“Biden’s appointment of Cindy Marten as Deputy Secretary of Education is a brilliant choice. She is a caring teacher at heart who can also take on a bureaucracy to bring real progress to our public schools. We made a good choice in 2013 and so has President-Elect Biden in 2021.”
John Lee Evans, Past President, San Diego Unified School Board
The nomination of Superintendent Marten to be Deputy Secretary of Education is an excellent pick by President-elect Biden. He obviously paid attention to the major progress in student achievement in San Diego Unified under her leadership, as reported by studies at UCLA and Stanford, as well as the Broad Foundation and the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
In 2013 when I was the President of the Board of Education we selected as Superintendent a successful principal of a high poverty elementary school to bring her results to scale across the district. She was already doing the work of a Superintendent by forming partnerships with parents, teachers, community members, philanthropists and district officials. Now as Superintendent she has been a leading proponent for school funding with success at the state and national level, which makes her a natural for a national leadership position.
Superintendent Marten is a servant leader. She has supported her staff and has developed a strong leadership team that will continue forward with the reforms put in the place during her tenure. We started developing our Vision 2020 reforms in 2009 and as Superintendent she operationalized those goals and made them a reality in our district. She will do the same for our nation’s public school students.
I knew my term on the school board was going to end in 2020, but I did not know it would end in the midst of a pandemic with our campuses closed for months. Our district was founded 166 years ago before the Emancipation Proclamation. We have been through the Civil War, World War I, the Spanish flu pandemic and the Great Depression. Many of our graduates fought and died in World War II. We benefited from the postwar prosperity that propelled California to the top of the nation in educational funding and outcomes mid-century. We integrated our San Diego schools in the 1970s. We weathered 9/11 and the Great Recession of 2008. In 2020 we now face the Great Pandemic and the Black Lives Matter social justice movement.
Facing a hard reality on Day One
Richard Barrera and I were elected on the heels of the Great Recession. On the day after I was elected a reporter came to my house to ask what we were going to do about millions of dollars of cuts in the middle of the school year. The very severe cuts continued for the next four years as we struggled to keep the district afloat. We had community meetings across the district to identify what it was that we absolutely needed to keep. It was daunting, to say the least. Richard and I would meet with the finance team and district leadership for hours every weekend to figure out how we could finesse the cuts without completely destroying the district.
We came into a District that had a revolving door of Superintendents. The problem was that the District would look for a “Savior Superintendent” to save us from ourselves. Then after the Board would hire such a person the members would begin to disagree with what he was doing. A new Superintendent would come in with many new ideas and throw out the old methods, even the ones that were working. Urban Superintendents tend to move on after a couple of years, leaving the schools dealing with the turmoil of another change.
Developing Vision 2020
As a Board we decided that first we needed a plan. A new Superintendent was hired just before we started. He was taken aback by the fact that we wanted to come up with a community vision for our schools rather than simply relying on the Superintendent. It was further complicated by the fact that he was not an honest communicator and he took an adversarial approach to teachers. We called our plan Vision 2020 to focus on how we would improve our schools over the next decade as our first graders at the time moved towards graduation. We developed a school reform plan, San Diego style.
During the next few years we worked on the plan even as our funding continued to be cut. At the same time there were moves to undermine the democratic basis of our public schools by calling for appointed school board members. Underfunding the schools was an ideal way to prove that public education doesn’t work, but in those difficult years we continued to improve our student achievement. We also saw inequities in resources and curricula among our schools and began to devote extra resources to the higher needs schools.
A new Superintendent
In 2013 we appointed a new Superintendent, Cindy Marten to operationalize the goals we had outlined in Vision 2020. We chose a principal of a high poverty elementary school who was producing positive results in her school by focusing on student needs, motivating a stable staff and reaching out to the community and the District for support. At her school she was already doing the work of a Superintendent and we wanted to take her success to scale across the District.
