City’s School Board Opposes Elections Solely by Districts

The San Diego city school board still opposes district-only elections for itself, despite the November citywide vote approving district elections for the City Council, the five-member panel decided Tuesday. The board voted, 3 to 2, to ask the San Diego Charter Review Commission next week that the method of selecting the board remain unchanged.

The action on charter questions highlighted a busy Tuesday in which the board:

- Revised field-trip policies to avoid a repeat of last spring’s situation when a travel agency went belly-up, leaving hundreds of students unable to take an East Coast trip despite having paid the agency thousands of dollars earned in fund-raisers over a period of months.

- Heard new board President Susan Davis outline the major issues expected this year, including the implementation of school-based reforms under which decision-making will be shared between the board and individual schools, and a vow to work with Mayor Maureen O’Connor to carry out her statement Monday night to make 1989 the Year of the Child in San Diego.

- Expressed concern about a proposal by state schools Supt. Bill Honig to allow parents to enroll children in schools outside their assigned districts. The board directed local Supt. Tom Payzant to emphasize that any plan should not permit such transfers if they upset integration programs or result in unused classroom space.

On the charter-related issues, new board members Ann Armstrong and Shirley Weber were unable to persuade their three colleagues to support district-only elections. Under the present system, candidates run within their individual districts in a primary, and the two top vote-getters then compete within the entire school district in the final election.

Members Susan Davis, Kay Davis and Jim Roache said the present system works well. Kay Davis said her responsibility to the entire district has allowed her to “look at issues in a different way, at times a radically different way, than if I were only representing voters in my (Point Loma-area) district. It’s allowed me to have a breadth of responsibility citywide, and has been a good buffer for decisions on integration, on school closures, on (labor) negotiations.”

The board voted unanimously to ask the commission that it remain under the City Charter and that any addition of two seats to the panel--to a state-mandated limit of seven members--not be considered until after 1990 census data is in. That data will show how redistricting could be done to maintain both legally required population and ethnic balance, the board said.

Commission Has the Power

The Charter Review Commission will hear the board actions next Tuesday, and has the power either to follow school trustees’ desires or to recommend that changes be placed before district voters in a future election.

(In a related action, the San Diego Community College District voted last month to support district-only elections in its testimony, also next Tuesday, to the Charter Review Commission.)

The new field trip policy tightens procedures that schools must follow in planning overnight or out-of-state trips for students. Major changes include: a list of approved travel agencies that must be used by schools; requirements that all students have personal injury and trip cancellation insurance for all multiple-day trips; prohibition of all ski trips because of the potential liability for the district and application of the policy to trips planned during school breaks and summer vacation.

District administrators already have approved six travel agencies for use in domestic trips and three for foreign trips. Other agencies can be added to the list if they meet district criteria, which include membership in a national society of travel agencies, familiarity and experience with school-related travel, and financial integrity as measured by financial statements and a willingness to be audited by the district if asked.

Tenuous Balances

In her statement Tuesday on 1989 issues, Davis praised the mayor’s announcement Monday and pledged that the extensive resources of the district should be used with those of the city and other community agencies. She also said the board should make substantive progress this year on its own goals of cutting dropout rates, expanding parent education programs and working to flesh out both school restructuring and the new core curriculum, which requires all students to take certain college-preparatory classes to graduate.

Kay Davis said that, although Honig’s plan for school transfers “sounds great” in principle because it encourages schools to perform better, she worries about how it would affect district integration plans if many white students asked to transfer to schools in the predominantly white Poway or Grossmont districts, upsetting the already tenuous ethnic balances within San Diego Unified.

Payzant cautioned that the effects of any transfer plan could be minimal on San Diego if such a plan prohibited transfers that would affect integration.

“We use those criteria now in approving any interdistrict transfer,” Payzant said. “The problem is that we are criticized for nay-saying and saying we don’t want competition” when the district only wants to ensure that such plans take into account the demographics of Southern California, Payzant said.