Measures C & D: Two Changes at San Diego Unified
In San Diego politics nothing creates more confusion at election time than public education.
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The Short Version (Details in story)
Measure C on the ballot makes all elections for the San Diego Unified School Board by district rather than citywide. Some people are opposed.
Measure D will create a mechanism for removal of school trustees. There is no opposition.
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Candidates for city council or mayor regularly make promises about education completely unrelated to the powers of the offices they are seeking. The reality is that the council and mayor have almost no say on how public schools operate.
The San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) election processes are dictated by the city charter. But the boundaries of SDUSD are not the same as those of city government, and a Board of Trustees runs the show.
Local public school systems exist in their own political bubble. School board elections are supposed to be a fundamental building block of democracy. (They also exist as a pathway for aspiring politicians)
A bit of history, via Wikipedia:
The American board of education traces its origins back to 1647, with the formation of the first American public school system. The Massachusetts Bay Colony mandated that every town establish a public school within its jurisdiction. Committees sprang up to run the institutions, and in the 1820s the state of Massachusetts required such committees to be independent of local governments, establishing the current model for the autonomous school districts that exist throughout the United States.
The United States Constitution reserved educational authority in the hands of the states pursuant to the Tenth Amendment, and most states have passed such authority to local school boards. For over a century, local boards were solely responsible for public education funding, standards, instruction, and results, which to a certain extent remains true today.
There was a time, back when my daughter was enrolled in the SDUSD system and recession-caused budget cuts loomed large, that I regularly attended the SDUSD board meetings.
I came away from that experience with two conclusions:
I have mad respect for any human willing to take on the task of overseeing education. The process is complicated and chaotic, more often than not driven by emotion, and to a large degree administrators (and institutional inertia) will dictate what happens.
Parents are crazy. Not all of them, of course, but the welfare of children can drive otherwise sane individuals to bizarre behaviors. One of the main functions of school board members is to sit through hours of testimony from parents arguing passionately for programs alternating with advocacy for the latest whack-a-doodle conspiracy making the round on Facebook.
School boards and the institution of public education are boxed in by unrealistic expectations (the magic wand theory of governance), finances (very complicated!), and a political movement seeking to move public assets and services into the private sector.
Increasing demands on parents’ time --often driven by financial pressures-- have contributed to making paying attention to education policy and education itself a luxury for many families.
The bottom line is that educational success --however you define it-- is driven in the vast majority of cases by economic status. And in case you hadn’t noticed, the vast majority of us have been on a downward slope for decades now.
A recent RAND Corporation study put some hard numbers to that decline, saying the bottom 90% of American workers would be bringing home an additional $2.5 trillion in total annual income if economic gains were as equitably divided as they’d been in the past.
They say the blame lies, in large measure, with decades of failed federal policy decisions—allowing the minimum wage to deteriorate, overtime coverage to dwindle, and the effectiveness of labor law to decline, undermining union power. They also cite a shift in corporate culture that has elevated the interests of shareholders over those of workers, an ethos that took root 50 years ago this week with the publication of an essay by University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman.
Many of these developments, Rolf points out, have been driven by the belief that an unfettered free market would generate wealth for everyone. Thanks to the RAND study, he says, “we now have the proof that this theory was wrong.”
In recent years some of those advocating for more schools outside the public school system (charters) have sought to neuter or eliminate boards of education. Charter schools, which come with their own set of unique problems and history, compete with public schools for money, and since budgets are set by school boards, some operators (mostly for-profit entities) have put tons of money into getting rid of the middleman.
San Diego’s School Board elections have been strongly influenced by organized labor in recent years. This isn’t necessarily the bad thing local right wingers would have you believe. They’ve tried playing the same game --big bucks for a citywide election-- and lost.
Unionized teachers care deeply about education and the education system. And they pay attention to the minutia of day-to-day school operations. (I won’t even get into arguments about pay, pensions, and disciplinary measures, since there is no actual alternative presently on the table other than union-busting.)
The “losers” in the current setup --primaries are run in sub districts, the entire city gets to vote in the general election for sub-district seats-- are neighborhood-conscious parents or grandparents. BUT… running for school board means going after a full-time job for part-time pay (broken down hourly, it’s sub minimum wage). This disqualifies huge swaths of the population.
The most cogent argument against Measure C is that sub-district voters will have no say about who the other members of the board of education are.
The compelling argument for Measure C is that it is bringing the School District into compliance with the California Voting Rights Act. At some point, the argument goes, the district will be forced via a lawsuit to institute district-only elections, which are thought to insure more diverse representation.
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Measure C - District Only Elections for School Board Members
(City of San Diego ballots)
Measure Ballot Summary: Shall the Charter be amended to change the process for electing School Board members in the San Diego Unified School District, by providing that voters in individual sub-districts nominate and elect their representative in both the primary and general elections, rather than the current system in which candidates are nominated in individual sub-districts in the primary but advance to a general election in the entire School District?
Placed on the ballot by a vote of the City Council following advocacy from Parents for Quality Education.
Voting Threshold required: 50%
There are no websites or social media concerning this measure.
Arguments for Measure C in the official ballot book were signed by City Council members Chris Cate & Monica Montgomery, BAPAC Chair Ellen Nash, Retired Principal Wendell Bass, and Parents for Quality Education President Tom Keliinoi.
The official ballot book will contain an argument against Measure C signed by Taxpayer Advocate Scott Barnett, Policy Advocate Dr. Kyra Greene, SD High Elected Parent Leader Amy Denhart, SD County Teacher of the Year Tammy Reina, and Past NAACP President Frank Jordan.
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Measure D - Procedures to Remove School Board Members for Cause and Fill Vacancies (City of San Diego ballots)
Measure Ballot Summary: Shall the City Charter be amended to include the office of School Board member from the San Diego Unified School District under City laws that address removal of elected officials for cause, filling vacancies in elected office, and succession to office?
Placed on the ballot by a vote of the City Council
Voting Threshold required: 50%
There are no websites or social media concerning this measure.
Measure D is on the ballot thanks to Bob Filner and Kevin Beiser. In response to the lack of a clear cut mechanism for removing badly behaving city elected officials from office other than recall in the Mayor Filner fiasco, voters approved Measure E in 2016.
SDUSD School Trustee Kevin Beiser was asked to resign after a civil suit accused him of rape and five years of abuse. Three other victims told their stories to the media. The suit was eventually settled, but the taint remains.
Beiser, once considered a rising star in the Democratic Party, ignored calls by the party and his fellow board members to step down. It turned out that the city’s legal beagles inadvertently left the school board out of Measure E, so the only way to rid the board was a resource eating campaign to have him recalled.
So Measure D uses the same mechanisms the voters approved in 2016. If the other four members of the school board say it’s time to go, a special election would be called.
There is no argument being made for voting against Measure D.
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For further information:
San Diego voters will decide on school board election reform in November
Why school boards don't always become diverse even after following California voting rights law
San Diego Unified school board supports board member removal proposal
Next Up: Raising the 30 foot height limit for the Midway District.
Voter Guide – You’ve Voted for President, what’s next?
I’ll be writing about many ballot measures and candidates between now and the end of September. That work will be condensed into a handy-dandy voter guide just in time for your mail-in ballots to arrive. I’m the guy who coordinated San Diego Free Press’s Voter Guides over the past decade, so this won’t be my first effort. Stay tuned.
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