Gompers Students and Parents Ask Apology : Education: Despite demand, board president and colleagues stand firm in calling award to the troubled school a farce.

Several students and parents from Gompers Secondary School demanded an apology Tuesday from San Diego city schools board President Kay Davis for calling the school’s California Distinguished School award “a farce” in a Times article last week.

But despite the strong rhetoric, Davis refused to back away from her remark, saying to a chorus of “boos” that she and the speakers had “a difference of opinion.”

School trustees--Davis in particular--held their ground as they also took heat from public speakers about their push for more accountability, detailed in another article on their special board retreat in Rancho Santa Fe last week. At the retreat, board members talked about rewards and punishment for teachers and principals, depending on how well they succeed over two or three years in improving student achievement.

The Gompers story detailed how the troubled Southeast San Diego school achieved the state honor despite more than three years of parent, teacher and community conflicts over how to expand the school’s science-math-computer magnet curriculum--long limited to just a few white and nonwhite students--to all of its heavily minority neighborhood students.

State schools Supt. Bill Honig acknowledged in the story that the award was based only on high test scores and other data from the school’s 12th-grade class--about 100 students--despite the school’s unusual configuration as a 7th-through-12th grade school. By far the largest number of its 1,400 students are at the junior high level, almost all of them nonwhite and with lower test scores.

But sophomore class President Josh Lamont scolded Davis for her remarks, asking: “Why are you not supporting us? . . . We have brought great honor to this district.”

Junior Jesse Wesley, after listing the courses and sports new to Gompers, said he was surprised at “how cruel and harsh people can be. . . . A certain member of the board is the true farce.”

Several speakers acknowledged that all is not well at Gompers, but they blamed Davis and other doubters about the school’s new all-inclusive curriculum as reasons why overall achievement remains below district levels in many cases.

Betty Brown, head of the Committee for the Education for African-American Children, said she “is tired of (Davis’) insults and perpetuation of the myth that our African-American children are inferior in intelligence.”

“All we need is dedicated teachers,” Brown said, reflecting the continuing charge by supporters of Gompers reforms that veteran teachers do not want to motivate nonwhite students.

Board Vice President Shirley Weber told the students that their school is “distinguished” regardless of the criticism, and that she believes the media and other board members should stop “placing Gompers under a microscope. . . . Let’s have a moratorium and stop talking about Gompers!”

Davis held her ground, however, telling speakers that while Gompers has made some progress, “it still faces a lot of challenges and has a long way to go.”

In the same vein, Davis and her colleagues defended their moves last week to hold their employees more responsible for the lack of academic improvement.

“We can’t continue just to say, ‘Give us two more years, or five more years,’ ” Trustee Jim Roache said. “There comes a time when talk is cheap, and we have to see some results.”

To that end, trustees approved one of 12 low-performing schools--Jackson Elementary--for a comprehensive new curriculum. Teachers have promised to develop new teaching styles, support a comprehensive social-service program to improve the health of both parents and students, and attempt an experimental Montessori curriculum at some grades. The Montessori theory in essence calls for students to be able to experiment with a variety of learning activities within a loosely structured classroom environment.