The changes we made
Broad and challenging curriculum
The No Child Left Behind program led schools to teach to standardized tests that were very narrow in scope. We wanted a broad and challenging curriculum that taught the basics, but also included music and the arts, physical fitness and social emotional development. We have all students learning another world language and at some schools we now offer immersion programs that allow students to become fluent. We became a national leader in technology, which was a lifesaver when we were forced to resort to online learning during the pandemic. To challenge our students we began offering more Advanced Placement courses at all high schools. Even more impressive was the exponential growth of college courses offered to students on our high school campuses.
Critical and creative thinking
We have emphasized critical and creative thinking. This is so important with the plethora of information and misinformation that our students must learn to sift through. Paolo Freire, a Brazilian educator, said that literacy is about more than learning to read and write. It is about learning that you can act upon your world and be an agent of change. Our new ethnic studies courses put this principle into action.
Changing the way we measure success
We have changed the way that we measure success beyond the single standardized test scores. The National Assessment o Educational Progress found San Diego schools improving the most among 25 urban districts. The Broad Foundation, not necessarily a supporter of San Diego style school reform, studied our schools and, based on the data, listed us as one of the top four districts they surveyed in the nation. In California think tanks at UCLA and Stanford saw San Diego Unified’s results as an outlier. Based on our demographics our students are beating the odds.
Effective teaching
Quality teaching is the key ingredient of Quality Schools in Every Neighborhood. We have just reached a tentative agreement with our teachers to replace our old pass/fail evaluation system with a new growth and development model. This will allow teachers to work on a path of continuous improvement and support with peers and instructional leaders. Teacher evaluation is a hot topic across the country and I believe that this new system will serve as a model for the nation.
Meaningful graduation
We increased the graduation rate, but we also made graduation more meaningful. We have made the graduation requirements more rigorous than some of our neighboring suburban districts. The University of California entrance requirements are the default curriculum for our students. We have also increased the number of career technical courses in our transformed high schools. Now upon graduation students will have the opportunity to choose between university or community college or to go directly into a technical career. Just in the first two years we went from 44% eligible for UC to 70%, but the increases were much more dramatic for African American and Latinx students.
The one thing that was still mi$$ing
Funding is unstable, inadequate
As 2020 approached I realized that, while we had not yet achieved our goal of a high quality school in every neighborhood, I realized that we had made substantial progress on our goal of improving our schools. But there was one issue that was still a major obstacle: a lack of stable funding that would provide all of the programs that everyone agrees our schools need. The Local Control Funding Formula formalized what San Diego Unified was already doing: providing extra resources to our neediest students and schools. But the problem was that the base grant was not enough to operate even a school in La Jolla. The concept is right, the basic funding is not. This funding problem has existed in California over the past 40 years as we descended from the top tier to the bottom tier nationally in school funding. They say that money does not buy happiness, but poverty does buy a lot of misery.
At the end of 2019 we met with the leaders of California’s large school districts to begin to work on a plan for long term, stable funding for our schools. We balance our budget every year and never run a deficit. But at the beginning of budget planning every year it looks like we have a “deficit” because we must calculate our budget on last year’s revenues, but next year’s expenses until the state approves a budget. Just as we wanted to step out of the immediate crisis when we developed a long range Vision 2020, we wanted to act similarly with regard to budgeting. We would need to continue our annual advocating for a little more money, but we also needed to look at how to completely reform the system.
Soon after we began talking about this the pandemic broke out. We were able to leverage our collaboration with other districts to prevail against massive state budget cuts to our schools, including laying off staff, in the midst of the challenges of the pandemic. San Diego Unified also led the nation in advocating for federal funds, which started with the CARES Act, but much more still needs to be done.
Dealing with the pandemic in our schools
Last summer when we wanted to reopen our schools in the fall we faced so many conflicting guidelines—Centers for Disease Control, American Academy of Pediatrics, California Department of Health, even the White House. We decided to empanel a group of experts in infectious disease and public health at UCSD to determine 1) what mitigation factors need to be in place for our students to be safe in school and 2) to determine what the community conditions that make reopening unsafe are.
