How shall I count them?
Our public schools in many crucial ways are being dismantled in the name of what my opponent and the Union-Tribune grandly call "Bersin Reforms."
  • Massive spending on eight "Blueprint" focus schools – out of 175 needy schools districtwide
  • Serious harmful policy decisions have been rubber-stamped by Bersin’s threesome on the Board
  • Plans are moving ahead to "transform" our high schools in collaboration with business elites via a new Carnegie Foundation grant, but without perusal or approval by the elected Board of Education, or any participation of the greater San Diego community of parents, teachers and students
  • Elimination of music and art as part of the core curriculum
  • Churning administrative staff in disruptive annual downsizings and restructurings
  • $10,000 bonus paid to the Superintendent, a public employee
  • Reading programs lack explicit phonics instruction
  • No math reform planned until the 2002 school year
  • National Science Foundation twice denies grants within the last 18 months
  • Only 28% of high school students who need improvement in literacy sign up for summer school
  • Technology contract cost overruns and scapegoating district employees in the name of "accountability"
  • Unaccountable private parties exert behind-the-scenes influence in Superintendent selection, multi-million dollar land transaction and soft-money contributions to district programs

The community needs to take back its Board of Education.

From unpublished letter to San Diego Union-Tribune – copied to Fran:

"Since I have known her for 25 years, Fran has been an advocate of improving and raising the standards of our public schools and has always been a concerned, thoughtful and sometimes outspoken critic of our education system. So when I read that you referred to her as one of the loyal adherents of the status quo, I knew that either you haven’t been listening to what she has been saying or were deliberately misconstruing her position."

--- David Raphael Singer, Architect

The "Blueprint"
An Experiment on our Kids

I voted against the "Blueprint" which was jammed through with a 3-2 vote of the Board’s rubber stamp majority on March 14, 2000 -- after minimal exposure to the public and with no significant modifications after a maiden presentation only three months earlier.

There was overwhelming grassroots opposition to the "Blueprint" from community and teachers who convened by the thousands at three public forums and the March 14 Board meeting.

The "Blueprint" presages a radical and overwhelming restructuring of what you and I know as public education. (The other shoe is about to drop as district administration moves forward unilaterally with its Carnegie Foundation-funded planning grant to "transform" our high schools – without any Board of Education involvement or the active participation of a single teacher or parent.)

To fund the "Blueprint," virtually every district program and school site budget has been raided to pay for this increasingly expensive proposal. The "Blueprint" effectively destroys a comprehensive curriculum of language arts, social studies, math, science, music and art at elementary school, and the comprehensive curriculum at middle and senior high schools that includes electives such as social studies, science, music, art, foreign language and school-to-work opportunities. Schools’ discretionary budgets have been halved – or worse – to pay for the "Blueprint" beginning this Fall.

Curriculum

Under the "Blueprint" the lowest-achieving high school students will have a curriculum of three hours of "literacy" and two hours of basic math. I know about kids, and I doubt that demoralized and struggling young people will choose to stay in school under these bleak circumstances.

Counseling

Counseling programs -- so desperately needed to help our children’s self-awareness and socialization in this era of hypersexuality, violence and alienation -- remain at bare-bones recession-level funding.

Electives

For the 2000-2001 school year electives have been cut at 29 of 45 secondary schools as a result of the "Blueprint." We have lost Spanish classes, highly-acclaimed AVID classes, music and art and speech. Aides have virtually disappeared. The full impact of their absence will be felt this fall.

Drop-Outs

We risk increasing school drop-outs by assigning low-performing students to three-hour sections of "literacy" and two-hour sections of remedial math. In the California Education Code all students are guaranteed the right to access the core curriculum -- a right that is ignored by the "Blueprint." If strugglers drop out, our test scores will go up, and we can claim a Pyrrhic victory!

Good Premise, Bad Practice

The admirable theoretical premise of the "Blueprint" – to raise achievement levels of our historically under-performing Latino and African-American students to the levels of their Anglo counterparts – is subverted in practice to a school day of resegregated remedial classrooms and a high school experience that will take at least five years.

The "Blueprint" -- thrown together without stakeholder input and after only three months’ public scrutiny, with little change except for its increasing price tag, and rubber-stamped by a politically co-opted 3-2 Board of Education -- is an unconscionable experiment on our kids.

