Supt. Payzant’s Birthday Stirs a Brouhaha

Depending on which city teacher you talked to this week, Kay Wagner had either a “cute idea” to make Supt. Tom Payzant smile or one of the more “Mickey Mouse” notions of late out of the district’s central office.

Wagner, the city district’s fine-arts coordinator, suspected she was navigating uncharted waters when she sent a memo earlier this month suggesting that teachers and students might want to draw portraits of Payzant in honor of his 50th birthday today.

True to her suspicions, Wagner found out this week that not even the birthday of the schools’ chief proves immune from the political and philosophical crosscurrents of urban education.

On one hand, elementary teachers from about 40 schools responded positively to the idea of having their first- or second-graders spend an hour putting together caricatures of Payzant, “roughly based” on copies of photos Wagner attached to the memo.

“I thought the idea was harmless and real cute--since kids like to draw--and we should be supportive of our superintendent,” Rhoda Kaldowksi, a teacher at Bethune Elementary in Paradise Hills, said of the charcoal sketches and pop-up pictures her students made.

But, at the secondary level, the corps of fine arts teachers, with few exceptions, found the proposal both a ridiculous diversion from their already crammed curriculum and ironic, given the diminishing district resources allotted to their subject the past several years.

“It’s really stupid, to be honest with you,” said Toni Green, art teacher at Marston Middle School. “Lots of teachers aren’t exactly crazy about the man we fight with over salary every year, and the kids don’t even know who he is--they want to draw something meaningful, to get recognition or prizes for their art.”

Sighed Wagner this week, “I thought of this activity to get (Tom’s) attention on the arts and to celebrate something that is really significant for everyone here, his 50th birthday.”

Some schools returned Wagner’s memo to her with various sarcasms scrawled across the margin, accusing her of hero worship, and the like, in wanting to post the portraits outside of Payzant’s office this morning.

“I know there’s a lot of anti-Payzant sentiment out there, but I’ve worked with a lot of superintendents, and Tom has been as supportive of the arts as any of them,” although that would not always be saying much, Wagner said.

“But goodness sakes, it’s his birthday and, despite those sour feelings, wouldn’t they have gotten into the spirit of things?”

At Zamorano Elementary, the district’s fine-arts magnet school, some teachers laughed, thinking the idea was a “joke” to make Payzant into a “Martin Luther King” Jr. icon or something, vice principal Beth Stern said.

But a few were intrigued, she added.

“It’s a great way to make him smile when he walks through the door today,” teacher Leslie Barnes said. “I talked with the children about his job, and how to make gifts and how to show people we appreciate them.

“We talked about facial shapes, and where the chin goes, and we took yellow pieces of paper and cut and fringed it to look like his hair, and then the children put ties on him, or drew flowers in a pocket or put glasses on him.”

For art teacher Sandra Buck at Crawford High School and many of her colleagues, however, Wagner’s idea only fit the concept of “a quickie assignment” for grade schools.

“We’ve got our own curriculum, and this was by no means important enough to take time out and paint portraits of Payzant,” Robert Coons of University City High said.

Added Ernestine Bradley at Point Loma High: “It’s bizarre--Payzant gets this huge big raise (a four-year, 54.5% pay increase last May) and we get $1,000 for the year for arts supplies. So why should we bow ourselves to Dr. Payzant and honor him with our school work when he’s done so little for the arts?”

Wagner agreed that district funding for the arts “is not overwhelming” but asked, “By not doing something, is that going to get him to support arts more?”

One of the few secondary teachers who did take on the assignment as a class project was Catherine Carrick at Mira Mesa High, whose outspoken principal, Jim Vlassis, has not always been known as a Payzant fan.

To balance matters, however, Carrick promised a similar effort for Vlassis when he retires in two years.