Copyright © 2012 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger’s
Newsmagazine • All rights reserved
PHOTOS, top to bottom:
Marne Foster
Bill Ponder
L to R: John Witt, Bob Cornelius, Gregg Robinson
Lyn Neylon
The
predominantly Queer San Diego Democrats for Equality endorsed two leaders from
the American Federation for Teachers (AFT) for school board races at their
March 22 meeting: Marne (pronounced “Marnie”) Foster for San Diego Unified
School District board district E and Gregg Robinson for District One of the San
Diego County Board of Education. One month earlier, the club had split over a
Congressional race and rated both state senator Juan Vargas, the labor-backed
candidate and former state senator Denise Moreno Ducheny “acceptable” despite
Vargas’ refusal to support marriage equality for same-sex couples. In picking
Foster over Ponder, the club outright endorsed a labor-backed candidate despite
her difficulty articulating support for marriage equality.
When Foster
filled out the club’s issues questionnaire, instead of answering whether she
supported marriage equality she referred to paragraph three of a four-paragraph
letter she submitted with the questionnaire and also distributed to club
members at the meeting. It read, “I am a Christian woman who clearly
understands that God has given men and women ‘Free Will’; and, it is not my
place or any one’s place to impose their faith on others, or to take
away another man or woman’s ‘free will’! This is a right that God has given and
no one can take away! Many teach tolerance, understanding and acceptance; but I
teach love which encompasses all!”
Under
questioning from club president Doug Case, Foster acknowledged that she had
attended her Lesbian sister’s wedding and finally said she would support
marriage equality. But in a follow-up question, asking how she had voted on
Proposition 8 — the ban on legal recognition of same-sex marriages California
voters approved in November 2008 — Foster said she hadn’t voted on the issue at
all. Ponder said he had voted against Proposition 8 and added that as a former
college administrator, “I had to serve all students. Colleges and universities
have long had to deal with this directly.”
Many of the
club’s questions dealt not with Queer issues but the overall challenges facing
the schools today, particularly the repeated cutbacks in education funding the
state has imposed on local school districts and the layoffs San Diego Unified
and other districts have had to order in response to budget cuts. Asked if
either of them had voted for a tax increase, Ponder said as a property owner he
would have voted for higher taxes to fund education, while Foster expressed her
disappointment that her union, the AFT, backed away from their proposed
“Millionaires’ Tax” initiative and instead endorsed Governor Jerry Brown’s tax
increase proposal after winning some changes in it. “We need real revenue for
real education,” Foster said.
Facing a similar
question from a different perspective — how should the district deal with its
budget if more tax revenues aren’t
forthcoming — Foster said, “We’re going to have to use technology in ways we
haven’t before. We will have, unfortunately, to do more with that. We’ll have
to bring parents into the classroom.”
“You have to
look at the fiscal situation and the alternative in terms of financial
structures,” said Ponder. “There are ways to make the district itself work more
efficiently. We’re going to have to sit down with all the adults in the
district and see what we can still be and what we can’t afford. Third, I would
go to the colleges, universities and foundations and involve them. I don’t
think the financial situation is going to get better any time soon.”
Maggie
Allington, club member and wife of Assembly candidate Pat Washington, asked the
candidates about the failed attempt by a group of business leaders called “San
Diegans 4 Great Schools” to expand the school board to nine members by adding
four seats that would be appointed rather than elected. “I think that’s a bad
idea,” Foster said. “They [the new board members] should have to have to earn
the confidence of the community and prove they have the right to be there” by
winning a vote of the people.
Ponder said he
regarded the defeat of the San Diegans 4 Great Schools initiative as a done
deal but added, “I believe there is a
role for colleges, universities and companies to play” in governing the
district. “If the school board together figures out a role for them, that’s
important and productive,” he said. (After the meeting, Washington told this
reporter that Ponder had actually been on the sponsoring committee for the San
Diegans 4 Great Schools initiative, which the club had endorsed against and
urged its members and community supporters not to sign.)
Asked about
charter schools, Ponder said he thought they were a sensible option for schools
placed under “program improvement” by the California Department of Education —
a category set up by the state to implement the federal No Child Left Behind
act. According to the California Department of Education Web site, schools end
up in “program improvement” if they “do not make adequate yearly progress” in
standardized test scores. “We need to involve the parents and others to make
sure they get out of program improvement,” Ponder said.
Foster used the
charter-school question, and Ponder’s response to it, to launch a broader
attack on No Child Left Behind itself and the ideology behind it that both
individual students and whole schools can be measured by test scores. “There
are improvements needed to No Child Left Behind,” she said. “A lot of teachers
are forced to teach to the test.” She also said that 75 percent of the charter
schools already established in District E have not met educational standards
and have been closed.
