San Diego Schools : Changes Are Clear; Future Still Cloudy

In June, 1987, an independent commission of prominent San Diegans issued a major study calling for teachers and principals to try new ways of teaching, for stronger community support and for better use of technology.

At the time, many regular observers of the San Diego city school system predicted that the “schools of the future” report would follow the traditional path of many such documents, gathering dust as it sat neglected on office bookshelves.

But two years later, the San Diego Unified School District seems awash in reform after a series of seminars to explain the report to teachers--although no one can quite define what the word reform means and where the efforts might lead.

Major and Minor Steps

Teachers and principals at about a quarter of the district’s 150 educational facilities have taken steps--some minor, some major--toward gaining flexibility in implementing curriculum and other general policies set by the state and district.

These restructuring efforts so far range from school-wide meetings of interested staff members at Hamilton Elementary to the rearranging of curriculum at Linda Vista Elementary to help its large population of immigrant and English-as-a-second-language students grasp reading and mathematics skills more quickly.

The ferment for reform is being helped along by consultants sponsored by Matsushita Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Japanese conglomerate best known in this country for its Panasonic electronics products. For more than a year, Matsushita has had specialists at various schools almost on a weekly basis to provide ideas, make suggestions, help crystallize good intentions and focus debate.

“We’re farther along than I thought we would be a year ago,” city schools Supt. Tom Payzant said.

Philosophy Pushed

Payzant and the Board of Education have pushed their philosophy that schools will be better able to teach students--and in particular the growing ethnic mix in San Diego--if they are allowed greater control over their own budgets, organization and curriculum.

“I initially thought it would take longer to start getting people to ask basic questions if whether what they are doing (at their schools) is working for all kids,” Payzant said. “And that meant persuading them that restructuring was not going to be just another idea or program conceived by the central office staff.”

For that reason, Payzant said, the district has deliberately kept the reform movement loosely structured, allowing individual schools to ask for help in debating the merits of reform, but not forcing change on unwilling participants.

“There is still a good deal of ambiguity and many schools are still looking to the traditional sources of direction at the central office,” Payzant said. “They are uneasy when they don’t see that direction coming. So no one is quite sure where all of this is going to take us.”

In one case, at Silver Gate Elementary in Point Loma, the first stirrings for action have come from a group of parents who have heard about meetings at other schools.

The president of the local teachers union expresses optimism that reform will take permanent root. Hugh Boyle, a 30-year district veteran who took the union out on strike in the mid-1970s, worked out a four-year contract with the district last November that brought not only substantial pay raises but also flexibility in carrying out educational reforms.

“It was clear to everyone in the district and to Matsushita that we can’t do any real reform without the union and everyone else cooperating,” Boyle said. “It was a painful process to go through (negotiations), but the district has learned the hard way that you cannot mandate something from the top and think it will really work.”

The contract created a special committee of district and teacher representatives to consider waivers for schools asking to try new ways of staffing, of approving budgets, of peer coaching, of team teaching and other strategies that could conflict with the basic labor contract.

Many Retirements Loom

Boyle said San Diego is in a unique position for change because a large number of teachers and administrators will retire in the next three to five years.

“The district is growing and hiring new teachers by the hundreds as those of us leave who long ago became part of the system that we wanted to change when we were first hired,” Boyle said. “That is going to bring greater opportunities for reform, and I think it is a realistic hope.”

With prodding from the Matsushita consultants, informal committees of teachers and administrators from schools with reforms under way are trying to define more precisely what a restructured school should look like.

But while the so-called pioneers would like more schools to join in the process, they remain wary of requiring participation.

“I hope that once the level of confidence and trust is better, we can be more provocative in suggesting some specifics and not have that perceived by schools as the game plan to be followed by everyone,” Payzant said.

Matsushita consultant Ken Tewel, a former New York City principal, said each school must follow its own instincts in deciding what to do and how fast to do it.

Minimal Interest at First

Tewel has helped the staff at Kearny High School, where the faculty expressed minimal interest when he first came to meetings there last year.

“There was what I would call adult ‘wilding,’ with teachers railing at themselves, at the district, at the principal over all sorts of things,” said Tewel, now a professor of education at Queens College, part of the City University of New York.

Not until the decision for how to eliminate some teaching positions was handed over to a faculty committee--and not simply made from the top--did the school community begin to consider restructuring as something more than a sham, Tewel said.

“That led to teachers taking a look at instruction as well, and soon they had conceived a planning group and were looking at the school’s future direction, and, while I was making regular visits, they were doing the substance themselves.”

Earlier this year, Kearny successfully presented its plan to trustees to expand its technology magnet program to the ninth grade and is now considering more changes, such as a language immersion approach for immigrant students.

“And now, when the principal gets a letter from the faculty asking for him to do something, he instead asks ‘Why?’ ”

They Can Make a Difference

Small successes at the start give teachers confidence and power to believe they can make a difference in making things better for students, which is the goal that should always be kept in mind, according to Matsushita executive director Sophie Sa.

“The key is in bridging the gap between how teachers see their schools now and the belief in education . . . that they had when (long ago) deciding to become teachers,” Tewel said.

Boyle said some principals do perceive restructuring as “the way to go” if they want future promotions, despite district promises that nothing will be required from the “top down.”

“Some feel that there is nevertheless a subtle message to do it,” Boyle said.

But Payzant and others say the message is rather one of asking whether a school can afford not to consider change.

“Every school should be asking not how its best students are doing, but how its lowest students are doing and whether it can do something about improving that,” Payzant said.

“We’ve got a lot of problems in this district with dropouts, with the performance of black males, etcetera,” Payzant said. “The definition of the problems, the exhortations of what to do, will continue to be discussed at the central office, and there will be policy direction from the board.

“But instead of a solution traditionally coming from a few at the district, it now can be up to a school to figure out what would solve things best for it. In this way, we’re going to draw on a much broader base of talent.”