Reopening in phases
The UCSD experts recommended that we begin reopening in phases. We began Phase 1 with appointments for individuals and small groups of elementary students who are facing the most challenges as students with special needs, students who are under achieving and our new students, including our youngest. This phase has not progressed as quickly as we would like and we are now adding on middle and high schools students. At this stage it is voluntary for students and teachers and we need to better inform them about all of the safety measures in place.
We are very aware that there is great suffering and damage being done by this pandemic. We have a goal of reopening in person in January with half of the students in class at a time. But there is one factor that we cannot directly control: the spread of the virus in the community that makes it unsafe to open. But we must be ready to reopen at the first moment that we get the green light. All of the protective measures are in place now, as well as a routine testing and tracing plan.
Just as we came out of the 2008-2012 financial crisis stronger than before, we can do the same as we come out of the pandemic. We must begin working on a recovery plan for 2021 to make up for what we have lost. This also requires Congress to act to restore our schools. We can and must come out stronger than before.
Lessons learned from the pandemic
We have also learned lessons from this pandemic. We can move away from the old funding model of “time in the seat” and be more creative about how we utilize our time in large groups, small groups and individually. Likewise, our grading system is being reformed to be based on mastery and competence in the subject matter. It will include additional time and second chances to learn material to put more students in the sphere of success. The Black Lives Matter social justice movement has put a heightened emphasis on our disproportionate discipline policies and we are reimagining the role of police in our schools. While we are eager to return to in person learning, online learning will be a valuable supplement to in person learning and will improve ease of communication between teachers, students, parents and even committee meetings across the district.
Hope for the future
There are a couple of reasons that I am hopeful as our schools move beyond the year of Vision 2020: the students at Lincoln High School and the Class of 202 across the District.
Lincoln High moving forward
When we first came on the Board in 2008 Lincoln High School had just reopened to a beautiful new campus. But in the next few years we heard about low test scores, incidents of violence on campus and a revolving door of administrators. While some students were successful, the overall picture was not pretty. Last year the administration put in a new leadership team to change the culture of the school and to improve student achievement. Right away we heard about fewer absences and less tardiness and fewer discipline issues on campus.
I decided that I wanted to see firsthand what was happening at Lincoln, so I did an Undercover Boss type visit. Of course, it was not easy to blend in, but I put on blue jeans, a t-shirt and a backpack and shadowed a student for the full day. I did all of the school work the students were doing. In English we learned about looking at situations through different cultural lenses and how to write an expository essay. In algebra I learned (or relearned) how to divide polynomials. The teacher carefully explained to the class, then had them practice in small groups and them had them turn in a quiz at the end of the class. She wanted to determine who needed further teaching for the next day. I just had to go up to the teacher to see if I had done it right and she said, “Yes!” I felt the pride of a student who has mastered a new skill. At lunch and between classes I walked across a calm, peaceful and friendly campus. Not once did I think about the concept of discipline.
The students are teachers were fully engaged. They were mutually respectful, not the authoritarian atmosphere that I experienced in my high school years. These students are going to be better prepared to enter the next phase of their lives than I was.
Saga of the Class of 2020
The Class of 2020 was in first grade when I first joined the Board. I followed one cohort of students from elementary to middle to high school and made a video each year about their experience in school and their plans for the future. Their intelligence, creativity, empathy and inclusiveness were impressive every year. Little did we know that the few months before they graduated they would be doing their school work at home on a computer and that they would miss senior activities, including graduation. They even faced uncertainty as they were about to begin their college careers in an unknown format. But they are also resilient and optimistic, as you can see in their final video before they graduated.
Hope for 2030
As I finish my third term on the Board of Education, I am optimistic because we have the right Superintendent and staff and the right Board to focus on excellence and equity. We also have an amazing group of students. The second graders, the Class of 2030, will get through this pandemic and then benefit from many of the ongoing reforms in the district, particularly the focus on quality teaching. Just as the Class of 2020 survived the Great Recession, the Class of 2030 will come out stronger. Another reason that I am hopeful about 2030 is that the Class of 2020 will be hitting their stride and already making a very positive mark upon the world.
