hydrated. “Students need water,” Goldberg asserted.
The first-time school board candidate also says some of the athletic fields need work. “I’m very much aware of the recent discussion about the fields that are improperly maintained and kids hurting themselves,” she said. “That’s the kind of issue that I think that school board members should be aware of; raise consciousness about. “Take care of the kids…safety and health first.”
After years in the classroom, Goldberg has seen a variety of educational initiatives that have come from the state and federal governments, and she feels that the emphasis on testing has not served students or school districts well.
“We have a top-heavy situation with all the testing. I realize that it’s not the district’s fault, but our instruction time has been cut in two,” she noted. “The kind of critical thinking that you develop through discussion and having students interact with one another – there’s no time for that when you’re testing and looking at benchmarks.”
The recently announced changes in the federal No Child Left Behind Act would be beneficial to school districts, as well as to students nationwide, the school board candidate said.
“There have to be major changes because the kind of mindset that over testing produces defeats that we’re trying to keep in place with our students,” she said.
Charter schools, in some communities, have gained a foothold and two of them, Building Bridges International and Innovate! charters have sought to come to Culver City during the last two years. “I really think that charter schools have a place and wherever the needs of children are going to be met and they can be met superbly by a charter, I’m in favor,” she said.
While charters are publicly funded schools, they are not regulated as traditional schools are and typically are not unionized or accept the percentage of special-needs students that community schools do.
“I would like to see an open door to let teachers and classified staff have union affiliation if they chose to at [a potential charter school in Culver City], but I don’t think that would discourage approval of a charter,” said Goldberg, who comes from a union background.
The topic of students transferring into Culver City became a hot-button topic three years ago and could be on the horizon again at some point. Goldberg feels students who come from outside Culver City are assets more than liabilities.
“I’ve seen transfer permits produce some of the finest students that I’ve ever taught,” she said. “I think that having diversity is part of living in an urban area.
“There have been times when our [student population] numbers have fluctuated and those transfer students become pretty darned important for us,” she continued. “They’re usually more beneficial than they are liabilities because when you’re motivated to come to a new school you’re motivated to work within the system.”
At the Sept. 27 school board meeting, the board examined the costs of a sports complex and new solar panels for the district but not for the Robert Frost Auditorium. Goldberg said the board could have communicated better with homeowners who live near the high school, including many who apparently were unaware that a sports complex was being planned.
“I think I would have taken the position of advising the community of what was going in,” she said. “I have a lot of friends who live in the immediate area and they’re just astonished that they didn’t know [the district] is planning to build this huge complex and there’s going to be a lot of disruption in the neighborhood.
“You don’t do that to your community. You make sure that they are apprised of everything,” she said.
Goldberg’s stance on the complex is one of the reasons that the Association of Classified Employees-Culver City endorsed her.
“When the impending capital improvement projects were first being discussed, her first thought was that renovations should be made based on the needs and safety of our students,” association president Debbie Hamme told the News. “Her very next concerns were for the people in the community, especially those who lived in the area surrounding the high school and how the construction and increased traffic may affect their quality of life.”
Goldberg said she also feels that the auditorium’s costs should have been itemized.
“She is the only candidate that has expressed concerns about how district decisions affect all stakeholders. She sees the bigger picture,” Hamme said.
Goldberg said while she loves teaching, she is ready for a new life challenge.
“Now I hope to go on to this next level of fulfillment in my life’s work as sort of the frosting on the cake,” she concluded.
The election is Nov. 8.