I repeat: I voted against the "Blueprint."

"My three school-age children will no longer be a part of Bersin’s misleading campaign. The day after his blueprint was enacted, we put our house on the market."

-- Valerie Sachs, Letter to the Union-Tribune 7/19/00

Harmful Policy Decisions

The harmful policy decisions of the rubber-stamp Board team have produced negative results.

  • Parent, teacher and principal morale has plummeted. This is not good for schools, classrooms or students.
  • Thousands of K-3 students were required to enroll in summer school because they read below grade level – despite the two years' literacy emphasis in elementary classrooms. Is it possible we are using inadequate reading programs?
  • AVID classes for under-represented college-bound minority students are jeopardized because hundreds of instructional aides were fired last spring.
  • Of the high school students slated to take optional-but-recommended summer school "genre studies" literacy classes, only 28% enrolled. Students are rejecting the "Blueprint" with their feet, and not getting help they need. At this unacceptably slow rate, high school diploma requirements may take more than five years to complete.
  • There has been profligate spending on far-flung consultants:
    • $500,000 for a Florida-based advisor who was a go-fer for the superintendent, a facilitator of "private/public collaboratives" and a moderator of "board/superintendent dialogues" on superintendent performance evaluations, bonuses and annual goal-setting
    • $99,900 for A.U.S.S.I.E., Inc. (a consultant group from Australia), to teach our teachers reading strategies without benefit of phonics
    • $636,500 for a few all-expense-paid four-day junkets to the University of Pittsburgh for 33 district employees, plus reciprocal visits from two Pittsburgh consultants who came to San Diego in the cold mid-winter

"As in all wars, the real victims are the children. Bersin & Co. will move on in a few years, but they will leave behind a multitude of youngsters who have been cheated out of an education."

-- Mary Solsbak, Letter to the Union-Tribune, 8/13/00

My Opponent

  • Aggressive in speech and demeanor; favorite verbs are "attack" and "accuse" when addressing me in public forums. This is a self-described "mediator"?
  • Money from a PAC of her supporters -- out-of-town developers and downtown power brokers -- bankrolled a weekend-before-primary election "hit" mailer that distorts who I am and what I stand for.

    To set the record straight:
    • I support San Diego Reads book drive with personal contributions of new books to our schools. I voted against spending $1 million of district money on San Diego Reads, since San Diego Reads is a private organization which I believe should be supported entirely by private contributions.
    • I support class-size reduction and fight to preserve it whenever it is threatened. Small class size was mandated by State action four years ago in grades K-3 and I support expansion to other grades.
    • I voted no to full-day kindergarten, because there was not one word of discussion about the social and developmental pros and cons for young children.

       Along with a majority of district kindergarten teachers who testified before the Board last spring, I have serious reservations about full-day kindergarten with daily homework assignments for four-year-olds. I do support full-day kindergarten for five-year olds, however, and have lobbied the California legislature several times to move the December kindergarten cutoff to September.
    • The so-called "literacy framework" means a school day dominated by activities such as "read-alouds" and "shared reading." Math, science, social studies, music and art take a back seat. It also means too little use of phonics for beginning readers. At the secondary school, the "literacy framework" limits availability of elective classes such as foreign language, art, music and AVID. I voted against the "literacy framework."
  • Works for law firm which represents landowner in $16 million land sale to school district (March 2000)
  • Misrepresented endorsers on March Primary Election ballot statement
    • La Jolla High School teacher listed on her ballot as endorser asked in writing to have his name removed
    • California School Employees Association (CSEA) endorsement listed on her ballot was subsequently rescinded by membership for having been illegally obtained
  • Personal friend of Superintendent Bersin and wife -- can we expect objectivity?
  • Works for law firm whose principal partner is closely tied to Chamber of Commerce
  • Endorsed by Chamber of Commerce
  • Sent youngest child to private school last year -- just as Bersin did before becoming Superintendent

"Ms. Zimmerman, thank you for your courage to fight for our kids!!!"

-- Kathy M. Fazekas, Teacher Wegeforth School


Home -- About Fran -- Reforms
Endorsements -- Support Fran -- Contact Fran