Hometown Hero: Louise Jaffe

“Every parent is willing to throw themselves in front of a truck for their child. So what do we do to make every family able to translate their love for their child into action that allows and supports the potential of achievement for their child.”
Louise Jaffe, Chair of the Santa Monica College Board of Trustees.

The way Louise tells it, she was born in the middle of the 1950’s and in the middle of mainstream USA. She mostly grew up in Salisbury, Maryland, a rural community on the Eastern Shore. Her dad was an optometrist and her mom a homemaker, raising Louise and her brother, and helping out with the optometry office.

But mainstream USA was changing and Louise, a good student, instead of senior year in high school went to the local college. She wrote a paper that she thought was original and received her first ‘C’. She wrote her next paper in a traditional style and got an ‘A.’ She went long enough to learn that the idea of being in a classroom for four years and being graded on her work was not for her and transferred to Antioch College. Louise describes Antioch “as a whole new way to be in the world.” “Amazing” professors who didn’t try to “manage” people, just to “welcome” them.

She turned away from a human-centric course of study, wanting to focus on things outside herself. Her degree in Biology took her to the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography in Savannah, GA. Louise discovered she was ‘good enough at science but not good enough to have sparks of insight’ and she wanted that feeling about her work.

Not knowing what should come next, she accepted an opportunity from her uncle, the film director Herbert Ross, who was working on “The 7% Solution.” She describes herself as ‘lucky enough’ to work on films until her last film job, “Howard the Duck.” It was 1985 and she married her husband, Richard Casey, (called Casey) just 2 days after the film wrapped.

By 1986 they were living in Santa Monica and their daughter, Maggie, was born. “Everything changed in a moment. Casey and I were walking Maggie in a stroller and crossing Lincoln Blvd. Without thinking, I stepped out into the street to create a protective zone around the baby. From then on, I couldn’t look at any person without thinking ‘that’s someone’s baby.’”

Luck again intervened and Louise got the chance to work, part time, on the Simpson’s as script supervisor and she’s been working on the Simpson’s continually since 1986. She and Casey had a second daughter, Nora, who was born in 1989.

Louise turned her focus to their education. Louise credits Mary Hartzell, Director of First Presbyterian Nursery School and Julie DiChiro, the principal at Will Rogers, as her teachers. “Julia was a person who didn’t say no. She made each idea better. It was a big lesson to me.”

Louise followed her children from Will Rogers to John Adams and to SAMOHI. She was the PTA president at Will Rogers and at SAMOHI; a founding member of the Community of Excellent Public Schools; and a past PTA Council president. “It has all been a remarkable learning experience and I learned as much as I gave.”

Louise describes the teachers and the principal at Will Rogers as ‘inspired.’ Yet she could see that, in the same school environment, one group of children was doing much better than the other. “I began to realize that learning had to begin at birth and to be a responsibility of the family and the community.”

Right about that time she read the City Open Space Plan and learned about the concept of ‘City As Park.” Louise applied the same framework to education and developed the concept of Santa Monica as a Lifelong Learning City. http:www.smllc.org

“Education is essential. Everyone needs access. All children flourish.”

“My daughters are in college now. I will be at UCLA this coming fall studying for a doctorate in Educational Leadership. I work hard. I try to be a nice person. But I recognize that I’ve been lucky in my marriage, my children, my work, and my city. I’m thrilled and I’m grateful.”

What Say You: Green Streets

Ocean Park Boulevard is proposed to be the City’s newest ‘green street’. The plan for a first phase, from Lincoln Boulevard to Neilson Way, includes bike lanes, street trees, landscape medians and is designed so that it will capture the urban runoff from the Boulevard and from the surrounding 55 acres which drain into its catchment basin.

In Southern California water quality and water quantity are inseparable. Our metropolitan area discharges storm water to the ocean in an amount of water equaling half of the water we pay to import. Storm water, known as urban run off, makes it way off our sidewalks and streets, into the storm sewers and through them out to the ocean, having picked up along the way the pollutants and bacteria that make the Bay and humans sick. Urban runoff, if allowed to infiltrate through the soil to our underground aquifer will be cleaned of pollutants and bacteria in the infiltration process and will reduce our dependence on imported water and help us to better cope with California’s drought cycles.

Combine our citywide support for cleaning the Bay with our love of cycling and walking, add a strong plant palette with lots of canopy trees for air quality benefits and to provide shade for walkers and bicyclists and you have the recipe for Green Streets.

The draft Santa Monica Land Use and Circulation Element (LUCE) states: “Streets are more than just pipes for getting as many cars as possible from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time. As the City’s largest publicly-owned land use and biggest component of the City’s open space, streets and sidewalks must serve multiple functions beyond moving cars.”

We ought to be able to get around our small city with ease and with pleasure, but that is not always so. Green streets will help. All our streets should provide pedestrian safety and a tree­­–lined streetscape, designed to infiltrate urban run off. The LUCE plan calls for a street hierarchy and plans a network of secondary streets which act as connectors between our neighborhoods and are designed for slower traffic than the arterial streets and safe cycling and walking. The Ocean Park Boulevard Streetscape Project will do the job.

As project architect, John Kaliski, says “Ocean Park Boulevard is one of the largest and earliest of the green streets in all of Southern California and we believe it will serve as a model for all the green streets we know are to come. The high level of community participation in the design was truly beneficial and involving the community should be part of the model for the design of all green streets.”

Originally a proposal from local resident and OPA (Ocean Park Association) member Bob Taylor, with the advocacy of the Ocean Park community, this concept now has citywide support. It has been reviewed and supported in community meetings, by the Council, the Planning Commission, and the Recreation and Parks Commission. It will go back to the Council, one more time, for final approval, and is planned for construction in 2010.