Only two incumbents on the Culver City Unified School District Board of Education will have a chance at reelection in November as Patricia Siever has decided not to enter the 2013 school board race.
In an exclusive with the News on Aug.5, Siever said she decided not to seek another term due to a number of personal matters that require most of her attention. “Due to unforeseen family obligations, I will not be running for reelection in the 2013 Culver City Unified School District Board of Education election,” she said.
As vice president of the school board, Siever would have been in line to be the board president at the beginning of the next term.
She was elected in 2009 after a late entry in the race, placing third behind current school board incumbents Katherine Paspalis and Karlo Silbiger.
Among the accomplishments of the school board that she is most proud of, the board vice president named the elimination of furlough days for district staff members and the increase in the Academic Performance Index in local schools, which measures academic progress in California elementary, middle and high schools.
“I’m also very proud of pushing the district to develop and establish a system of goals and objectives for each year,” Siever added.
Siever also has increased responsibilities at West Los Angeles College, where she is a professor of history and the United States Constitution. She is the vice-chair of the college’s history department.
Siever served as the chair of Culver City’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Committee in 2011.
“I would like to thank everyone who supported me, as well as all of the active supporters that I have today,” she said.
The race will now have a combination of familiar faces as well as a few unknowns.
Susanne Robins is the latest to join the race for the school board, filing her paperwork to seek office on Aug. 1. Scientist Steven Levin and teacher Robert Zirgulis are contenders in search of one of the three seats that will be up for grabs in the fall. Silbiger and Paspalis were among the first to announce their intentions of running for reelection.
Robbins is a former science teacher at Culver City Middle School. She resigned in 2010 and is the president of Ascend Training Solutions a curriculum design, training and consulting business.
CCUSD board member Laura Chardiet knows Robins. “She was my son’s teacher when he was at the middle school. I think she’s incredibly smart and she was an excellent teacher,” Chardiet said.
Siever was the second African-American to server on the Culver City school board and only the second elected member of a governing body in the city’s history.
The filing period to enter the race ends Friday, Aug. 9.