School-by-School Spending Figures Cause Consternation

Some public schools in San Diego receive substantially more dollars per student than other schools, according to the first-ever, easy-to-understand spending data that will be given to parents and teachers in the city school district in early 1991.

Lincoln High in Southeast San Diego receives an average $4,742 per student for academic programs common to most or all of the student body. That’s $2,000 more than the lowest-ranking high schools, Mira Mesa and Point Loma. It’s also almost $1,500 more than the district high school average of $3,256.

“I’ll be damned,” said Jim Vlassis, principal at Mira Mesa, which receives $2,739 per student. Vlassis, along with his colleagues, has never known how his school compares budget-wise to the district’s 19 other high school and alternative schools. “I guess I’m damn proud of the job we do, that we’re able to do all the things we’re expected to do as well as any other high school, without being given any extra money.”

Among the 20 junior high and middle schools, Memorial Junior High in Barrio Logan receives the top allocation, with $3,779 per student. The group average is $2,971; Kroc Middle School in Clairemont is at the bottom, with $2,653.

The figures for academic year 1989-90 include money given to schools for basic educational programs, for special academic programs intended to lure white pupils to predominantly-nonwhite schools, and for boosting student skills at schools with large numbers of impoverished pupils--those who qualify for free lunches or whose parents receive welfare. Secondary schools receive substantially more funds, both basic and special, than do elementary schools and therefore their per-pupil allocations show significant variations.

The data was compiled for inclusion in the second year of school accountability report cards. Those cards will be issued early in 1991 for all schools, but each site will print only its own per-pupil figure and the district average, with no school-to-school comparisons. The accountability cards stem from a state constitutional requirement approved in 1988.

But the information is likely to fuel the debate, already gathering steam both locally and nationally, over whether extra funds for nonwhite and low-income-area schools are well-used considering that student achievement shows few substantial improvements.

“It sure raises a lot of interesting questions about whether this is the best way to spend the money,” conceded Beverly Foster, one of four assistant San Diego Unified district superintendents. “We’re just beginning to have these discussions (among educators) as to where the accountability is for all of this money: are these dollars doing what we want them to do?”

Outgoing school board president Kay Davis put it more bluntly.

“What the hell are schools like Lincoln doing to show for all that money?” asked Davis, referring to the stagnant or dropping test scores at most schools that have received integration or other special funding for years. “Even if your kids are 50% worse in discipline, attendance, homework, whatever, should there not be some correlation between the bucks and the outcome?”

San Diego’s secondary-school principals also disagree about existing integration and remedial efforts in the district, the nation’s eighth-largest urban system with 122,000 students, 39% white and 61% nonwhite.

“We’d be better off giving each kid $4,000 and telling them to go find another school,” said J. M. Tarvin, principal at La Jolla High. His school, with $3,176 per student, falls into the bottom half of high school allocation rankings, because its upper-middle-class student body and high test scores means little special money for the site.

“I think it scares the hell out of the district that someone might try a voucher experiment and show the silliness involved in putting all of this (public) money for years and years into programs that no one can show whether they work.

“It just shows you there is no correlation between the amount spent and the product assumed to be coming out.”

Tarvin said his school, despite its academic success, could use more money for lower pupil-counselor ratios, for more teaching aides, for smaller class sizes, and for more individual attention to students, especially black and Latino teen-agers who choose to bus to La Jolla.

“That’s garbage from Tarvin and he knows it,” countered Ruby Cremaschi-Schwimmer, who retired in June after four years as Lincoln’s principal. “The extra money Lincoln and Gompers (Secondary School) and others get is based on student needs. Tarvin’s kids don’t come in near as needy.

“Lincoln’s got 85% of its students qualified for free lunch, has kids who only read at the 20th percentile. You can be real, real good as a principal if your kids come to you good.

“So when we’re talking differences in dollars here, it’s because separate but inherently unequal is alive and well in American schools, and you need to put a lot more dollars into places like Lincoln just to catch up. If you really want things equal, the ultimate answer is forced busing.”

San Diego Unified has long rejected mandatory busing, opting instead to set up special magnet education programs in nonwhite areas to entice white students to bus in to those schools. That is why Lincoln receives an additional $843 per student and Gompers $865 per student above basic allocations to boost their magnet curricula.

At Gompers in Southeast San Diego, the extra money allows the school to have an additional 23 teachers and four aides above what it could afford under its basic education budget, including paying a person to write grant proposals to the state and federal governments for even more funds.

