John de Beck: If the school district is broken, fix it!

There are problems that keep recurring in the San Diego Unified School District. One is the periodic takeover by special interests groups that are completely destabilizing and are functions of the election process for board members. The second is the lack of attention paid to community needs by whoever is elected to the board.

Neither of these problems can be fixed if community members do not band together to create an organization designed to address them.

Because I have been an insider on the San Diego Board of Education, I have personally experienced the swings of power at least twice. Each time the power shifted to special interests, they acted as winners and pursued some quick fixes. Most of these plans were designed to help children with top-down mandates that were more for adults than for students. On top of that, we have continued fights over resources and outside private funders send money to the district to buy actions that their particular dogma supports. We then have organized labor, coming in to kick top-down management and replace it with their own, which really replaces one top-down mandate with another.

In each of these takeovers, the forces ignore the issues that parents and others have, and what they consider important. These consumers of the educational product of the district, who have no financial interest, thus, find themselves powerless. Those who win take control and mandate from the top what local schools have to do.

Because my career on the board is winding down, I feel compelled to offer ideas for a newly created school district that would be sensitive to local school communities, and less vulnerable to special interests’ takeovers.

The conventional view is that San Diego has an economic and racial divide that is Interstate 8. And many of the issues of organization seem to conclude that a district breakup would be on this Mason-Dixon line. That makes any discussion of a breakup take on racial overtones. However, that is completely contrary to what I am proposing. The coastal district is an east-west split, using Interstate 163 and Interstate 15 as the eastern boundaries (see map).

I do not propose a racial solution. The proposed district split must be one that supports integration. That is a legal requirement.

In reality, the coastal area of the district now supports a majority of voluntary integration students and the proposed new district would do so as well. Efficient busing would continue and schools would all be at near capacity because of a more comprehensive curriculum and attractive special magnet schools.

The curriculum improvements would be more likely, partly because each cluster would have the opportunity to save or expand programs by sharing resources within the cluster. Maybe shared music and art teachers, maybe shared gifted programs, maybe shared special cluster language instruction, or even shared counseling and guidance or nursing services. Right now, each district school has its own budget but there is no formal cluster resource sharing design.

Reducing special interest control

So how can the plan avoid special interests’ takeovers? The answer is by electing board members that represent identifiable educational communities in a way that avoids massive financial and media support from special interests. For example, our present board was elected with hundreds of thousands of dollars that they did not raise themselves. None of them raised more than about $5,000 from the entire school district population they now represent and control.

The need for representative board members can be solved by having board members elected from high school clusters. These are the elementary and middle schools that send students on to a specific high school. Having district elections by high schools would increase the number of board members. For example, in my current Board District C, there would be three board members, one from Point Loma, one from Mission Bay, and one from La Jolla. Each of these board members would likely be from folks known in the Parent Teachers Associations (PTAs), foundations and other advocacy groups within the cluster, and an outsider would be noticed immediately. If a “ringer” got on the ballot, it would be more difficult to mount a special interest election because using most mass media would be highly inefficient. In addition, having to influence the outcome of as many as five regional elections would be a political consultant’s nightmare.

Facilitating board accountability

And, what about board member accountability to constituents? At present the San Diego Board of Education is only accountable to the electorate if they seek election at the end of their term or if a recall is successfully mounted. Of course, board members who seek higher office might wish to consider their future as they vote, and having special interest support may be an asset for their ambitions. However, because of the current citywide general election used to elect SDUSD board members, the number of signatures currently needed to get a recall vote on the ballot is insurmountable. In a cluster election, the number of signatures for a recall action would be significantly less, and therefore accountability actions, like recalls, would be in reach for those concerned about their representation.

A district management organization plan to support cluster management and Community Guidance is available now, but a new board would have to approve a design and select staff to accomplish this new plan.

A new board is required.

A new board needs to be selected at the same time voters approve the proposed Coastal Unified School District. In the final plan there would be up to 9 board members and their pay would be less per month than the current board. The board members would serve the clusters only as a member of the new district board, not as administrators of their clusters. Nevertheless, they would have their cluster constituencies to keep them focused on appropriate district policies.
Are there other benefits to a split?

Besides making governance more accountable, the objective of a split would be to make a district that was more efficient and less wasteful. Economies of scale, as bureaucracies see things, are merely justification for the huge bureaucracy. Despite what these advocates espouse, savings are possible by eliminating services that are duplicated in the San Diego County Department of Education. These savings should be diverted to better instruction, reduced taxes, or used for recruiting more qualified teachers. And eliminating a group of people sitting around full-time for duties that are seasonal may be another way to save. Careful examination of the expenditures of the SDUSD will reveal a huge overhead. About 60 percent goes directly to schools. The rest is for school services whether they want them or not. For comparison about effectiveness as it relates to size, one needs to look to Los Angeles, and then to Poway, or Encinitas.

So, where are the details?

The new governance model is just a proposal. Young parents and community members who are fed up with the status quo must take it up. It can’t be my project. But I feel compelled to offer suggestions based on my experience and training. It is not too efficient to give a blank page and start from scratch, so I have suggestions I will provide to the next generation of school leaders I hope will emerge from this effort. I hope to meet with them in the coming months.

I expect any new district board to carefully review and modify my proposal to make it better. I believe new board members would prefer not having to start from scratch. I can and will defend my ideas with interested parties.

The essentials

This district would meet all regulations in the Education Code (Section 35700 et seq.) The process is diagrammed in a flow chart that is contained in the Ed Code (see copy).

Simplified, the process requires that 25 percent of the registered voters within the boundaries of a proposed district sign petitions for the district split. After the signatures are verified, then a plan for the district governance must be presented to the County Board and the State Board. If approved, 51 percent of the voters in the new district must support it. The plan must answer “essential conditions” as follows:

- Assurance of adequate enrollment
- Retention of substantial community identity
- A plan for equitable division of property
- No increase in racial isolation
- Neutral State cost impact
- Evidence to show increased educational performance without adverse effects on the other part of the district
- No design to increase property values
- Evidence that the plan promotes sound fiscal management without adversely affecting existing district.

All of these requirements will be met in the proposal. Draft answers are ready now. All affected employees will have employment options and union contracts will be honored.

Most of this is subject to the new board approval; however, the electoral districts and how the initial board is to be elected must be specified.

Essential parts of the proposal

High school feeder clusters will be the organizational and political division of the proposed Coastal District.

Each cluster will have a cluster budget, a cluster manager and a cluster advisory body. Individual school clusters would have options to share assets and personnel.

A draft management model that supports cluster governance is ready.

There is national evidence to support the fact that sustainable leadership can be accomplished by hiring multiple leaders for specialized divisions who manage affairs with differing views moderated by a board. The draft plan includes a designated chief instructional officer/superintendent to manage instruction, and adds a chief accountability officer, a chief business officer, and a chief facilities officer who supervise operations in their areas of expertise.

A new board may modify my ideas or throw them out completely. But I believe there is evidence that the urban superintendent’s job is too big for one person to do. The high national turnover of superintendents supports that view. And here in San Diego, we should be convinced.

In summary

My belief is the current district governance model is broken. I propose splitting SDUSD into compact school districts that are more sensitive to local communities and into sub-districts not likely to be dominated by any special interests. Without action, the battle for control of SDUSD will rage for the foreseeable future, and children will suffer. I hate to leave office without that discussion.

John de Beck is a board of education member for the San Diego Unified School District.

Tags: SDNN

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 9:50 am and is filed under Columns, Education, Politics & Government. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.