‘Shooting’ E-Mail Spurs an Uproar in San Diego

An e-mail in which the San Diego school board president sardonically suggested shooting two fellow board members has set off an uproar in the district.

Sue Braun fired off a Sept. 25 e-mail to a group of senior school district officials to complain about a contentious, marathon board meeting held that evening.

“The only other idea I have is to shoot the both of them,” Braun wrote of two dissenting colleagues who had long opposed her support of far-reaching reforms proposed by district Supt. Alan D. Bersin.

“I was thinking of a way to get them both with one bullet, but now think they are too heavy for that to work.”

Against the backdrop of back-to-back high school shootings in San Diego County in March and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the comments have stirred emotions throughout the 143,000-student district.

Braun, 67, apologized and stepped down as board president Oct. 9. But her critics continue to raise concerns about an adult expressing inappropriate sentiments at a time when schools are vowing zero tolerance for student threats of violence.

The local teachers union, which at one time supported Braun, and a Latino coalition are among those calling for her to resign from the five-member board. They said they were not satisfied with her public acknowledgment that she had made a “terrible error in judgment.” Nor were they placated by a conclusion by the district attorney’s office that Braun meant her colleagues no harm.

Braun has said she intends to serve out her term, which expires in December 2002. She did not return a call for comment Monday.

As a result of the brouhaha, civility and board relations will be high on the agenda at today’s biweekly school board meeting, said Ron Ottinger, 44, who, as vice president, will run the proceedings. But there is still the potential for fireworks and an uncertain future for the makeup of the board.

“There is significant reform in every corner of the school district,” Ottinger said. “When you have reform on the scale that is required to raise student achievement across the board and close the achievement gap, the old culture meets the new, and that’s where the tension lies.”

School Board Has Been Bickering for Years

The board had been bickering before Bersin came on board. It was split in July 1998 when it hired the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California. That deep division has continued since his arrival and his decision last year to implement his “Blueprint for Student Success,” perhaps the most wide-ranging series of changes ever undertaken in a school system. By the end of this school year, the changes will have cost a projected $160 million.

One of the targets of Braun’s e-mail, Frances O’Neill Zimmerman, 62, who has been at odds with the superintendent, said: “Even though he came in with a split board, he could have moved to build bridges, but he’s incapable of doing that. It’s his defining fault.”

By most accounts, the differences between the board factions are personal and philosophical. Zimmerman and her colleague, John de Beck, both former teachers, favor community involvement and consider Bersin to be, in Zimmerman’s words, “utterly uncollaborative.” They also disagree fundamentally with Braun, Ottinger and Trustee Edward Lopez about how students should be taught.

What helped set off the latest fireworks at the Sept. 25 meeting was a dispute over how well the district’s students have done on the Stanford 9 basic skills achievement test.

Bersin and his curriculum chief, Anthony Alvarado, a former New York school administrator, had pledged to boost scores significantly. The district had sent out postcards citing “steady progress” over the last three years (including a period before the blueprint was implemented). But de Beck trotted out statistics showing that 2001 scores were stagnant compared with 2000 results.

“We’ve spent [millions] on all these initiatives,” de Beck, 71, said in an interview. “Are we getting anything for that?”

Bersin and Alvarado introduced the blueprint to reverse what they described as several troubling trends.

Tens of thousands of students in San Diego, Bersin said, were reading and doing math at unacceptable levels. More than 40% of ninth-graders read at the lowest levels, as measured by standardized tests. An alarming 30% of students dropped out of high school because of poor academics.

Teachers Riled Over Loss of Classroom Aides

No one disputes that the district needed to find solutions. But one step it took was to eliminate hundreds of jobs for classroom aides, using the money instead to buy instructional materials, train teachers and reduce class sizes. That riled teachers.

“It’s not a good deal, taking away extra aide time . . . because the district has decided centrally to make a determination of what’s good for schools,” said Marc Knapp, president of the San Diego Education Assn., which represents more than 9,000 San Diego teachers. “They’ve spent lots of money and taken away decision-making and collaboration.”

The turmoil on the school board has prompted community leaders to explore drastic measures.

Last week, about 20 prominent San Diego residents, including executives, religious leaders and educators, met with former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan to hear how he helped orchestrate the reform of his city’s sharply divided school board.

Riordan, who is likely to run as a Republican candidate for California governor, related how he raised $2 million for a slate of school board candidates, including three challengers, all of whom won their races in 1999.

Some who attended the meeting said they believe that San Diego Mayor Dick Murphy should follow that precedent and intervene.

Zimmerman, however, said she already has endured an assault by Bersin’s supporters. Last year, she said, business leaders contributed heavily to a campaign to defeat her, saying she opposed “back to basics” school reforms and listing her office phone number.

“I won the race with 51% of the vote,” she said. “By all rules of elections, I should have lost, but people were very upset.”

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Times data analyst Sandra Poindexter contributed to this story.