The San Diego Unified School Board has decided to embark on a bold plan to reopen the schools this fall for students all day every day. But the only way this can be done for the full year is with the state providing as much as its revenues permit, along with stimulus money from the federal government.
Facing severe cutbacks in state funding for schools announced last month by the Governor, the Board and Superintendent had contemplated a continuation of distance learning. This would prolong significant learning loss for all students, but particularly low income students, English language learners, special education students and homeless and foster youth. However, the state legislature is planning to reverse those cuts. These state funds could cover the extra Covid-19 expenses at the beginning of the year. It would also allow for a high quality distance learning program for those families who choose not to return to the classroom. However, if federal stimulus money for public schools is not approved this summer the district would need to revert to distance learning for the second half of the year.
Some say opening the school year with insufficient funds for in-classroom learning all year is a high stakes gamble. But the Board determined that the alternative of a mediocre full year was not acceptable. Furthermore, the economy cannot fully reopen unless our schools are open full time for working parents.
So far only ½ of 1% of federal stimulus money has been awarded to public schools. The House of Representatives approved an additional $58B for public schools in the Heroes Act. Now the Senate needs to come up with a stimulus plan that specifically provides funds for public schools, the ultimate safety net in our communities. The Council of Great City Schools and all of the major national educational organizations have stated that a minimum of $175B is needed to keep our schools afloat as state and local revenues plummet. All of the additional Covid-19 costs require increased—not decreased–funding.
As difficult as it was to close our schools, we did not face the immediate existential threat that the airlines and other industries faced in March. But the day of reckoning for public schools will arrive before the first day of the school year. We cannot start the year with teacher layoffs, program cuts or distance only learning. Every school district needs to make its case directly to its state’s two US Senators with the personal stories of how this will affect our students. They will eventually find out, but it will be too late if we do not speak up now.
As a Trustee of the San Diego Unified School Board I feel compelled to speak out about the murder of George Floyd. The nation is now waking up to the reality of systemic racism within our police departments, as well as other institutions. We can no longer refer to “just a few bad apples.” Of course, the vast majority of police officers are decent and courageous people, carrying out a difficult job. But as Chris Rock once said, no one would put up with a few “bad apple” pilots crashing airliners. One example of the systemic problem was that Floyd’s murderer had been selected by the system to train the other new officers on how to act as a police officer. Along with many elected officials I support the formation of a truly independent San Diego police review commission.
At San Diego Unified we have our own sworn police department that addresses issues internally in the schools, as well as external threats ranging from human trafficking to school shooters. During the pandemic our officers have assisted with food distribution to our school families. But at this time we should review our own police practices. We also need to better understand how our armed, uniformed officers are perceived by students of color, particularly African Americans.
We must also look at systemic racism in our educational system. A few years ago the Superintendent convened a workshop for school leaders with the National Equity Project to address the issue of low expectations for our students of color. (As a psychologist I can say that teachers’ expectations have a significant impact on student outcomes.) A few participants at the workshop asked me, “What happened? Was there an incident that led to this workshop?” Yes, there’s a problem and it has been around for many, many generations. Our own mission statement that all students will succeed has not resulted in equal outcomes for African Americans and other students of color.
We have a pilot program that has a few ethnic studies courses in our district. But that is not enough. Our goal is to have multi-ethnic perspectives infused into our entire curriculum at all grade levels. It is becoming increasingly clear that we cannot move forward if we do not realistically understand our history and the through line of racism.
This weekend I participated in a protest with the overriding theme of Black Lives Matter. I was encouraged by the predominance of so many young people of all ethnic backgrounds who were participating. Many white citizens are starting to wake up.
