A Lesson From Burbank

Every time the subject of education comes up in casual conversation, someone comes unglued.

They’re enraged because our kids are stupid and getting stupider, our teachers are stupid and getting stupider, budget-makers are stupid and getting stupider and people who write about education are truly the stupidest of all.

I am personally not enraged because stupidity is what a newspaper columnist feeds on, even if he’s too stupid to know it.

What brings education to mind is a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court that wants to prohibit use of a test to determine whether teachers can read and write.

The suit asks the question, is it necessary that a second-grade teacher be able to read better than her students or can they learn together?

We discussed this the other night at a dinner party among whose guests were a high school teacher, an outraged liberal mother and me, a token cholo. Burritos were served in my honor. I hate burritos.

I mention ethnicity only because the lawsuit was filed by, among others, the Assn. of Mexican-American Educators. This naturally brought me under attack.

“What’s that stupid suit all about?” the teacher asked, turning toward me, as though I were responsible for the stupid thing. The word stupid came up a lot.

Before I had an opportunity to reply, the outraged liberal mother said the tests were racist because they relied heavily on English, thereby causing emotional pain for people like me.

“He reads and writes in English prooty good,” my wife Cinelli said, but no one was listening. Everyone was enraged.

The debate continued during tequila sunrises, and through the tostada salad, the bean burritos and the flan, a desert appropriate for both ingesting and rubbing on one’s behind to prevent bedsores.

I played the island of serenity in a sea of chaos and listened while others fired salvos at stupid school administrators, stupid teachers unions, stupid school boards and every stupid legislator who ever trod the stupid halls of government.

The diners were so involved in loudly stupidizing everything associated with education, hardly anyone heard a voice ask, “What about Burbank?”

It was a whispery voice without definitive tonal qualities, as one might expect a Burbank voice to be. But it evoked curiosity.

“What about Burbank?” I asked, stirring the flan so it would appear to have been eaten.

“Everybody gets along in the school district,” the whispery person said. He looked a little like a James Thurber cartoon.

The room fell silent for a moment. What was the whispery fool doing introducing a positive element into an arena of torrid debate? The hostess was humiliated.

“Anyone for cafe de Tijuana?” she asked desperately. I ordered a double.

But the next day I looked into the Burbank Question. The little man was right. They get along in the school district because teachers and learning are considered important, and that ain’t too stupid.

The Burbank School District, like all others, has a budget problem. But, unlike most districts, it has concluded that if anyone had to be sacrificed, it shouldn’t be teachers.

Teachers, in Burbank at least, are considered foot soldiers in the war on stupidity, a concept too oblique for L.A. to comprehend.

As a result of this conclusion, Supt. Arthur Pierce eliminated 40 jobs, half of them administrators and their aides. Not one teacher was canned, the average classroom size wasn’t increased and the district saved $2 million.

This was accomplished very quietly at about the time L.A.’s superintendent was bailing out and hostility prevailed in every corner.

Granted, the Burbank enrollment of 21,000 students is nothing compared to L.A.’s 800,000, but what prevails in Burbank--despite other problems--is a willingness for everyone to work together.

Size makes no difference when the attitude is right.

“Honesty has worked well for us,” Pierce said the other day. “We have no secrets from the teachers union and they have none from us. We understand why we’re here.”

“A trust has been built,” Burbank Teachers Assn. President Arne Pearson said. “I’m high on this district. It’s not all heaven, but I’m proud of what’s happening. By the way,” she added, “I’m a union president, true . . . but I’m a second-grade teacher first.”

There’s a lesson from Burbank for everyone. I just hope to God we’re not too stupid to understand it.