City Grapples With Teachers’ Flight to North : Burnout: Unusual number of openings has many veterans shifting to area north of I-8 and highlights the problem of stabilizing staffs in ‘tougher’ assignments to the south.

For nine years, Sue Webb had one of the toughest of assignments in San Diego city schools, teaching English to youngsters at an inner-city high school.

When the chance came this summer to move to a school north of Interstate 8, away from the center city but still within the confines of the sprawling San Diego school district, she jumped.

In doing so, she joined hundreds of other young, veteran teachers who left similar tough inner-city schools throughout the mid-city and Southeast neighborhoods for positions at more suburban schools that a majority of teachers in the district perceive as the most coveted.

The impetus for the movement was an early-retirement financial offer by the school district that has resulted in hundreds of veteran teachers retiring from schools north of I-8.

For many years, openings in such schools were rare because teachers stayed put once they achieved enough seniority to transfer in the first place.

Webb, for example, is now teaching English at Mira Mesa High, one of the city’s most prestigious secondary schools, where Principal Jim Vlassis posted openings for the first time in nine years.

“A lot of teachers in the district were waiting for this chance,” said Webb, referring to the 436 teachers who retired in June, a figure that district personnel administrators estimate is more than double the number who would have left without the financial incentive.

As of last week, almost 300 veteran teachers had switched schools, with almost all of them going from south to north to fill some of more than 700 positions open due to retirements, resignations and requirements for additional teachers because of the increase in the number of students.

But another consequence of the teachers’ flight north is the vacancies they left behind in the schools south of I-8.

What that means is that the vast majority of more than 450 new teachers and former substitutes hired so far--and school personnel officials say they have hired some good ones--will be assigned schools in southern areas, where principals will have to hustle to provide adequate assistance.

Without such strong veteran peer assistance, national teacher association statistics show that one-third to one-half of all new teachers quit the field within the first three years, largely out of frustration over the crush of initial curriculum and discipline problems.

The south-to-north trend and the placement of new teachers in the toughest schools have been problems for the district for more than a decade.

But the wholesale transfers this summer have pushed to the forefront the question of how to stabilize instructional staffs at inner-city schools--an improvement viewed as vital if dropout rates and Latino and African-American student achievement are to improve.

“It’s been a natural trend for years that we’ve got to figure out how to deal with,” assistant schools Supt. Frank Till said of the perception that many schools “seem to always end up being in a training mode.”

Till said district administrators and the teachers union are already mulling the concepts of pay bonuses and salary differentials to keep more teachers in tougher urban schools.

The district’s restructuring program, in which schools will be given more individual choice and more responsibility for student achievement, could be designed to reward an entire school staff monetarily for meeting dropout and testing goals.

But, although both the union and district agree that the hemorrhaging must be staunched, the union is presently in no mood to carve out new ground, despite the need to begin negotiating a new contract later this year.

Leaders of the San Diego Teachers Assn. (SDTA) believe that many principals played fast and loose with contract rules for posting vacant positions so that they could get around seniority requirements and hire a specific teacher for a particular teaching post. They are also trying to organize the almost 1,000 substitute teachers into a bargaining unit, because many substitutes claim that their colleagues got short shrift in the competition for new hirings this summer.

All of that will complicate efforts to deal with the movement of many experienced teachers out of inner-city schools, which educators say occurs for a variety of reasons.

“You burn out,” said Webb, who for nine years taught English and headed a special program to boost the college chances of nonwhite students at San Diego High School.

“The kids I was teaching at San Diego High need you so much, it’s rewarding to see them succeed. But, after a while, the details of their lives get to you, with problems of gangs, drugs, etc.

“You begin to feel more like a social worker. You have all of society’s problems in a classroom, yet at the same time all these complaints from society that we (teachers) aren’t doing enough.”

Webb said a lot of money “is poured into schools in Southeast to start up a lot of special programs” that later fizzle because teachers and/or administrators lose interest in them. “Or sometimes you’ve got three or four related efforts going on with no communications between people trying each one.”

Her principal, Jim Vlassis, added: “Not everyone can be a Sister Theresa their entire career.”

Marc Knapp, a veteran teacher at Cubberly Elementary in Mission Village and an SDTA official, said student populations do not always substantially differ ethnically between Southeast and northern tier schools because of the large numbers of students who bus to non-neighborhood schools under integration programs.

“It’s rather that teachers don’t feel safe in many areas” around Southeast schools, Knapp said, “especially when you’ve got people selling crack across the street in some places.”

As to the charge of racism that some people make, Knapp responded, “It’s not. More teachers would pass on (transfers) if they felt there was a safe, supportive environment at some schools, that discipline and parent support were strong, that they could still feel after many years that they could still make a difference despite so many negatives in the environment.”

SDTA President Hugh Boyle, a San Diego High teacher for many years, said, “A majority of our teachers are white females. Where do they come from? Suburban white America. The inner-city, the nonwhite students, are not part of their experiences.”

Many teachers also want to live close to their homes, which in general are in suburban areas in northern San Diego or nearby communities like Poway or Rancho Penasquitos, he said. And most of the district’s multitrack year-round schools, which are the most crowded and therefore least attractive, are in Southeast.

