PTA Activist Vindicated, Then Asked to Quit

In Roth vs. El Rodeo PTA, both sides are winning.

Trisha Roth, an anti-alcohol crusader who complained about the auction of vintage wine at the annual El Rodeo School PTA carnival, was vindicated last week when the 33rd District of the California Congress of Parents, Teachers and Students ruled that the auction violated its policy and state law.

However, the district PTA recommended that Roth, an El Rodeo PTA officer, should resign that post because she is venting “personal grievances” and “is not willing to put the (auction) incident aside.” Failing that, the school’s PTA board can vote to oust her, the district board said.

The vintage Bordeaux, Mouton Rothschild, was included in the carnival’s silent auction, held in April at the school in Beverly Hills. The district PTA determined that the sale violated state PTA guidelines and the state Education and Business and Professions codes, but was not done deliberately.

At the carnival, Roth, who has two children at El Rodeo, complained about the wine to organizers and school officials. PTA President Patti Tanenbaum said that amounted to a “hasty and irrational” outburst and an embarrassment to the hard-working carnival volunteers.

Tanenbaum said Roth had the opportunity to protest a few weeks beforehand, when a list of auction items was sent to every parent.

Roth asked city officials and the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office to investigate. She refused the El Rodeo PTA executive committee’s requests that she withdraw her complaints or resign, which brought the dispute to a district PTA hearing.

On Wednesday, the committee again asked Roth to resign, but she declined. Roth said her removal will be voted on at a PTA meeting in September.

Tanenbaum said she had hoped that Roth would “willingly step aside for the moment, realizing that . . . in no way negates her commitment to what she believes, and in no way indicates our lack of commitment” to anti-drug and anti-alcohol causes.

Roth, characteristically, is not taking the district PTA resignation recommendation sitting down. She is appealing it to the state PTA and denies that she is on a personal vendetta against other El Rodeo PTA leaders. “I never said anybody was bad,” she said. “I’m trying to educate people.

“I think the reason they’re throwing me out is because they didn’t like my opinion--it was different from theirs,” she said.

She said El Rodeo PTA members originally did not see a problem with auctioning the wine.

Tanenbaum said that including wine in the auction was an “innocent mistake” that had been made on previous occasions but would not be repeated.

In its decision, the district PTA urged that the state PTA guidebook add a notation that the Education Code prohibits selling or offering alcohol on school grounds. But Roth said that the finding ought to be stronger, spelling out, for instance, that having alcohol at family-oriented events sends children the wrong message.

Roth’s anti-alcohol stance was a prominent part of her failed campaign for City Council in April. Her previous targets have included wine-tasting classes at the Beverly Hills Unified School District’s adult school and wine-tasting fund-raisers. She pushed the school district for explicit anti-alcohol rules, and last week the school board approved a policy that bans distribution of alcohol at student events and urges parents to act as models for children.

Roth has reported restaurants that fail to post warnings of the dangerous effects of alcohol on pregnant women and fetuses, as required by Proposition 65. “You go into a restaurant and tell them, ‘You don’t have a Prop. 65 sign up.’ You know what’s going to happen the next time you’re in there? Absolutely nothing. People don’t respond a great deal of the time.

“I’ve tried to make people look at what the consequences are,” she said, saying that is why she is refusing to give up in the PTA case.

Roth was left out of ceremonies to install new PTA officers at a recent breakfast held at Tanenbaum’s house. “I felt if people were angry at me, and they didn’t want to install me . . . . I have to respect their anger and not make a scene,” she said. “I tried to be a lady.”

But that snub, she said, shows that Tanenbaum and other PTA officials are not letting bygones be bygones.

Tanenbaum said Roth was not installed because the PTA district decision was pending at the time, and “because things have been very uncomfortable and strained, we thought (we would) lay low.”

Roth is “just kind of unpredictable,” and that makes it “difficult to work in an open, trusting way which is essential for our volunteer organization,” Tanenbaum said.

Roth vows to keep up her war on alcohol, including urging that the PTA continue to put its weight behind her cause. “I’m planning on . . . sharing (my information) with the PTA, whether I’m a board member or not a board member,” she said. “I’m not going to take my toys and leave.”