To: San Diego Union-Tribune
From: Fran Zimmerman
Subject: CORRECT VERSION My Own Private San Diego
Date: 10/31/02

The grand lunchtime view that columnist Neil Morgan enjoys from the tower of downtown's University Club or from the seaside windows of the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club when he breaks bread with the power elite is a lot different from the one most San Diegans have when they grab a quick sandwich and talk to their co-workers about their kids and our schools. People in this town are worried that their kids and grandkids may be losing their right to a good free public education that is worth the paper the high school diploma is printed on.

The truth is that the drastic Bersin/Alvarado "Blueprint" has effectively destroyed comprehensive education in our schools – a curriculum that once included music, art, social studies and science at the elementary level and numerous elective opportunities such as music, art, and foreign language at secondary. The test scores after two years of this "Blueprint" regime are weak to mediocre, except for the youngest learners. The Latino Coalition for Education has declared no confidence in the "Blueprint." Beleaguered teachers have declared no confidence in the "Blueprint." Taxpayers worry about high-spending on consultants and lawyers; on administrative salaries with bonuses, perks and benefits; on the looming fiscal crisis; on the probability of a teachers' strike next year if there is no change in the adversarial, litigious, disrespectful climate at 4100 Normal Street.

So Morgan's "Truth" column (10/30) is anything but honest. He joins the chorus of his well-placed and wealthy luncheon companions who see the School District as a source of private contracts and potentially lucrative land deals. Morgan denigrates the existing School Board and trivializes elected boards of educations in general – which I believe are important and valuable democratic public institutions as they, at least, answer to the electorate. He echoes the clever but disingenuous Bersinism about "not what adults want, but what children need" and never punctures the false rhetoric about "reform" – a word that Bersin and his friends have artfully expropriated with amplification by this newspaper.

The truth? Our public schools have been hijacked by big-money locals like voucher-loving Walmart heir John Walton, Manpower temporary employment services owners Mel Katz and Phil Blair, Padres owner John Moores and his development partner Malin Burnham, (an America's Cup yachtsman who recommended Superintendent Bersin four years ago to the present Board which even then was split on its vote) and finally, yacht-owning Reading Recovery-loving Bill Lynch from Rancho Santa Fe. Private national foundations with agendas give us grants with strings attached, demanding that we retain Bersin and Alvarado. And yesterday billionaire Eli Broad, a Los Angeles developer and Democratic dabbler in social policy, and Richard Riordan, Rebublican millionaire and ex-Los Angeles Mayor, yesterday began dumping money into San Diego School Board races to defeat our own grassroots candidates Jeff Lee and John deBeck.

Incredibly, all these rich men, on behalf of their Superintendent of Schools Alan Bersin, will be financing late "hit-piece" mailers against Lee and deBeck. Burnham already has bought radio time to try to discredit Lee. And lamentably, huge sums of money will move through the Republican Party and its unofficial branch, the GOP Lincoln Club, to do more of same. You have to wonder why these people are so zealous about our public schools. Could it be about land and privatizing contracts – what powerful and entitled adults want, not what children need?

Frances O'Neill Zimmerman
Member, Board of Education
San Diego Unified School District