S.D. Businesses Present Agenda to Help Schools

The San Diego business community announced an ambitious effort Wednesday to do more for education than simply write a check or provide volunteers for a school event.

The San Diego Business Roundtable for Education presented its inaugural agenda to try to affect teaching quality, boost student preparation for the work world, improve parent participation and lobby both locally and in Sacramento for important classroom priorities.

The 25 companies that agreed to be founding members have raised $60,000 for the round table’s first year, with another $60,000 from the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce, under whose auspices the round table will operate.

Former San Diego school board member Kay Davis has been named round table executive director, and Ann Burr, president of Southwestern Cable TV, will serve as the group’s chairwoman.

The group will have a countywide focus, although many of the issues facing education today have their roots in changing demographics that are rapidly moving the region’s urban schools into a multicultural world of nonwhite student majorities.

Indeed, schools Supt. Tom Payzant was present for Wednesday’s announcement, and said the new group can “take multiple issues and make clear the connections between them,” such as the link between healthy kids and their ability to learn.

“This is not just a shoot-from-the-hip effort,” Burr told a news conference, noting that the round table is the culmination of almost a year of planning.

It is intended to make education a higher priority among area business and develop a detailed plan of what business can do to improve the literacy of the future work force, she said.

For the past decade, many businesses have entered into partnerships with individual schools where volunteers might tutor occasionally or the company provide funds for awards assemblies or field trips.

While not knocking those efforts, Pacific Bell’s Terry Churchill--a longtime activist for area schools and a founding round-table member--said Wednesday that “they are not making a big enough difference by themselves.”

“We need more advocacy.”

Churchill called the move a pragmatic one for local companies because “we (as businesses) are one of the biggest property taxpayers to schools, the sons and daughters of our employees are many of the kids in schools, and the students are our future employees and customers.”

“There is nothing more important for San Diego’s future economy than (improving) the schools,” he said.

The group’s initial agenda is long on process, with plans to survey county businesses to find out what they want from public education, to develop lobbying and public information projects, and to hold seminars and public forums on issues such as school choice and management changes to give teachers and principals more say in how to run their campuses.

Nevertheless, round-table members promised that there will be concrete results, although a promise by chamber President Mel Katz of having them “by this time next year” was called perhaps a bit optimistic by Churchill.

But Churchill cited existing business financial support for countywide efforts such as New Beginnings, a program bringing coordinated health and welfare counseling to poor students and their families in school settings.

Companies also back parent-involvement programs countywide by people such as activist Vahac Madrosian, whose seminars for Asian, Latino and African-American families have spurred school participation tenfold or more in several districts.

Churchill also said the round table could play a critical role in pushing advanced technology in schools.

For example, the San Diego Unified School District has been unable to fund a technology coordinator to help unravel the mishmash of hardware now purchased individually by schools and to train teachers to use computers more intelligently in the classroom and see an academic payoff.

Churchill said the round table, if it had existed two years ago, could have lobbied the school board forcefully for such a position. Alternately, if round-table members see technology as a priority, Churchill suggested, companies such as Pacific Bell with high-tech expertise might be able to run seminars for teachers themselves in districts without the money to do so.

The payoff for businesses in having trained students as potential future employees would be tremendous, he said.