...The powerful union has thrown its support behind Scott Barnett, a Republican who used to be the head of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association.
Zombro believes Barnett will reign in school spending so that it focuses on the basics and not on big reforms.
“(Quality education) is not a flashy program or a big consultant or a big splash. What it takes is a positive place for children to learn, for parents to interact with their schools, and for teachers to teach.”
Whatever the outcome, the board will have to manage the second largest school district in the state with a lot less money. It will also have to push for better academic results while dealing with a persistent achievement gap.
John De Beck always had the courage to criticize the teachers union; citizens can rejoice now that Richard Barrera, John Lee Evans and Shelia Jackson have done the same.
Camille Zombro and Jim Groth of the San Diego Education Association (SDEA) might want to pull their heads out of the ground and realize that its time to acknowledge the real world: there's a limit to how long citizens will continue to bow to the arbitrary demands of CTA.
After another plan failed to dig up enough savings, San Diego Unified is now under even more pressure to squeeze employees to balance its budget.
The prolonged budget crisis has put some board members at odds with the same unions that helped to elect them -- and jumbled the usual dynamics of the politicized board.
Longtime labor ally Richard Barrera is seeking deeper concessions from the teachers union, along with John Lee Evans, who was elected on a pledge to protect teachers. John de Beck and Shelia Jackson, who have often disagreed on labor issues in recent years, are both pushing the idea of progressive salary cuts that fall harder on employees who earn more...
...Last year the board decided not to lay off teachers, and about 185 remained on the payroll, despite the fact they did not have teaching stations or children. (I will use the term, “surplus teachers” to identify these people.)
In addition the district used savings that increasing class size would provide (reducing the number of teachers needed), to balance our “tentative” 2009-10 budget.
So we had two conflicting problems and solutions. One was (to realize any savings) that any remaining surplus teachers would have to be placed in already budgeted positions (some of which were cut to save money this year) and the board decided to offer these teachers jobs and training in special education so they could fit into jobs that were budgeted, needed, and unfilled. Others were going to be used for substitutes, and other unfilled jobs that would come from special funded projects. The second was that we would have other unassigned teachers caused by the class size increase.
The board seemed to forget (or was not told) that the problem was that increasing class sizes would add to the need to find places for people and that the class size savings we used to balance our budget were on paper, and not real unless all surplus teachers got assignments that were already in the budget.
Principals were told to implement class size increases for this year and when enrollments showed a decline (or were flat) in September at Ocean Beach, Normal Heights and other schools, they just followed directions and reduced staff according to contract and district rules. The result was that they have had to let teachers go into the pool of surplus teachers (increasing the total) and had to use the remaining staff according to the staffing formulas they were given. They had no choice but to reorganize their schools and that caused them to use techniques like combination classes, to meet their official staffing ratios....
Maura Larkins comment:
It’s a wonder the great Terry Grier didn’t point this out to the board. Or maybe he did, but either way, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this plan wouldn’t work. The board calculated that it had to keep the surplus teachers to please the teachers union (Democrats), and to raise class size so it would appear that it was dealing with the budget crisis (Republicans). The board seems to care only about pleasing the politically powerful, and is so lacking in courage that it wouldn’t fess up about what it had done before school started, when the current debacle could easily have been prevented. Why can’t we elect board members with the courage to put kids first?
