"Dogs are great assets to candidates, and the feeling seems to be engendered that if a dog loves the candidate, he can't be all that bad."
-- - Dick Gregory
The COVID-19 pandemic hit our emotional well-being hard. Safely sequestered away in our cocoons, we could not physically interact with those outside our immediate household. Even when straying out to secure necessities we were forced to stand six feet apart, our facial expressions hidden behind masks. Only the most hardened introvert could thrive in these conditions.
My family was particularly motivated to follow the suggestions of health experts because of my wife's diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. Her current treatment is a cancer drug that depletes her immune system. Contracting COVID early in the pandemic before treatments were established could have been fatal. Our jobs, classified as essential, already required us to venture outside of quarantine. Expanding the number of people we interfaced with was an unacceptable risk.
During this time Zoom became a lifeline. We are close with my extended family and usually get together at least once a month, even more often for birthdays and holidays. Deprived of these visits, my mother set up a Zoom account and scheduled a weekly get-together. With the added benefit that far-flung relatives could to participate easily, it became something I looked forward to every week.
Humans were not the only ones being affected by the isolation. Our three dogs, who excitedly greet our extended family when they walk through the door, were also deprived of these visits. Therefore, it is not surprising that Maizey quickly associated the opening tones of a Zoom conversation with a chance to interact with more of her favorite humans. Even when I was participating in meetings outside the family she would perch on my lap intently watching the screen.
It is not hard to imagine that the pandemic hit LAUSD School Board Member Scott Schmerelson particularly hard. He is a gregarious person who seems most satisfied at his job when visiting schools. With school buildings closed during the height of the pandemic, he was deprived of the most pleasant part of the job and instead was left to deal with the animosity towards the District's COVID policies. His interactions with the vultures on the Board were no longer mitigated by interactions with students.
I thought of this when I heard that during a recent debate over Zoom Scott had a dog perched on his lap. I had been at his house often during his first campaign and did not remember him having a dog. Like so many others, had he adopted a pet during the Pandemic to try to compensate for the lack of social interactions? Did his dog also learn to associate the sound of Zoom with a chance to meet more humans?
The actual story may be even more endearing. The dog was not Scott's but was his neighbor's and he was watching the pup while she was on vacation. Concerned that the dog was showing distress at being in an unfamiliar location, he let it crawl up on his lap.
Having known Scott for over a decade, his act of kindness does not surprise me. No matter what you think of Scott's policies or his effectiveness as a School Board Member, he is a nice guy. This is something that was conveyed to me often as I went door to door campaigning for him alongside teachers whom he had led as a principal.
Scott's opponent in November's election did not find the picture of the School Board member comforting a dog to be endearing. Instead, the California Charter School Association's lap dog, Dan Chang, took to social media to declare it was "weird."
I am not sure which voters Chang was trying to attract with this line of attack, but to me it just highlighted the difference between the two candidates. While Scott is a kind-hearted career educator, Chang is a bully running a campaign based on personal attacks instead of highlighting the difference in policy ideas.
While Scott enjoys widespread support from those who used to work with him, Chang's co-workers are supporting his opponent. Worse yet, Chang is so clueless about the state of his professional relationships that he was surprised to learn of his coworkers' endorsement of Scott during the Northridge East Neighborhood Council's Candidate Forum.
Our students deserve leaders on the LAUSD School Board whom they can look up to as role models. Someone who comforts a distressed animal would certainly fit this bill. Chang is the social-media bully we try to protect our kids from. He should not be allowed anywhere near the District's halls of power.
Carl Petersen is a parent advocate for public education, particularly for students with special education needs, who serves as the Education Chair for the Northridge East Neighborhood Council. As a Green Party candidate in LAUSD's District 2 School Board race, he was endorsed by Network for Public Education (NPE) Action. Dr. Diane Ravitch has called him "a valiant fighter for public schools in Los Angeles." For links to his blogs, please visit www.ChangeTheLAUSD.com. Opinions are his own.
