Davis, Braun for Board

To say these are difficult times for the San Diego city schools is to understate the obvious.

Schools in the developing part of the city are already bursting at the seams, and the district has little hope of building enough new facilities to accommodate the additional 40,000 students expected by the end of the century.

Major cuts in some programs seem likely as the school board faces a grim budget picture for next year. Board members and administrators say they are not sure where the money for even modest teacher pay raises will come from--and the teachers’ contract is up for renegotiation.

Along with these financial woes, the school board in the next few years must continue to wrestle with the ongoing challenge of drugs on the campuses, the need to offer quality education in all parts of the district and the drop-out problem. Serving on the school board is no sinecure.

Two of the five seats on the city school board are up for election this year. Trustee Larry Lester, after serving one term, chose not to run for reelection. The seat he leaves is being sought by Sue Braun, a longtime schools volunteer, and Jim Roache, a sheriff’s captain. Trustee Kay Davis is seeking reelection to a second term and is being challenged by John de Beck, a teacher and former teachers union official.

We believe Davis should be retained on the board, and Braun should be elected to the open seat.

Braun approaches the school board with a positive skepticism toward the way things are done. Though she would probably be less of a rabble-rouser than the arch-conservative Lester, she comes across as a natural questioner of the status quo. She would often be the board member asking “Why?”

In the coming lean times, Braun could play a valuable role challenging the need or the level of funding for certain programs. More so than her opponent, she has thought about ways to bring next year’s budget into balance.

As school board decisions increasingly stray from strict educational issues to include questions like which under-used schools to close, how to develop school property to provide money for new facilities and where to locate those new campuses, Braun probably would act with a populist’s concern for the wider community that feels the impact of what the board does.

Personally, Braun has a bachelor’s degree in child development and a master’s in social work. She has three children who have gone through the public schools here, and she has been active in the PTA and other volunteer groups. She also served on the school district’s integration task force.

Davis was elected to the board in 1982. A moderate, she often casts the deciding vote on controversial social issues that sometimes divide the board, as she recently did in reversing her position of a year ago and voting with a 3-2 majority to adopt a case-by-case policy in dealing with student AIDS patients.

She was a leader in the effort to raise graduation standards and to require students who participate in extracurricular activities to maintain at least a 2.0 grade average.

During the year she served as board president, she provided effective leadership, and throughout her term on the board, she has consistently been one of the better-informed and harder-working members. Her experience and sound judgment will be valuable in the coming years.