San Diego

Approval for an unprecedented experimental public school in San Diego was given Tuesday by district trustees, but not before they warned planners that they would be held to the ambitious agenda promised in supporting documents.

The “E-Campus” (for experimental) will begin in September at Darnall Elementary, a now-closed campus in the Rolando area that will be reopened to handle rapidly growing enrollments in East San Diego.

The staff will have more freedom than 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--all in an attempt to show that such freedom and wide-ranging reforms can bring stronger academic achievement than present bureaucratic public school system designs.

The trustees obtained agreement Tuesday for more parent participation on the initial teacher-principal-community committee that will plan the school. The various unions and administrative groups that came together over the past several months--spurred by activist Rod Tompkins--agreed to increase the number of parents from one to three persons at the insistence of trustee Shirley Weber.

“The parents are the biggest stake holders in this experiment,” Weber said. If the school fails, the teachers and parents can go on to another site while the parents will be left with the unsatisfactory results with their children, Weber warned.