San Rafael Saga: Allegiance is a Slippery Slope
Dusk at San Rafael Elementary one week after the inciting incident. Photo and treatment: Doug Forbes
SEPTEMBER 1, 2022
Pasadena Now recently published a letter to the editor that signifies the slippery slope of sustaining allegiance at all costs.
Pasadena businessman and former city commissioner Robin Salzer enumerated the many accomplishments of embattled San Rafael Elementary School principal Rudy Ramirez who has been on leave while the school board and superintendent have debated his professional fate.
Ramirez was enraged after four police officers detained his head custodian in a manner many have described as excessive. A private security guard covertly recorded the principal as he used dubious race and gender-fueled language.
District Superintendent Brian McDonald has decided against terminating Ramirez. Instead, he will take corrective action, the likes of which he did not disclose. “We will begin a facilitated dialogue at the school and with neighbors to strengthen relationships,” McDonald said.
It is not yet certain whether the vigorous support of Ramirez by hundreds of school parents and community stakeholders influenced McDonald’s decision.
Salzer is a former San Rafael parent. He said, “To destroy [Ramirez’s] career after a decade of a stellar commitment to education and after making our San Rafael Elementary School one of the best in California is unconscionable.”
First, describing any school as “one of the best in California” is not necessarily unconscionable but certainly questionable, let alone embroidered. Besides the subjective nature of such a statement, the California public school system includes tens of thousands of public schools serving upwards of 5.8 million students.
Secondarily, a commitment to education or any profession is not an exemption from acceptable behavior. It is not unconscionable to commit oneself to good behavior and to professional excellence.
After all, the word “unconscionable means “not right or reasonable.”
It was not necessarily reasonable how at least five police officers responded to an entirely erroneous 911 call. It was not reasonable how a private security guard decided to record Ramirez without consent. And it was not reasonable how the city of Pasadena released multiple videos to the public, thereafter further fomenting unrest.
It was not reasonable for Ramirez to engage the security guard whom he did not know. And, it was not reasonable for Ramirez to call one of his female school parents a “nosy fucking punk” or to call a female neighbor a “fucking bitch.”
Ramirez peppered his recorded statements with how white people will unfairly treat and judge him, how he was not a “wetback” and how the female neighbor would not have confronted him if she were to experience what he was like during off-hours.
Salzer said, “Looking back in recent history some of our most beloved sports and political figures have used ‘salty language’ in public with nary a slap on the wrist and more of a laugh or snicker.”
His comparison of Ramirez with celebrities who use “salty language” is also not necessarily reasonable, considering Ramirez leads 400 children and an all-female teaching staff. While the legality of the recording is a question for which we will get an answer, nonetheless, it is hardly reasonable for a school administrator to call women nosy fucking punks and fucking bitches, whether one does so at a local bar or on the hallowed grounds of a public school.
Salzer said, “Yes, words have consequences, but we are also a society of forgiveness and second chances. Principal Rudy Ramirez deserves a second chance. His career as an exemplary principal should be celebrated and his misstep a lesson for us to all learn from.”
Just south of a couple dozen parents have said that this is not the first time Ramirez has acted in an unconscionable manner — inclusive of similarly racist and sexist language — and not the first time administrators have been made aware of such issues.
Nobody has said whether the allegations of those who objected to the principal’s retention were equally weighted with those of Salzer and other supporters and whether officials had already afforded Ramirez a second chance or a third, although there has been mention of prior anger management counseling.
Full disclosure: As a former San Rafael parent who has worked with Rudy Ramirez before and after my daughter’s death, I have witnessed his commitment to his job and his willingness to extend himself well beyond his administrator’s deck. Such devotion notwithstanding, what he said was contemptible. His language rather overtly aimed at females has me especially sideways for reasons of which he is well aware.
I have reached out to him on three occasions. He has not replied.
I have also inquired about whether other district school principals have used similar language and, if so, what actions they faced. The school board and superintendent have repeatedly said that disciplinary action is a private matter. The reality is, this is a public matter at a publicly funded institution and one that has received a considerable amount of regional attention from the conflict.
To take the air out of the conflict, Salzer listed four accomplishments during Ramirez’s decade-long tenure. He said, “All of these prestigious awards and designations were earned under the leadership of Principal Rudy Ramirez.”
Salzer might be better served to remember that, while principals guide, teachers teach… and lead. And while San Rafael is, by many accounts, an admirable school shaping a rainbow of beautiful young lives, awards are as subjective as those who create them.
Plenty of skilled, accomplished, passionate people do objectionable things, more than a handful of times. On the extreme end of the spectrum, you can simply look at the prestigious awards, designations and admiration that Harvey Weinstein garnered for his films, including those with an unabashed social justice bent. On the other end, we see a celebrated principal from a moderately sized city wage venomous statements about women and non-white people.
Ramirez’s statements are now indelibly connected to problematic police treatment of a non-white custodian and unreasonable white neighbors. Ramirez himself fueled those connections. However, the 911 caller described the suspect as white. At least three of the officers were non-white, including a Latina. They never address the custodian with race-driven language. They also do apologize to the custodian, twice.
Average citizens do not necessarily know that police training often teems with classroom videos in which hostile suspects assail responding officers. When you are repeatedly taught that every situation is a tick away from being hostile, too many of those situations become self-fulfilling prophecies.
Salzer said, “Don’t let 1-2 minutes destroy 10 years of Ramirez’s love for his students and the institution.” Perhaps Salzer should realize that hostile, irreversible outcomes can emerge within 1-2 minutes, let alone a few seconds. The debate will rage on as to whether this is one of those outcomes and who has discharged the greater hostility.
We can infer that Ramirez should prevent himself from sharing 1-2 minutes or, in this case, 8 minutes of certain behavior that, again, put his teachers, students and families in the problematic position of defending him. We should also infer that the intentions of the person who captured those minutes and those who subsequently distributed them must also remain subjects to an equal amount of scrutiny.