Committee Bitterly Split : Effort to End Gompers Standoff Breaks Down

The effort by teachers and parents to solve a crisis with serious educational and racial overtones at Gompers Secondary School--site of the city’s stellar math-science-computer magnet program--has broken down amid charges of hostility, racial bitterness, biased tactics and foul language among members of a special crisis committee.

The committee’s failure to reach a consensus on solutions means that Supt. Tom Payzant and the city Board of Education will probably be forced to implement their own solutions by walking through the mine field of management and social issues that plague the seventh-through-12th-grade school.

A group of predominantly white parents, whose children are bused to the special integration program at the Southeast San Diego campus, submitted a letter to the board Tuesday with the names of more than 70 parents who say the committee has failed to equitably represent their views in drawing up possible solutions to problems at Gompers.

The parents said they will no longer cooperate with the committee, meaning that its plan to draw up a list of solutions for Payzant will not represent a consensus of the Gompers community. Payzant said Tuesday that he and the board will have to make their own recommendations for saving the school if a final committee report next week contains little or no agreement between competing factions.

A resolution is critical if the Gompers magnet is to retain substantial numbers of bused students necessary for the integration program to continue. At least a dozen parents have either made plans or threatened to move their children to other schools next fall.

Testimony by the parent group Tuesday confirmed the worst fears of Payzant and board members, who realized that their hopes for community cooperation are a long shot given the intense differences between white and black parents over the reasons for Gompers’ woes.

Gompers mixes high-powered students, about half white and half nonwhite, in a five-grade-level science magnet, while students of an almost all-minority inner-city junior high, also a part of the campus, struggle to master basic skills.

The immediate crisis erupted two months ago when more than 40% of the faculty indicated a desire to leave because of the management style of the school’s principal in implementing cross-level teaching, in which all instructors must teach both senior- and junior-high classes.

Teachers and magnet parents believe the blanket implementation weakens the science program, which enjoys a national reputation and which has garnered many prizes in the past several years. But black parents saw the action by teachers as the final straw in what they believe is a refusal by the teachers to try to teach the resident children, almost all of whom are nonwhite and come with far less academic preparation for rigorous course work.

Situation Exploded in April

When the situation exploded in late April, Payzant and board president Dorothy Smith, who represents the Gompers area, endorsed the committee effort but said the school’s controversial principal should not be made the major issue and would not be removed by the board.

But seven weeks of meetings by the 70-member committee have brought nothing but frustration, divisiveness and “often outright hostility,” parent Paul Speckart told the board Tuesday in presenting the letter signed by parents of magnet students. They say that changes in the management style of Principal Marie Thornton must be part of any solution.

“Issues and recommendations generated in the small groups have not been successfully integrated into the drafted summary recommendations of June 8,” Speckart said. “It is with deep regret that we inform you that we cannot continue to participate in this committee as it is currently formulated.”

Magnet parents have made no secret that they distrust black parents of resident students who traditionally have chaired the school’s standing committees and who provided the initial leadership for the special 70-member committee. No black parents testified Tuesday, but they are expected to fight strongly against any move to scuttle their recommendations, which still will be sent to Payzant and the board. They strongly back Thornton, who is black.

Besides the parent-versus-parent hostility, Gompers teacher Rhoenna Armster, the district’s teacher of the year and a non-magnet instructor, testified for a majority of teachers Tuesday and said they also believe that the committee is flawed because it has failed to focus on the issue of cross-teaching and instead attempted to tackle “monumental social issues that have always plagued Gompers.”

Armster, who also is black, said teachers have been threatened and that some no longer feel comfortable on campus because they have been the target of racial accusations.

Board Deliberately Aloof

Board member Jim Roache said he and his colleagues deliberately remained aloof from committee meetings because they did not want to be viewed as imposing their own solutions.

“But this might well end up at the board, and the board might well have to be dictatorial,” he said.

Payzant echoed Roache, saying the seven-week process has revealed a serious lack of trust among Gompers parents and teachers and that the emotional outbursts and crude language at some meetings show the depth of feelings regarding the school’s problems.

But he promised that solutions will be found, whether by the committee or by the board.

“I don’t want to see Gompers disbanded, not torn down and not have the quality lowered for any student,” Payzant said. “I’ll see the committee process through, and then I’ll make comments.”