Seeing a video of a man being tortured for 8 minutes and 46 seconds until his death is horrifying for all decent people. I realize that grief and talk without action is not enough. The next step is listening. We need to engage with San Diego community members of all races and backgrounds to address the damage against students of color within our system. After all, they include our future police officers, judges, social workers and healthcare providers.
As a full school board we can only take official action at a regular board meeting and I am addressing this as an individual member. Our next regular meeting is June 23. However, we have a already scheduled board workshop on June 16 at which time I plan to begin the meeting with 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silence to honor the life of George Floyd.
Since the time I graduated from high school in the 1970s the world has changed. Or has it? Has high school changed? There were three grades at high school, because there was junior high instead of middle school. The “board of education” was a paddle for misbehavior. (Being “hacked” had nothing to do with computers.) There were six periods of English, math, science, history, PE and an elective. But is it really that much different now?
I decided to shadow a student for a day at a local high school. I thought it would be better way to see what a student experiences in high school, rather than going on an organized tour or simply observing a class from the back of the room. I would try to do the work that the students were doing in a manner as unobtrusive as possible.
In my high school day I learned about African American history, analyzed various texts about cultural perspective and learned how to divide polynomials. As an adult it turned out to be very engaging content.
I arrived to the high school a few minutes before the bell to meet the student that I would follow. As an older white guy dressed in blue jeans and a t-shirt with a backpack, was I fooling myself that I could blend in? I had told the principal that I did not want to follow some very high achieving student leader, but someone more “typical.” She told me she asked a few students who declined the “opportunity” to have an adult follow them around all day. No surprise, but fortunately, one student agreed.
My first class was AVID, a course originally developed in San Diego by a teacher who wanted to encourage students whose parents did not attend college to be prepared for that possibility. When I was in school you were either on the college track or you were not. I found an empty seat at a desk, all of which were arranged in small groups.
The teacher started the day with a warm greeting and a genuine interest in how the students had spent their holiday weekend. On this day the topic was African American history for Black History Month. Only two or three of the students were African American. Students brainstormed in their groups about events, places, leaders and causes in the civil rights movement. They were to individually write a poem on this topic and then work as a group to come up with a group poem. One student did not hesitate to speak up when the instructions were not clear to him and the teacher found another way to explain the process.
We started English class with independent reading and then wrote a reflection on what we had read. I turned in my paragraph. I read about Reeshma, a daughter of Indian immigrants, who at first desperately tried to fit in. Finally, she embraced her differences and became a leader in her school. We then read other texts about how one’s cultural perspective influences one’s view of the world. The teacher asked thought provoking questions and gave students time to think and answer. We then developed an outline for an expository essay on this topic with a clear thesis and evidence to back it up. As I am writing this article I am aware that I have no specific thesis, just observations. The work was begun as a group and then continued as individuals. Once again the desks here were arranged in small groups.
The school was spread out more like an attractive college campus with many separate buildings. Students walked calmly, chatting with friends on their long trek across the campus. The students didn’t pay any attention to me as I walked along with my sophomore student and his friends, but a couple of adults had a quizzical look. By the way, I was properly registered as a visitor.
Instead of algebra or geometry, the math class is called Integrated Math. Once again I was struck by how the teachers are very warm and also very respectful of the students. There is no stiff, hierarchical distance. As a psychologist who enjoys working with adolescents, I can identify with resistance to arbitrary rules. Students are able to leave the classroom to use the restroom at any time without any disruption. Everyone stays on task. I was impressed with how engaged the students were in each class.
I don’t remember a lot from my algebra classes except the basics. The teacher very carefully explained division of polynomials. After her thorough explanation, the students were to work on a problem in their small group and then present it to the rest of the class. In every class the teachers were constantly moving around the room, as opposed to sitting at a desk in the front of the room. At the end of the class the students took an individual quiz with a problem and turned it in. I thought I had learned how to do it, but I just had to have the teacher verify that it was correct. Yes! The teacher told me that she would review the results to see if many students did not master it, in which case she would re-teach it. What if just a few students don’t get it? –I will find time the next day to work with them individually during class without calling attention to them. By the way, she’s also in her classroom every day at lunchtime for anyone who needs help. And she coaches boys’ volleyball.
