Squeaky Wheels Fared Better in School Budget Cuts

The list of winners and losers in the budget battles concluded by San Diego city schools trustees shows that those employees, parents and community activists who fought their cases publicly fared better than those who did not.

Nurses, sports coaches, music teachers, special dropout-prevention and work-study counselors, principals and vice principals all lobbied long and hard with board members and the media, and their work paid off either by saving entire programs from elimination or by restoring some funding targeted in their areas by Supt. Tom Payzant.

Those programs whose administrators and supporters remained quiet, believing that all areas needed to take their “fair share” of a total $37-million reduction because of the extraordinary crisis in the state coffers, suffered cuts equal to or greater than the amounts suggested by Payzant.

The monthlong budget process raises questions both of how effective the lobbying of trustees can be and whether it is appropriate for school district employees themselves to argue against recommendations made by their superintendent and his top assistants.

“The squeaky wheel gets the oil,” board President Shirley Weber conceded. “It’s naive for anyone to say otherwise. I’d like to say that (lobbying) isn’t that effective, but I’ve got to be honest and say, yes, it does.

“If someone doesn’t lobby even if their cause is good, I can’t say that they’ll automatically win,” she said.

Weber spread the word among teachers and parents in minority areas served by the AVID and SOAP programs--which target nonwhite students for special assistance in order to attend college--to “get their act together” and talk about the benefits of the programs.

“There already had been strong, strong lobbying (at board meetings) by supporters of high school sports, which is a huge constituency and which moves at the drop of a hat,” Weber said. “I alerted the (minority) community . . . maybe if they had made a tremendous outcry earlier, they would have suffered less.”

(Academic programs particularly important to the nonwhite community were cut cumulatively about 28%, compared to the 50% sought by Payzant.)

New board member Sue Braun said she reacted to “lobbying that pointed out correct information we didn’t have, that made intelligent arguments.”

In particular, Braun and colleague Susan Davis recalled the school nurse from San Francisco who warned San Diego of the health consequences if they followed the Bay Area district in eliminating half their nurses, as proposed by Payzant.

“That really had an effect on us,” Braun said, as did the hundreds of letters received from parents and doctors in the community.

“I don’t think we just reacted because people told us, ‘Restore!’ but rather we acted when all the information seemed to be from one direction,” such as the benefits of sports to keeping students attending school.

Board members said that, in all cases, they welcomed input from school employees--Davis said there should be more--although they added that such lobbying could be construed as disloyal to the superintendent.

“If I were a manager whose workers were in danger of losing their jobs, I would have done it--it’s self-preservation to tell your folks they need to try to save their skin,” Trustee John de Beck said.

“But let’s be realistic. Dissidence at the central office level is not encouraged, and many department people griped privately” but not publicly, De Beck said. He added that there is less control on principals and teachers both because of their numbers and their dispersal among almost 200 sites around the city.

Payzant said he “encourages as many people as possible to speak out and give their views and suggestions. . . . I learned long ago that the worst thing you can say to people is you can’t go to talk to somebody about something, because you would be subject to criticism that you’re trying to muzzle them.”

But Payzant added, “I will tell someone, judge what the pros and cons are” of speaking out.

Assistant Supt. Al Cook said Payzant’s top lieutenants believe “that once a decision is made, our style is to support it publicly whether you disagree or not.” Nevertheless, Cook, who oversees sports programs, privately encouraged high school principals to lobby for fewer cuts in sports. But he said he would have been upset if his sports coordinator in the central office had spoken out instead of working behind the scenes with coaches and parents.

Retiring health services director Ed Fletcher labeled as “a bunch of crap” the idea that administrators could lobby the board without fear of retribution, saying “There are still those at (the top) who want to keep everyone else in the dark until it’s too late.”

District nurses were by far the most organized lobby, even surpassing sports supporters in their presentations and community mobilization. Chief nurse Judy Beck ended up in hot water with Assistant Supt. Frank Till, who said he chewed her out over the phone for what he called a premature memo telling nurses that half of them were going to lose their jobs. Till said no final decision had been made by Payzant when the memo went out.

But supporters of Beck said her early memo was vital in galvanizing them to act.

“We were angry they were even thinking about cutting us, and I think we became determined to use every weapon we had in our barrel,” nurse Margaret Ellickson said.

Even Trustee Davis said Beck “has never been known for caring whether she made waves” if she considers her cause important enough.

But other central office administrators acted differently.

GATE, the gifted and talented education office, lost two of its seven psychologists and four of its eight resource teachers, but director David Hermanson did not activate his politically powerful parent network as he did in 1987, when GATE supporters practically stormed the Board of Education to protest suggested cuts at that time.

“I felt that (the superintendent) had set a level playing field in making his proposed reductions,” so he told people not to make presentations to the board, Hermanson said.

He said he is “wounded” as a result, but still believes the San Diego Unified School District has the best GATE program in the nation. But would he remain on the sidelines the next time cuts are proposed?

“You’ll see the public out in force in the future . . . but I played fair this time,” Hermanson said.

Tim Allen, coordinator for the district’s second-language program for immigrant students, said he did not “call out the troops” because cuts in his area were small. But he would not have hesitated to do so if major reductions had come, he added, because he “got burned” in 1987 when he followed suggestions from higher-ups not to lobby, and then watched the GATE division “roar into action.”

Anne Karch, parent chairwoman of the community advisory committee for special education, said that while she and other members lobbied for nurses because of the service they provide to disabled children, they did not push for more money for specific special education services.

“We put a great deal of trust in the board that it would not go beyond those cuts identified by the superintendent,” she said.

But Deputy Supt. Bertha Pendleton had to remind trustees--when at one point they were considering additional reductions to the special education program--that the parents and teachers had deliberately avoided lobbying and should not be penalized for that decision.

“None of the central office people really lobbied us,” Braun said. “They took their lumps” even though the board slashed $7 million in administrative and non-classroom positions, a $1-million increase over Payzant’s recommendation.

Race-human relations counselors, who lost 11 positions after being recommended to lose only seven, came to the board to talk about their value to the district the week after final decisions were made.

“I was thinking, what’s the point to their talking about this now?” Weber recalled.

Francine Williams, who heads the program, said Dale Vigil, assistant superintendent for integration, had told her not to go out and campaign. “But next time,” she said, “you bet I would lobby.”

Vigil said he laid down the prohibition “because there already were strong perceptions out there among principals and others that the program was not good, and, as you know, perception is reality, so I don’t think the board really cared what we would have said.”

Trustee Davis agreed in part, acknowledging the distaste many schools have for the way the human-relations counselors point out less positive aspects of the system’s efforts to integrate students in both academic and extracurricular activities.

“But it would have been good anyway to have heard them earlier,” she said.