San Diego Schools

They're making gains on similar problems

San Diego is a city with the kind of scenery that would make working for the chamber of commerce appear to be a snap.

With 70 miles of beaches, pine-covered hills and popular Balboa Park in the heart of the city, San Diego could hardly be confused with Dallas.

And yet, the Southern California city has more in common with Big D than many realize. San Diego and Dallas both are experiencing an explosive growth in their Latino populations. And both are facing public education challenges as a result.

The dramatic increase in Hispanic residents has played havoc with reading scores in the San Diego Unified School District. And it has tested the urban school district’s ability to make significant performance improvements under the constraints of Proposition 227.

The proposition approved by the California electorate two years ago abandons bilingual education programs and requires English immersion for Spanish-speaking children.

Adding to the San Diego school system’s woes were overcrowding problems in the classrooms that would require more than $ 1 billion to fix. Sound familiar?

Into this public education lion’s den stepped Alan Bersin, the U.S. attorney who served as President Clinton’s “border czar” in the crackdown on drug-trafficking.

Mr. Bersin appeared to be an unlikely choice to turn the tide at the school district when he was named superintendent in 1998. But even though the San Diego schools still have a long way to go, Mr. Bersin and his administrators have implemented innovative programs and made impressive gains.

Less than a year after Mr. Bersin assumed office, he won 78 percent approval from San Diego voters for a $ 1.5 billion bond issue. He says he did so by convincing people they all have a stake in public education and by putting together a program that benefited schools throughout the district.

Mr. Bersin brought in Anthony Alvarado, a former superintendent of the Manhattan borough schools in New York, to serve as chancellor of the San Diego schools.

Together, they have put together a back-to-basics blueprint for student success that focuses heavily on improving reading and math skills at all grade levels. The plan requires hundreds of new teachers, thousands of additional classroom hours for low performing students and an expanded school year for many.

Under Mr. Bersin’s program, all children in the sixth grade will attend a two-hour literacy class each day that includes reading and writing memoirs, short stories, poetry and historical fiction. There will be more concentrated instruction in reading and math for high school freshmen who continue to lag behind their peers. Classes before or after school are being scheduled for students in the third, sixth, seventh and eighth grades who are performing far below grade level.

Mr. Bersin said the district is determined to address these problems before the students lose hope and drop out.

He has committed $ 50 million in state money and Title I funds to beef up reading courses in the classrooms and to invest $ 5,000 in books and material for each first-grade class. The decision caused something of an uproar because it meant that 600 teacher aides would be laid off.

Some teachers also grumbled that the superintendent’s commitment to literacy will not leave enough time to teach other subjects.

But the school district recently signed a new contract with the local teachers’ union, indicating many of the differences have been resolved.

Mr. Bersin also has made the business community a full partner in the San Diego Reads project. Companies already have provided $ 20 million in materials and support for the program.

The San Diego schools are following a path similar to the Dallas school district with expanded teacher training and mentors, who can help hone and improve classroom instruction. But the San Diego plan goes a step further in providing veteran teachers who can advise parents how to help their children learn and be prepared for class.

The San Diego Unified School District is responding to the challenges of Proposition 227 with a pilot project that begins Spanish and English language instruction in kindergarten. The plan calls for those proficient in Spanish to spend more than an hour daily learning English and those proficient in English to learn Spanish. Mr. Bersin is convinced the strategy will pay off for everyone as the racial makeup of Southern California continues to evolve.

At present, nearly 37 percent of the 141,000 students in the school district are Hispanic. About 17 percent are African-American, 28 percent are Caucasian and the remainder are Asian, Filipino, American Indian or Pacific Islanders.

The schools are making encouraging gains in the classroom. Ninety-seven of San Diego’s 180 schools will receive cash awards from the state because of academic improvement.

But the real measure of the school district’s success is the growing commitment from the San Diego community to make certain more improvements are achieved.



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