Principals throughout the poor areas of the district have no apologies.

“Hey, we don’t get enough money as it is, given the complexities of our student population,” Tony Alfaro, principal at Memorial, said. He said his colleagues and the parents at schools such as La Jolla take the position, “ ‘Go ahead, put the money there’ . . . as long as they themselves don’t have to be there.”

Affluent white students are welcome, even urged, to take advantage of the extra computers, smaller class sizes and other lures of magnet programs, he and other principals pointed out--yet relatively few do.

“And I don’t find my colleagues wanting to trade places with me, wanting to wrestle with the societal hassles we deal with daily,” Alfaro said.

Still, he agrees that accountability needs to be tightened, and he points to rising test scores--and in particular to improvement in essay writing--among his overwhelmingly Latino student population, to more than half of whom English is a second language.

“I think we can show that the money is making a difference here,” he said.

In general, though, improved test scores and indications of academic success have not followed the millions of dollars poured into socio-economically disadvantaged schools over the past two decades.

Principals at those schools raise valid points about the difficulty of working there, Vlassis of Mira Mesa said.

“But throwing more money into this isn’t going to make the difference,” he said. “We have to do something about attitudes on the part of the community, on the part of the family, on the part of the kids, to have them understand something about the educational environment.”

Mike Lorch, the new principal at Kearny High this year, is wrestling along with his staff about how to improve the way they use their extra money intended to help low-income students: should they continue with special reading labs and tutorial centers, or lower class sizes by hiring more aides?

“Educators have bought a fundamental premise: that we will supplement a lack of parent support or family expectations with money and turn things around,” Lorch said. “We get a carpeted computer room and say that will make up for a kid not having books in the home.

“I’m not sure we should continue spending the money the same way we have been, let me put it that way.”

Some San Diego area principals, who recently have asked for more special money from district managers, have been told to do a better job with the dollars they already have.

That’s a beginning step, other principals say.

Principal Mary McNaughton at University City High, with $3,233 per student, below the district average, said the message sent by the present system is “that the lower your test scores and the poorer the performance of students, the more support you get--and if things get worse, you get even more.”

Several elementary schools last year were threatened with loss of their special funds for low-income students because test scores increased, even though the money is used for extra textbooks, teaching aides and other basic activities central to the schools’ mission.

Lorch added that such a lack of flexibility on the part of federal and state agencies also restricts the ability of schools to use the money the way teachers believe it best could raise student performance. Educators should lobby for changes, he said, but with the proviso that their money could be cut off if test scores or other indicators of improvement failed to increase after a given period of time.

Board president Davis suggested that the next board of trustees also examine the district’s total budget dollar-by-dollar and treat no programs or school budgets as sacred.

“Let’s not say, ‘Well, we’ve always done it this way’ and just add on to something,” she said. “The mentality among everyone for too long has been, ‘You got it, you spend it’ without looking at what results you get.”

HIGH TO LOW IN PER-PUPIL ALLOCATIONS JUNIOR HIGH / MIDDLE SCHOOLS

School: Amount Memorial: $3,779 Montgomery: $3,559 Keiller: $3,538 Taft: $3,121 Roosevelt: $3,020 Lewis: $2,988 Deportola: $2,987 Wilson: $2,981 AVERAGE: $2,971 Muirlands: $2,970 Farb: $2,965 Pacific Beach: $2,963 Pershing: $2,946 Marston: $2,889 Mann: $2,886 Correia: $2,811 Bell: $2,794 Standley: $2,787 Challenger: $2,754 Wagonheim: $2,708 Kroc: $2,653 HIGH SCHOOLS AND ATYPICAL SECONDARY SCHOOLS

School: Amount Twain: $5,445 Lincoln: $4,742 Garfield: $4,143 Kearny: $3,897 Gompers: $3,733 Crawford: $3,406 San Diego: $3,405 Muir: $3,339 AVERAGE: $3,256 Mission Bay: $3,247University City: $3,233 Clairemont: $3,177 La Jolla: $3,176 Morse: $3,131 Performing Arts: $3,084 Hoover: $3,074 Madison: $3,046 Serra: $2,976 Henry: $2,967 Point Loma: $2,743 Mira Mesa: $2,739 Figures include allocations for basic educational programs, special programs for information and for boosting academic performance in poor socioeconomic areas.

Source: Budget Office, San Diego Unified School District