Lunchtime. The hardest time of day for a new student. But instead of going down to the lunch court we head to a lounge where the basketball team hangs out. We watched videos of the team that they were going to play that night. The students selected segments that they wanted to watch on the big screen. In between there were comments about what is the best way to invest in the stock market.
It was a long trek across campus to Spanish class, which had another friendly and enthusiastic teacher. Since I am already fluent in Spanish there was not a lot for me to learn. The desks were in traditional rows and I was more of an observer, which made the class seem a little longer, because I was not challenged. In fact, I had wondered if the block schedule with 90 minute classes would make the classes too long. Students take four classes per semester instead of six, but in that way they are able to take 8 courses per year. But in all of the classes that morning the time flew by. There was a ten minute warning bell before the classes ended, but students stayed engaged. There was no mad dash for the door when the bell rang. I remember that bell being the sound of freedom.
So what’s different? The students are actually encouraged to think more critically rather than just answer questions about content read. Teachers are more engaged with the students and, therefore, students are no longer passive. Students are getting a broader, multicultural perspective.. I felt somewhat invisible myself, which is what I wanted, but I don’t know what it would be like for a new student arriving mid-year.
I chose to visit Lincoln High School in southeastern San Diego, a school with a high concentration of poverty like many schools in San Diego. Lincoln has a long African American history, but now a majority of the students are Latino. There are many well documented problems at Lincoln related to student achievement and past violent incidents at the school. All this talk piqued my curiosity about what a day at Lincoln is like. The classroom teachers knew that I was coming, but they seemed too engaged with the students to worry about the presence of a school board member. I obviously did not get the full picture, because there were about 40 other classes going on across campus at the same time. The classes I attended were full, but they did not seem overcrowded. The atmosphere on campus was calm on the day I attended. Walking across the campus at lunchtime was a similar scene to what I have seen at other high schools in the district.
But I realize that as a school board member I will never fully know what it is like to be a student, teacher, principal or parent at a particular high school. What I do know is that the teaching and learning that I saw at Lincoln was in many ways higher quality than what I experienced as a high school student myself decades ago. But that was the only world I knew at the time. My hope is that Lincoln students will leave with a broader perspective and then go on to improve public education more than we have in the past few decades.
My decision to conclude my tenure on the San Diego School Board
John Lee Evans, Vice President, San Diego Unified Board of Education
When I first started to serve on the San Diego School Board in 2009 we developed Vision 2020 with community input for school reform, San Diego style. As 2020 approaches we have made significant progress on most of the goals. I would like to graduate with the Class of 2020, so I am not going to seek re-election to the board.
It has been a great honor to serve on the school board. I did not run for the school board to “run” the district, but rather to reform our schools by making major changes in its direction. This has been done in collaboration with other board members, particularly with Richard Barrera, who was elected at the same time. It is also being done with our staff, particularly our teachers, who are collaborating in developing a groundbreaking growth and development model to improve teaching, rather than the outdated evaluation system.
We hired an effective reform minded educator as Superintendent, Cindy Marten, to operationalize the lofty goals of Vision 2020. She has focused on bringing together all of the isolated departments to together focus on the overall success of every student, particularly those who have historically been left behind. We also broadened our definition of success that goes beyond (but includes) standardized test scores.
We led the state in providing extra resources to high need schools before the Local Control Funding Formula was adopted. We led the nation by emphasizing critical thinking before the nation adopted Common Core. We became an early national leader in the adoption of technology in the classroom. More recently we are leading the state in adopting research- based Healthy Start Times for our high school students.
One leader compared making change in such a large school district to turning around an aircraft carrier. I am confident that we are pointed in the right direction and that these reform efforts will continue when I leave the board at the end of 2020.
