Study Group Formed to Chart a Course for 21st-Century Schools

A 17-member commission has been appointed to figure out plans that will carry San Diego city schools into the next century, Supt. Tom Payzant said Tuesday.

The Schools of the Future Commission, headed by former Board of Education president Bob Filner, will conduct the first comprehensive study of its kind in California, Filner said.

He said the commissioners, who will begin the study this month, will look at projected societal and economic changes to decide what effect they might have on the school system in the year 2000. Based on that information, the commission will make recommendations for long-range planning.

“Everyone has a vision of education, but the vision comes into contact with day-to-day problems,” Filner told a press conference Tuesday. “We want to paint a picture of San Diego as it will be in the 21st Century and see how the school system will relate to that.

“The commission will do creative planning for the future regardless of the practical constraints of today’s priorities and budgets.”

He said the panel, which is projected to finish the study by June 30, 1987, will consider, among other aspects, technological and architectural changes, economics and transportation in the San Diego Unified School District.

“Nothing is outside our purview.”

Dean Nafziger, assistant to the superintendent of the district’s Planning, Research and Evaluation Division, said, “This commission allows the district to extend thinking beyond immediate problems.”

Although the planning division has been expanded in recent years, its staff usually is preoccupied with the nuts and bolts of short-term planning.

“There has been no big thinking,” Filner said.

Ruben Carriedo, director of the planning division, said, “We have been trying to institutionalize something that would allow dreaming for the future. Because of important planning activities focused on short-term problems, that goal had been put on a back burner.”

Filner said the commission will help provide direction.

“We hope to set some goals for the district. We will try to define the ideal school of the year 2000,” Filner said.

Filner expects the commission to make recommendations about curriculum, staffing, structure, and how to prepare teachers and administrators for public schools at the turn of the century.

The commission, composed of San Diegans from diverse professions, will meet as a group monthly and will form committees to focus on specific areas.

“Most members do not come from education,” Filner said. “We will bring a point of view not normal in the school system. They were picked not as representatives of groups, but as individuals who have ties throughout San Diego.”

The group plans to hold forums or hearings in the fall to get public opinion. Students and teachers also will be consulted.

Funding for the study will be sought from outside contributions.

“We want to do it without even a minuscule draw on the school budget,” Filner said. “We hope corporations and individuals will come forward.”

The school district has allocated one full-time liaison position for the study.

Besides Filner, who is now a history professor at San Diego State University, members of the commission are:

Rear Adm. Bruce R. Boland; Gail Boyle, president of the San Diego Teachers Assn.; Eugene F. Brucker, educational consultant; Kay Davis, school board member; Julie Dillon, president of Dillon Development Inc.; C. Hugh Friedman, law professor at the University of San Diego Law School; Irwin Mark Jacobs, president of Qualcomm Inc., and Superior Court Judge Napoleon A. Jones Jr.

Also, E. Walter Miles, political science professor at San Diego State; the Rev. Vahac Mardirosian of North Park Baptist Church; Arthur Ollman, executive director of the Museum of Photographic Arts; Pham Quang Tuan, adviser at Indochinese Mutual Assistance Assn.; Paul Saltman, biology professor at UC San Diego; Elsa Saxod, president of Saxod Enterprises; Connie Viado, 1985 graduate of San Diego city schools, and Karin Winner, managing editor of the San Diego Union.