San Diego Schools Hit by Whirlwind

In a recent speech to his teachers, Alan Bersin noted that his first year as school superintendent has been a time of great debate, anxiety and stress within California’s second-largest school district.

Has it ever.

More than any other year in memory--including 1996, when teachers staged a successful six-day strike--this has been one of prolonged public disagreement and discord between teachers and the administration.

“I’ve seen [superintendents] come and go,” said Elaine Law, a 32-year veteran of San Diego schools and now principal of a predominantly minority elementary school. “But I’ve never seen an E-ticket ride like this.”

A year ago, the school board voted 3 to 2 to do what only a handful of big-city districts have been brave or foolish enough to do: hire someone from outside the world of education to make fast and sweeping changes.

The move was born of frustration that despite two decades of innovation and new programs, the San Diego district has largely failed to boost the achievement level of low-income, predominantly minority students.

The board majority concluded that the system of decentralized authority, shared governance and decision by committee that is common in many school districts had failed and that it was time for the educational equivalent of tough love.

The same majority also wanted someone unafraid to confront the teachers union over its ability to influence curriculum and insulate its members from change.

Bersin, 52, a former Los Angeles civil litigator turned U.S. attorney for San Diego and Imperial counties, was fresh from the disappointment of not getting the No. 2 job under Atty. Gen. Janet Reno and was looking for a new career challenge.

With promises of greater accountability from teachers and higher test scores from students--not in five years but within a testing cycle or two--Bersin breezed past a dozen or more pedigreed educators who wanted to succeed the retiring Bertha Pendleton.

Pendleton’s forte was consensus building. Bersin’s is action.

A Scenario Common in Business World

The first year of his tenure has followed a scenario that is well known in the corporate world but seems revolutionary in a school district:

A hard-charging chief executive hits the ground running and lets everyone know there’s a new boss and a new sense of urgency. He promotes “his” people to top jobs. He downsizes by firing or demoting people.

He installs a new system for doing things and announces that there will be further changes to increase productivity, accountability and responsiveness to customers. Employees sink into resentment, but the boss remains bullish.

“There is a strong foundation here,” Bersin said in an interview. “But we’ve got to change. Old attitudes, old allegiances and old antagonisms are not going to produce the results this community wants.”

This being a military town, Bersin is ready with military simile: Trying to reform a large bureaucratic system like the San Diego Unified School District (139,000 students, 9,000 employees, $867-million annual budget) is like trying to get a mammoth aircraft carrier to change course.

“The carrier hasn’t changed course yet, but it’s shimmying,” Bersin said.

The teachers union has a different military comparison, likening Bersin to a newly minted officer who has a heady sense of his own authority and no respect for veterans.

“Morale is the lowest I’ve seen it in my 30 years here,” said Marc Knapp, president of the San Diego teachers union. “It’s a very oppressive atmosphere for employees in the district--a feeling of tyranny. It’s Bersin’s way or no way.”

Bersin has heard it all before. He has made a kind of mini-career out of bringing swift and unsettling change to San Diego institutions.

He was appointed U.S. attorney in 1993 despite having no experience as a prosecutor. He is a friend of President Clinton from their days as Rhodes scholars, and he knows Hillary Rodham Clinton from their days at Yale Law School.

When he became U.S. attorney, Bersin immediately shuffled personnel. Some curse his name still. Some praise him for bringing a renewed sense of purpose to the office.

He was willing to defy the sense of “that’s not how we do it in San Diego” by indicting and successfully prosecuting three former San Diego judges for taking gifts from a lawyer. The district attorney had declined to prosecute.

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and educated at Harvard with a bachelor’s degree in government, Bersin has shown a preference for importing New Yorkers to ride herd on the San Diegans in his employ.

As U.S. attorney, he brought in career prosecutor Charles LaBella. And as superintendent, he hired Anthony Alvarado, who earned acclaim for raising achievement levels in a 24,000-student slice of the New York system.