The job of school board member requires a unique commitment of time and talent. It calls for someone 1) with experience in education, 2) who values public service over politics, 3) has a commitment to equity in public education as a social justice calling, 4) has a very high level of personal integrity 5) has a collaborative mindset and 6) is respectful to all parents, teachers, students and community members. 7) A thick skin is also necessary when making sometimes unpopular decisions that are in the best interest of students.
In my decade on the board I would say that three of the nine other members with whom I have served have met this very high level of qualification. by meeting all seven criteria. The other board members have had some of these positive qualities My hope is that narcissists, bomb throwers, bullies and persons without high ethical standards do not apply.
Because it is a part time job with a full time psychological commitment, it is often difficult to attract knowledgeable people with the right personality and experience to serve. My hope is that a person who meets the above qualifications will be elected to serve in this seat along with our exceptionally effective board members, Richard Barrera, Sharon Whitehurst-Payne, and Michael McQuary, to continue our reform efforts to improve public education in San Diego. I am announcing my intentions a couple of months before the filing period, so that those I have described as highly qualified have time to enter the race. I will continue to work very hard on the board through November 2020 and I will continue to support and advocate for public education beyond that date.
School board races need to be given more attention. Only a small percentage of the electorate currently has children in public school–with the other voters being younger than parents or grandparents. But the health of our city is related to the strength of public education in all neighborhoods. Every member of society has a stake in a strong public education system.
Examples of sustained reform under Vision 2020
We have a broader and more rigorous curriculum and have increased our graduation rate, while making graduation more meaningful. Our high schools have been transformed to bring more college courses on campus, as well as career technical courses and internships. The number of students eligible for CSU and UC has gone up by nearly 50%–with dramatically greater increases for African Americans and Hispanics. At the same time we have increased music and arts programs, STEM programs, as well as world language programs.
We have developed multiple measures of learning that go beyond one state test score to include the full development of the child. This success at all levels is reflected in the recent Nation’s Report Card in which San Diego Unified scored at the top of urban districts across the country.
We have organized the district into 16 clusters of neighborhood schools to meet the needs of each community in a very large district. This provides greater continuity in programs along the K-12 span and we are moving towards preschool for all.
Teaching has improved through Professional Learning Communities composed of teachers and administrators. The district and the teachers’ union have been collaborating on a groundbreaking growth and development model to improve teaching that will replace the outdated and inadequate evaluation system.
We have been improving learning opportunities by closing the digital divide. San Diego Unified has set an example for the nation in educational technology. With the strong support of the voters we have developed world class facilities for our specialized academic programs and in the process we have enhanced our neighborhoods with improved athletic and arts facilities, while modernizing all or our schools.
In addition to improving the education of our children we have been good stewards of public funds with the highest credit rating for our fiscal management. While improving our facilities we have provided more jobs and recruited workers in the neighborhoods of our highest poverty students. We have also developed a Climate Action Plan to reduce the impact of our facilities on the environment.
As we approach 2020 we will begin this year to address Vision 2030. We want to expand the diversity of our teaching staff for the benefit of the students. We want to expand preschool and our early literacy programs. We want to find ways to fund our schools that fulfills the desires of our community. We are all dedicated to continue that work.
We needed a $59M increase over this year to maintain the status quo at San Diego Unified. We would need $350M more to provide all of the teachers, counselors and nurses to meet the public’s expectations for our schools. But what is provided by the $1.3B that we currently have?
