By
FRANCES UNEILL ZIMMERMAN
Member, Board of Eduication
Starting
on Jan. 8, the Board of Education will cable televise
its twice-monthly Tuesday meetings. This major
improvement in public information about our public
schools will alert the community to the status
of current "reforms" that are presently
the subject of serious debate among the five trustees.
In
my opinion, it may take a decade to remedy the
harm done to San Diego's public schools after
Superintendent Alan Bersin and Chancellor of Instruction
Anthony Alvarado depart the premises. In their
three and a half years in power - and it is about
power and self-promotion, not what's best for
the public education of our 143,000 students -
they have been given an unaccountable free ride
by the Board majority of rubber stamps - Ron Ottinger,
Ed Lopez and infamous emailer Sue Braun.
The
results? Weak elementary mathematics that is not
aligned to California math standards. No time
for elementary school science. No time or money
for field trip frills. Fewer elective courses
for older students - art, music, drama, manual
arts, foreign language and social studies classes.
More than 24,000 low-achieving students (most
of them children of color) tracked into dead-end
remedial reading and math days with no relief
and no exit other than dropping out of school.
At
secondary level there is a dumbed-down physics
requirement at grade nine that is too hard for
poor readers and too easy for good readers. Big
classes of 35 to 40 regular or advanced students
in other subject areas are common, while remedial
stalags are held to 20 kids. While we talk about
"closing the achievement gap" between
haves and have-nots, test scores are flat or down
in reading and math for all but two grades, and
children of color have performed less well in
the last year.
There
is an exodus of experienced and high-quality administrators
to other school districts and the County Office
of Education. New principals are selected by a
process dominated by a cabal of Alvarado insiders,
including his fiancee, who make secret decisions
after which low-ranked greenhorn candidates mysteriously
rise to first-choice. These nominees are then
unblushingly ratified by the rubber stamp Board
threesome which neither seeks nor gets objective
documentation of candidates' full qualifications.
Our
teacher corps is demoralized and increasingly
militant as their contract approaches expiration
and Bersin refuses to honor their existing contract
or to collaborate with them as professionals on
academic planning for the classroom.
One
billion public dollars are being spent by this
authoritarian, self-aggrandizing and secretive
administration and huge private money is being
raised without the requisite critical oversight
of the elected Board of Education, as in the case
of Carnegie, Gates and Hewlett grants. And this
is my short list of concerns.
As
a-moviegoer, I draw an analogy between what's
going on in our City Schools under Bersin and
Alvarado with "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers."
If the community doesn't wake up to what's happening
and take charge at the ballot box in the two School
Board elections of March and November next year,
we will have lost one of the few viable and perfectible
urban public school systems left in this country.
I am looking to TV to help make us aware of the
plight of our public schools under the Bersin/Alvarado
regime.
O'Neill
Zimmerman of La Jolla represents District A.