When Bersin, Alvarado and other top aides visit a school, teachers quickly pass the word that “the white men in dark suits” are on campus.

Frequent, Forceful Presence in Media

Bersin is a frequent and forceful presence in the local media, which grates on some teachers. Each Tuesday he is interviewed on the city’s top-rated morning TV news show. He does radio talk show interviews and makes speeches to service clubs.

A search by the teachers union found that in 365 days, Bersin’s name appeared 279 times in the San Diego newspaper, compared with 19 for the union president.

He led the charge for a $1.51-billion school renovation bond, passed overwhelmingly in November by normally penny-pinching San Diego voters.

Earlier this month, with two TV cameras waiting, the onetime All-Ivy League lineman showed up to toss the football and play tug of war with students at a football camp co-sponsored by the school district.

The teachers won the 1996 strike primarily because Pendleton was no match for them in using the media. If there is a strike while Bersin is superintendent, the teachers will enjoy no such advantage.

One of the first flare-ups between the union and Bersin came at the beginning of the academic year, when elementary school teachers were presented with a new framework for promoting literacy.

Each teacher is under orders to spend three hours a day teaching reading, writing, listening and speaking. Although there is some flexibility for a teacher to choose between approaches, the days of near-autonomy for individual schools are now gone--without much consultation.

From the beginning, teachers complained that the literacy system imposed by Bersin was depriving them of time to teach other subjects.

The teachers’ complaints were validated when the National Science Foundation canceled a $9-million federal grant for the San Diego school system because it said Bersin’s focus on literacy had robbed teachers of time to teach mathematics and science.

Still, Bersin, Alvarado and the board show no signs of wavering from the literacy push and plan to expand it to high schools--even though it will mean cutbacks in elective courses and possible protests.

The literacy flap led to a protracted toe-to-toe confrontation between Bersin and union President Knapp over the superintendent’s plan to send “peer coaches” into schools. Points of disagreement included how the coaches would be selected and what authority they would have to evaluate their fellow teachers.

This spring, anger at Bersin spilled over into a picket line joined by 3,000 teachers. Only mediation by the president of San Diego State University allowed the two sides to agree on shared control of the peer coach selection process.

Bersin defines his job as “looking at the challenge of improving student achievement in the eye and focusing relentlessly, even ruthlessly, [on creating] an environment that produces what students need rather than what adults want.”

To teachers and some administrators, that kind of bravado smacks of a top-down management style that is destined to fail.

“While there have been some positives under Alan, he’s introduced an undercurrent of disrespect that is corrosive,” said Ernie McCray, an elementary school principal.

Bersin wants greater power to select principals and last week announced the immediate demotion of 13 principals and two vice principals. He thinks teachers’ pay should be tied to the achievement of their students. And he would like to end a policy that protects tenured teachers from being transferred without their consent.

Two of five board members are critics. But Bersin has the enthusiastic support of two major political players in San Diego: the editorial page of the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Business Roundtable of the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce.

However, even some of his supporters think his bulldog style may be his undoing.

“Over the long haul, you can’t continue to lead that way, because if you offend enough people, they’ll start to coalesce against you,” said Scott Harvey, a former San Diego city councilman.

Bersin insists that he is neither surprised nor chagrined at how difficult his first year has been.

“I don’t think I underestimated the challenge; I understand how these things run out,” he said. “People who like me say I’m persistent. People who don’t like me say I’m stubborn.”

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San Diego Unified District at a Glance

Schools: 176

Students: 139,000

Annual budget: $867 million

Teachers: 6,844

Support staff: 1,756

Managers: 431

Ethnic breakdown of students:

Latino: 36%

White: 28%

Black: 17%

Asian: 19%

Alaskan Indian: Less than 1%

Recent history: The district has not been able to narrow the achievement gap between whites and nonwhites despite two decades of effort, including magnet schools, enrichment programs, smaller class size, special tutoring for low-achieving students and greater authority for individual schools to select teaching methods.