Some of the smallest class sizes in the state
Broad and challenging curriculum offered at schools in every neighborhood
Specialized programs, including International Baccalaureate, STEM and STEAM programs
Project based learning environments
Over 6,000 dedicated teachers working with our 105,000 students
Over 6,000 support staff that keep our schools operating
Comprehensive healthcare benefits for all staff and their families
Advanced learning opportunities including AP courses and community college courses
Innovation Centers for individual remediation and acceleration
Highest graduation rate for urban districts in California
Significant movement towards closing the achievement/opportunity gap
Rigorous requirements for meaningful graduation for college and/or career
Pathway programs for specific career fields
Internships for high school students
Scholarship level athletic programs in a variety of sports
Junior ROTC for high school students
All students learning a world language
Language immersion programs in Spanish, French and Mandarin
Arts and music in every school with many award winning programs
Collaboration on K-3 literacy programs
Nationally recognized technology in the classroom for personalized learning and collaboration
Meeting legally required Individualized Education Plans for 15,000 special education students
Specialized assistance to 27,000 English Language Learners
Programs for 22,000 GATE students
Character education, conflict resolution and restorative justice programs
Civics education and service clubs for citizenship and leadership development
Nutritional lunch for all students regardless of ability to pay and breakfast for many
Professional development for staff
Professional Learning Communities for teaching staff
Maintenance of almost 200 district facilities
Democratic engagement of stakeholders through school sites and cluster councils
Family and community engagement programs
Advocacy for state and federal funds, resulting in millions of dollars for our schools
This list is just a start. We are doing so much more. What have we left off the list? We can improve a lot in all of the above areas and we could do so much more with full and adequate funding. But we will continue to look at no cost and low cost options to continue our work to create Quality Schools in Every Neighborhood under Vision 2020.
For next year we needed a $59M increase for status quo. We will receive about $25M. That leaves a $34M shortfall. That represents about a 2.6% cut, which needs to be made as far away from the classroom as possible.
The Governor’s proposed budget has been announced and now we can begin to do real planning on the San Diego Unified budget. We needed an increase of $59M just to maintain status quo without any across the board salary increases, as explained below. It includes increased pension costs, automatic step and column raises and increased healthcare costs.
The good news is that the Governor is completing the implementation of the Local Control Funding Formula early. The bad news is that the money dedicated to ongoing expenses is less than half of the $59M needed. The exact amount for San Diego Unified is yet to be determined, but it is estimated to be around $25M. The increase just to our payroll costs is actually more than the amount the Governor is giving us.
The cuts will not be as deep as originally anticipated, but there still will be a need to make cuts. I hope that this can be done primarily at the central office level to protect the schools and classrooms. But even central office cuts will have an effect, perhaps longer times waiting on hold for the district office.
District staff recently issued a survey for all stakeholders to get a sense of priorities when cuts are made. I think that the first reaction of most parents and others is to say NO to all cuts. As a board member that is what I would like to do. All of these cuts are distasteful, but we have to make choices about what is most important. Increasing class size is not on the list. Small class size has consistently been a priority of our stakeholders over the years. We have maintained smaller class sizes than many other districts. Even with the budget shortfall we are still trying to protect class size.
With the ongoing inadequate funding of public education in California every budget year continues to be a challenge. We have no choice but to live within our means. But I will continue to advocate for full and adequate funding for our schools. We must overhaul Proposition 13 to close the commercial loophole. We also need to have a means to raise funds locally for our own schools.
Last year we had extensive staff reductions to cut $124M from our budget. This included eliminating 350 certificated/teaching positions, cutting many positions of classified support staff and a reduced work year for most employee groups.
Another part of the Governor’s budget was the inclusion of a significant amount of one-time funds that are not included in the ongoing budget. This is estimated to be about $29M, but cannot be counted on in future years. It can be used to pay down debt and one- time expenses. If we were to use those funds for ongoing expenses we would create a giant hole in the 2019-2020 budget, possibly doubling or tripling the shortfall for that year. The proverbial “kicking the can down the road” would come back to bite us.
As I have said before, I am committed to an open and transparent process with our stakeholders for the new budget. I am eager to hear any ideas about better ways to cut the budget that are legal and that allow us to fulfill our educational mission. The actual budget numbers, projections and assumptions are often disputed by one group or another. If that is the case, I will call for a neutral party to review the numbers, so that we are all working with the same set of numbers. This is one way that we can create better trust and confidence in the process. I will keep you posted about what I know each step along the way.
