Davis Apologizes for Comments at Retreat

San Diego city school board President Kay Davis has apologized to the district’s principals and vice principals for her remarks about “lazy, incompetent or aging leaders” during a board retreat earlier this month at which trustees discussed ways to improve employee accountability.

“I do apologize for the way I said it,” Davis told more than 100 members of the Administrators Assn. of San Diego at a special meeting Wednesday evening. The earlier remarks were reported by The Times in a story about how trustees in the nation’s eighth-largest urban school system are wrestling with ideas about how to put more teeth into evaluations of principals and teachers.

Was it fair to bring the issue of accountability to the fore during the retreat, Davis asked rhetorically?

“Yes, it was,” Davis said, emphasizing that the issue will not go away. The public increasingly demands to know whether instruction is becoming better simply because the district is now doing many things differently, she said.

“But I did not say (my points) as fairly as I could have,” Davis acknowledged, “and now paranoia (among administrators) has set in, and I am sorry for that because I do realize how challenging it is to be an urban principal.” She later said her comments probably “undermined public confidence” in the school system.

The comments at the retreat referred specifically to some of the 12 principals whose schools are part of a new forced school restructuring by schools Supt. Tom Payzant--known as the renewal schools program--intended to raise low standardized test scores, especially among black and Latino students. Davis wondered if some principals are up to the task of carrying out difficult reforms and improvements, and she worried that teachers will respond unenthusiastically to the need for difficult changes from a lackluster leader.

During a candid question-and-answer session after her apology, Davis and the administrators touched on several key issues involving the way good teaching can be rewarded, and poor teaching and school management punished.

“The issue is not only just one of your comments but comes from a whole series of actions” taken by the district, including altering restructuring from a voluntary to mandatory effort, Adel Nadeau, principal of Linda Vista Elementary School, said. “And that seems threatening.”

The question is also very much on the mind of district teachers, whose San Diego Teachers Assn. has arranged a special meeting Monday between teachers and all five board members to discuss what board members said in the Times story.

Davis said the trustees and schools Supt. Tom Payzant have been unable to reach a consensus on how accountability will be judged as more and more individual schools restructure--either voluntarily or otherwise--and gain more responsibility for teachers and principals to improve curriculum and management.

“We haven’t worked it out how to be ethical and credible” in handling the question of shared responsibility under restructuring,” Davis said, acknowledging that some principals consider it unfair to assume all the responsibility for failed initiatives that involve the entire school staff.

When several principals suggested that the board give school administrators complete control of curriculum and teacher assignments and then ask for complete accountability for results, Davis said, “I like that idea, the concept is great” but warned that teachers probably would not readily endorse a diminution of their role in deciding whether they stay at a school or not.

Davis said that Payzant and other top administrators need to improve the way they evaluate principals. She suggested that the district “should be more candid” in its yearly evaluations and give every principal some areas in which to improve, no matter the overall rating.

“Regardless of any rating, we all have areas where we can work on,” Davis said. “Tact is one of mine.”