He has been involved in school board elections before, but Scott McVarish said it was not inevitable that he would eventually seek public office. According to McVarish, one of the founding members of United Parents of Culver City, he did not consider running for elected office until Culver City United School District Board Member Laura Chardiet announced that she would not be seeking a second term in the summer.
“It took a long time for me to decide, actually. I was encouraged to run in 2013 but I deferred,” McVarish said, and instead, in his own words, “aggressively” sought to convince former Farragut Middle School teacher Suzanne Robins to run for office. Robins won with the backing of United Parents of Culver City, which has left an indelible imprint on school politics in its three-year existence. And while McVarish was a key player behind the scenes in the 2013 campaign he has stepped out front and center in the 2015 race with his election partner Ann Burke and Culver City Parks and Recreation Commissioner Kelly Kent as perhaps the most outspoken candidate in the race.
“Eventually I concluded that I could bring something to this board, which I think is incredible,” he said.
Out of the gate McVarish, an immigration attorney whose daughter is in fifth grade at El Marino Language Academy, garned the endorsement of the parent group that he helped to create, school board members Chardiet, Katherine Paspalis and Steven Levin and the Culver City Chamber of Commerce.
“Both Anne and Scott showed a wide range of knowledge on issues facing the school district,” said Kevin Lachoff, chair of the board of the Culver City Chamber of Commerce. “Adding to the district’s technology curriculum and promoting job preparedness are important goals for students as they prepare for their adult life, and both Anne and Scott support these important goals for Culver City’s children.”
“Burke and McVarish have earned the trust and support of an overwhelming majority of Culver City’s elected officials and community and parent leaders. UPCC agrees that they offer the kind of leadership necessary to face the challenges of the next four years,” reads a statement on the parent group’s website endorsing McVarish and Burke.
During an interview at a Culver City eatery earlier this month, McVarish laid out a number of his campaign goals, many that he has recounted in numerous campaign forums. But the issue that he feels most strongly about is the $106 million capital improvements bond to repair the district’s facilities and he and his supporters think that is what separates him and Burke from Kent, their opponent for the two school board seats.
“As involved as I have been, I still struggle with this stuff because it’s difficult. Your advisers are not going to make the decisions for you and they shouldn’t. What they can do is give you options, but without the background to understand the pluses and minuses of each option, you’re not going to make an informed decision… you’re going to make an emotive decision and that’s not good enough when you dealing with $106 million,” McVarish asserted.
Creating a series of academies is another of his goals as a school board member. McVarish grew excited as he laid out his idea: an academy for industrial arts, for science, technology and engineering and a leadership academy.
“The tide of Silicon Beach is rolling over Culver City,” he said. “We have Google on our doorstep [in Playa Vista] Symantec is the third largest employer in Culver City and the Hayden Tract is full of startup companies. We need a systematic approach where we inspire outside groups – whether they be nonprofits or just about any science and tech savvy people- and get them to buy into the program,” he said.
The industrial arts can be a pathway to others careers for students who choose not to go to college, McVarish believes. “For those students, the trades are a great option,” said McVarish, whose grandfather- “the smartest man that I ever knew”- was an electrician. “The majority of our students will not graduate from college, statistically speaking. I think there’s a message in our society that tells students if you don’t go to college you have somehow failed and I think that send the wrong message,” he asserted.
Asked if he was concerned about teachers and others steering students to the trades academy because they might not score as high on standardized tests as other students, McVarish said he trusted the school district’s staff to take care of the details of how the academies are run. “Our job as a board is to create a vision if the students respond to it,” he said.
One of his assets in the race could be his experience in his involvement of the give and take of school board campaigns where he participated during his time as a member of the Long Beach Teachers Assn. in the mid-2000s. During that time, McVarish was involved in a situation that made headlines locally when the California Teachers Assn. stepped in to take over the union where he was its executive director.
In 2007, McVarish left the union amid a sea of controversy. According to newspaper accounts, he and another executive were accused of financial mismanagement in the aftermath of a very contentious school board election. He was fired from his position and later his firing was rescinded before he decided to resign.
McVarish said his 10-year pension vested and he and the union negotiated a buyout of his contract.
“It was mutual,” he said of the parting with the union. “It was a union and unions have a lot of conflict. It’s inherent in unions and in political parties. I was an extremely popular union leader until there was a one person change on our board of directors and then my 8-7 majority became a minority. With that change, as often happens with unions, they tried to push out almost all my entire staff. What they didn’t anticipate was the reaction from our supporters.
“The firing was rescinded and eliminated, so technically I was never fired. I found and the new board found that we were no longer in sync, so I stepped down. It was completely amicable. We had different visions,” he said.
He also said union politics were a big factor in the controversy. “When you have a popular union leader and you want to get rid of him, you have to say why, so they threw some mud on the wall. But none of it stuck,” he said. “If they had, there would have been legally issues and there was never anything like that.”
McVarish said he wanted to start his own law firm and it was a good time to leave. “I decided that I did not want to go back to a union job,” he explained.
Regarding the importance of endorsements, McVarish said he rejects the notion that some matter less than others, as some as his supporters have asserted. “It’s a hard question to answer. Ultimately, different endorsements carry different weight based on how many people participated in the decision and frankly how much money and or volunteer work will you get out of them,” he responded frankly. “But I would say every school board member’s vote count.”
He said he agrees with new laws established by the Board of Supervisors that strengthen the code of ethics and financial disclosure for school boards members as well as new disclosure guidelines for budget oversight committee members.
McVarish denied saying that he and Burke have claimed that they could accelerate the architectural review of the facilities, which no school board can do. “I recall someone claiming that we said that, but that’s not coming from my mouth,” he said. “Perhaps what they meant was that we would be able to make decisions faster and not need to be brought up to speed. No one can speed up the state architect.”
As an immigration attorney, McVarish said the school district could eventually end up grappling with some of the same issues around immigration that larger school districts are now doing, where immigration policies at times break families apart. “We have a lot of students who are from immigrant and undocumented families and I will be the only board member who speaks Spanish,” he noted. “If you want a board member who can engage this very significant population, there is no one else who can do that.
“There is no worse thing that our government does than separate families, and that’s a real heartbreaking situation,” he continued. “I’ve seen kids go from being great students to absolutely losing interests and focus because they’re being devastated by the loss of their parents. I’ve fought for so many of these families to stay together.”
Voters should cast their ballot for him because “I think our academies will make [our high school] great and I think our high school will become a marquee in all of West Los Angeles… I’m talking the number one high school in West Los Angeles because we will be providing more enrichment opportunities for our students than anyone else in West LA. That’s why they should vote for me.”
The election is Nov. 3
Gary Walker contributed to this story.