Expelling Bureaucracy : New School to Tackle Educational Reform

Rod Tompkins’ own children have attended private schools in San Diego.

The former bank executive knew of many small but unheralded examples of talent and dedication in public schools that equaled those of any private campus. But, in working for partnerships between businesses and schools, he too often saw teachers and principals stifled by bureaucracy, tradition or a fear of attempting something new.

With no agenda other than to give that talent a chance to display itself--and to show that public education can reform itself--Tompkins approached San Diego city schools Supt. Tom Payzant last spring and proposed an experimental school.

Give the principal and teachers maximum freedom to do whatever they believe will increase student achievement most, Tompkins told Payzant.

Now, a difficult but rewarding half-year later for Tompkins, school trustees today are expected to approve the “E-Campus” (for experimental) beginning in September at Darnall Elementary. Darnall, a campus in the Rolando area that closed in June, 1986, will be reopened with as many as 800 students to handle rapidly growing enrollments throughout East San Diego.

A principal will be selected by Feb. 1, and the first teachers--who sign on voluntarily--will be on board by mid-March. They will have the widest latitude of any San Diego school in history to set up its teaching programs, free from existing district and union regulations regarding work rules, job descriptions, work hours, curriculum and evaluation, Payzant said.

The staff will be given a budget and allowed to spend as they wish, with the caveat that the results must show stronger achievement for all students--a majority of whom will be nonwhite and therefore in most need of a sustained academic boost. Teachers will have at least two years to show progress.

With equal measures of perseverance, enthusiasm, optimism and a refusal to take “no” for an answer, Tompkins maneuvered his idea to reality through a thicket of skepticism and caution from the key employee and management groups whose cooperation--or refusal--could either make or break his vision.

“It was just an idea to do something dramatic, to try and solve the political issues (of personnel and money) up front rather than trying to piecemeal reform step-by-step, which has meant a really slow pace in school reform up until now,” said Tompkins, a resident of Point Loma. “I was just a catalyst, someone with absolutely no ax to grind.

“I know that there is good talent out there. I’ve seen it. I want to mobilize it so people like myself don’t feel the high motivation to send their kids to private schools.

“I thought that private schools could pay more individual attention to my kids----but I didn’t think it was right that I had to feel that way.”

Several of the key groups looked askance at Tompkins when he first approached them, after he was warned by Payzant that nothing could move forward without their approvals.

“Our people at first wanted to know what was in it for him; they were very skeptical,” said Bill Harju, executive director of the San Diego Teachers Assn., which represents the almost 6,000 teachers and other academic personnel in the nation’s eighth-largest urban school system.

But the compelling need of educators to do something dramatic pushed Harju’s executive board, as well as other administrative groups, to work with Tompkins.

The teacher’s union and others eventually agreed, although they remain apprehensive that the school will set precedents for all schools that no one can predict. It’s an idea that Harju admitted “is something very controversial; people are afraid of change, and this looks revolutionary because it threatens the sanctity of the (labor) contract.”

But Harju also sees the idea as the public school system’s “small but important answer to choice.”

“Can we design a program and see if the flexibility from rules and regulations can raise test scores?” he said. If successful, Harju argued, public schools could prove themselves better than “choice,” the controversial proposal to give parents the chance to use public education money to place their children at private schools.

The fear among all the groups that E-Campus could augur sweeping changes for public schools “probably is why the idea is so good,” said Kermeen Fristrom, executive director of the Administators Assn., an interest group that watches out for principals and other middle-level managers.

“There’s fear over giving a campus autonomy that could mean the elimination of (traditional administrative) positions at a school, because that means job security,” Fristrom cited as one example. “But I support this because, even if there are parts that I don’t like, they are offset by other parts that will make the campus a better place to educate students.”

Further, Fristrom added, “This was a classic case of a single individual with a good idea getting into a huge government entity and forcing us to do some things that are very positive.

“His belief that we can overcome bureaucratic restrictions, the inherent handicaps in most public systems--that was key for me.”

The E-Campus agreement, which trustees are expected to approve today, was worked out by representatives of the administrators association, of the teachers, classified workers and blue-collar unions, the PTA, Payzant’s office, and by Ann Armstrong, president of the Board of Education.

Tompkins was the glue that held the coalition together as, over several months, each group fretted about giving up power without guarantees that another group could not gain the upper hand and use it against them in some awful perversion of the school’s purpose.

This committee of seven, dubbed the E-Committee, will oversee the leadership team of the principal and teachers until after Darnall’s first semester, after which it will dissolve and its oversight function will be assumed by an existing district restructuring committee. Tompkins, now an executive with Ace Auto Parks, will drop out of the picture even sooner.

“That’s another neat thing, there’s no new bureaucracy,” Tompkins said.

The representative of each group on the E-Committee has the power to waive any part of his or her collective bargaining agreement or operating rules. “That process will incorporate the expressed intention to provide E-Campus with the maximum possible latitude to operate,” the agreement states.

Tompkins said that, initially, he wanted the school to be given a complete blank check. “But we ended up with a modification, because there’s still a perception that giving up something is going to be difficult,” he said.

But Fristrom of the administrators’ association said the ability of representatives to waive rules automatically “is in itself anti-bureaucracy because the bureaucracy says you always have to go back to the entire group and get approval, and then go back and forth, back and forth.”

The leadership team will at first include the principal, four teachers, one secretary, one custodian, one teacher’s aide and one community leader. The team will essentially run the school until after the first year, when a team representing the full scope of the school, including parents and possibly students, will be in place.

“This whole idea will increase the probability that things you know can be done educationally for students will happen,” Payzant said.