Principals at schools labeled “tough-to-staff” believe that teacher perceptions of inner-city and Southeast San Diego schools are “misperceptions” in many cases.

“I had (a misperception) about Bell before I came here,” said Joene Bruhn, principal of the sprawling Paradise Hills Junior High, the largest west of the Mississippi River. “I had never been to Bell, but I found that, with the right ingredients, you can have a school staff (with nonwhite student majorities) that is cohesive, spirited, caring and stable.”

Bob Stein, principal at the new O’Farrell Junior High in Valencia Park, posted more than 30 positions without having a single bite from veterans at other schools, despite the large amount of freedom and authority that teachers there have for designing curriculum and dealing with student social needs.

“Disappointment is close to how I have felt, because I thought that, as a teacher-run school, there would be more excitement among teachers to participate in trying to make schools work in urban America,” Stein said.

Added his colleague Dennis Doyle, principal at nearby King Elementary in Southeast: “Being a teacher in an urban environment takes a special commitment, but there are many people who do stay, who do want to confront the issues of educating all children but also find out that 99% of the people who live around our schools are good, decent, law-abiding people who want the best for their children.”

Both Stein and Doyle expressed satisfaction with the many new teachers they hired, especially because the interview committees included existing teachers and school parents.

“In the past, we’d just get people assigned here” by the central personnel office, Doyle said. “I won’t settle for that. I want people committed to being here, who will work on changing the image, the misperception, if you will.”

Sharon Coleman left the San Marcos school district in North County this summer for a job at Baker Elementary in Southeast.

“Sure, it’s a challenge, but I tell people to forget that stuff about north of I-8, south of I-8,” Coleman said. “I’ve lived south of I-8 all my life, and teachers at this school and other (similar) schools really care, and they know that a lot of learning goes on when you have dedication and skill, and that kids will respond to your efforts to get them to be responsible.”

Many, but not all, principals endorse differential pay for teachers willing to stay in more difficult schools.

“I’d be in favor of bonuses, of maybe putting mentor teachers (who are paid extra) in tougher schools,” Vlassis of Mira Mesa said.

“I’d like to point out that I believe most of my teachers can do an excellent job in most any school,” said Principal Tony Alfaro of Memorial Junior High in Barrio Logan in arguing for bonuses, “but I’m certain most teachers can’t do the job at an inner-city school like Memorial.”

An opposing voice comes from J. M. Tarvin of La Jolla High, who oversees perhaps the district’s most desirable high school for teachers.

“Teachers didn’t get into the job to be social workers, and if they get caught up in all of those problems, you can’t do the job, no matter any extra money,” Tarvin said. “A school needs a focus on education with good school management. If that is there, you can teach well, no matter where the school is.”

The teachers union agrees philosophically that teaching staffs at south of I-8 schools must be made more stable. One proposal actively debated by the union is to allow principals, in posting some open positions, to apply seniority in a different way.

For example, teachers with less seniority might have first crack at some teaching openings. As a result, more experienced instructors would be kept at the tougher schools, perhaps in conjunction with monetary incentives the union calls “combat pay.”

But union leaders have put any reform proposals on hold, at least temporarily, because of their anger at the way they believe some principals this year abused existing contract procedures. Those rules call for principals to select a teacher for a posted position out of the top five applicants in seniority.

SDTA President Boyle and executive director Bill Harju say many principals, particularly at the secondary level, withheld certain positions from their public postings until after deadlines had passed for most teachers to bid. The principals then went out and picked up a particular teacher they wanted because they had fewer than five applicants, the union leaders charge.

“It used to be much easier to control,” Harju said, because, until three years ago a principal had to select the most senior applicant. At that time, the union agreed to the “five teacher rule” in exchange for the district allowing the union to hold a vote to require mandatory fees from all teachers, whether they join the union or not. (The union won a vote among district teachers for such fees last spring.)

“It’s been more of a problem than ever this year because of restructuring, where the education center is becoming gun-shy about enforcing the contract because it wants to encourage site-based decision making,” Harju said.

“Look, we want to build a more collaborative relationship,” Boyle said. “And we don’t want to be seen as obstructionist, but it seems that all we’ve given the district is another way for principals to manipulate things.”

“The district needs at the least to slap the wrists of a few principals,” Knapp said.

Many principals privately deny that they pull more than occasional “tricks” to withhold a position or two from the posting process.

One way is not to advertise a position until later by estimating a decline in student enrollment and a loss of that teaching spot, even though they know they have pegged the enrollment figure artificially low and will need to fill the position.

But one principal said that “we don’t do anything more with loopholes than the SDTA does when it looks for any possible way to save a terrible teacher that a principal is trying to get rid of. And what about the union people who call up principals and ask for special consideration in getting a transfer?”

The issue will have to be addressed squarely in upcoming negotiations because principals solidly oppose giving up the limited flexibility for selecting transfer teachers they gained in the last contract.

“We need to have as much ability to get the person best for the school as we can,” another principal argued. “It’s hard to have the post-and-bid requirements and get the person whom I and my teachers want by interviewing and having a choice.”