The club
overwhelmingly voted to endorse Foster, despite her reluctant embrace of
marriage equality, after many members with long-standing involvements in
educational issues — including San Diego State University Africana Studies
department chair Dr. Shirley Weber and openly Queer San Diego Unified School
District board member Kevin Beiser — strongly supported her. Ponder’s cause
wasn’t helped by a leaflet he distributed that named Dr. Weber as one of his
endorsers — not when she was there personally to say it was wrong and she was
supporting Foster. The club’s vote was 28 for Foster, five for Ponder and three
for no endorsement.
What Does the County
Board Do?
Why is there
such a thing as the San Diego County Board of Education, and what does it do?
That was the question club president Case asked the three candidates for District
1 on the County Board: incumbent John Witt, a Republican; and challengers Gregg
Robinson and Bob Cornelius, both Democrats.
“The County
Board is a court of last resort for students whose families believe they have
been unfairly treated by suspension or expulsion,” Witt explained. “The County
Board will hold a hearing, listen to both sides and make a judgment. The County
Board also sponsors specialists to help teachers and administrators, it
sponsors the court schools [for students under the jurisdiction of the criminal
justice system] and it provides classwork for the children of migrant field
workers.”
Cornelius said
he worked with the County Board of Education both in San Diego and Santa Clara
Counties, and in Santa Clara their County Board handles the special education
program as well. He said that in addition to the powers Witt mentioned, the San
Diego County Board of Education also runs the academic decathlon and the
selection of the Teacher of the Year.
Witt recalled
that when he first ran for the County Board in the 1990’s, after having retired
from the San Diego Unified School District board, “three far-Right County Board
members were rejecting federal funds for education.” Indeed, the club had felt
so strongly about the radical-Right attempt to take over the County Board that
Witt was the last Republican it ever endorsed before the San Diego County
Democratic Central Committee changed the rules and banned local Democratic
clubs from endorsing non-Democrats, even in nominally “nonpartisan” races.
But with the
radical-Right threat to take over the County Board of Education seemingly in
the past, the club’s debate turned on other issues. Cornelius, whose leaflet
emphasized his 36 years’ work in education, said, “Education is in crisis.
We’re looking at a $20 billion loss in four years. I’ve retired two or three
times and I’ve come back to trouble-shoot districts in trouble. I’ve been a
high school, junior high school and university-level teacher, assistant and
deputy superintendent. My experience is in early childhood education.” He said
he understood “the anxiety of reductions and cuts” and said that those who take
seriously the idea of “equal opportunity in education” need to “help get rid of
the revenue limit for education, rethink Proposition 13 — where we lost the
governance of education — and eliminate the defunding of public education.”
Robinson, who as
a teachers’ union leader has frequently spoken at labor-sponsored events,
boasted of his endorsements by Congressmember and Mayoral candidate Bob Filner,
San Diego Unified School District board member Richard Barrera, San Diego
County Board of Education president Mark Anderson, and the American Federation
of Teachers local 1931. “I’ve taught at the University of Texas and the
University of Maryland, and I’m not afraid of a regression equation, but the
most important thing is still what goes on in the classroom,” Robinson said — a
direct attack on the idea that teachers can be judged by so-called
“value-added” criteria based on their students’ test scores.
“One of the
responsibilities of the County Board of Education is to close the achievement
gap, which has been shrinking between Black and white students — but is growing
between rich and poor students,” Robinson said. Responding to a question from
Dr. Shirley Weber specifically on the achievement gap, Robinson argued that one
of the biggest ways to address it is to stop cutting back on early childhood
education. “We cannot expect teachers to compensate for cutbacks in
pre-school,” he said. “The important thing is not just to fund education at
current levels but to increase those levels. There’s too much scapegoating of
teachers right now.”
Eventually the
club endorsed Robinson by a unanimous voice vote — an unusual decision in a
contested election. The club also made a number of other endorsements in school
board races where either there was only one candidate running or only one
Democrat, including Lyn Neylon for San Diego County Board of Education District
2. Running to unseat Republican incumbent Jerry Rindone, Neylon ran on a
similar platform to Robinson’s, publicizing her endorsements by Filner,
Anderson and AFT Local 1931 and stating on her campaign leaflet, “We need more
educators, NOT more administrators, on the school board!”
The club also endorsed Bernie Rhinerson for District B of the San Diego Community
College Board and made three “friendly incumbent” endorsements in other school
board races: Mary Graham, Community College Board District D; John Lee Evans,
San Diego Unified School Board District A; and Richard Barrera, San Diego
Unified School Board District E.
