Richard Barrera is the elected representative for District D on the San Diego Unified School District's (SDUSD) Board of Trustees and returns as the first guest to record a second episode on the podcast. A true advocate for educational equity and a seasoned trustee, Richard discusses the intricacies of leading a major urban school district into the future. Richard reveals the strides made within San Diego schools, delving into the transformative journeys of students and the narrowing of the opportunity gap among communities within the district. The conversation details how the district is addressing upcoming budgetary hurdles, Richard's commitment to equity, and the role schools play during community crises. Tune in for a deep dive into the future of education with an inspirational leader who's been at the helm of change for over a decade and a half.
Learn more about Richard Barrera.
Richard Barrera is the elected representative for District D on the San Diego Unified School District's (SDUSD) Board of Trustees and returns as the first guest to record a second episode on the podcast. A true advocate for educational equity and a seasoned trustee, Richard discusses the intricacies of leading a major urban school district into the future. Richard reveals the strides made within San Diego schools, delving into the transformative journeys of students and the narrowing of the opportunity gap among communities within the district. The conversation details how the district is addressing upcoming budgetary hurdles, Richard's commitment to equity, and the role schools play during community crises. Tune in for a deep dive into the future of education with an inspirational leader who's been at the helm of change for over a decade and a half.
Learn more about Richard Barrera.
And you talk about again you know, sort of the state of our. You know politics in this country right now. That's the antidote. You know these young people. You know the sooner that they can be running the country, the better we're all going to be.
Speaker 2:In this episode I welcomed back Richard Barrera. This is his second appearance on the podcast and Richard if you don't remember from the first episode is a longtime trustee for San Diego Unified School District. He served as a board member for the past 16 years. He's up for election in March and the primaries and then in November and the general election. He and I spoke about his campaign, the accomplishments of the district and the school board over the past 16 years. We spoke about the realities of the state budget, how that plays itself out at the local level in school district budget planning, and Richard also spoke about the impact of recent torrential storms and how that really laid bare some historic inequities within our city. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Welcome to the superintendent's hangout, where we discuss topics in education, charter schools, life in general, and not necessarily in that order. I'm your host, Dr Sharedda. Come on in and hang out. Welcome, Richard. Thank you for coming back. You're our first guest to come repeat performance here.
Speaker 1:Honored to be your first repeat, Thank you.
Speaker 2:David, let's see We've got a lot of different places we can go Education, state budget, winter storms, local school board elections so why don't we start there at the election place? You are on the ballot for this March 5th in the primaries and then in the fall and the general elections in November. Before we get into what your platform is and what you stand for and what you've stood for all these years on the board, if you could explain to listeners how voting has changed, how the laws have changed around district ding and the elections.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So San Diego Unified for certainly longer than I've been on the board, probably as long as anybody can remember had a hybrid system where in the primary elections candidates would run in a sub-district.
Speaker 1:We have five sub-districts that cover the whole San Diego Unified district, which roughly covers the boundaries of the city of San Diego with a couple of exceptions. So within those five districts, historically candidates would run in their district in the primary and only voters in that district could vote in that primary election and then the top two candidates from that primary would run off in the fall. But in the fall election all voters from throughout the San Diego Unified boundaries could vote for each district. So it was sort of a hybrid of what people think of as a district only and an at-large system. That changed in 2022 and now only voters from within a sub-district can vote in both the primary and the general election. So used to be that if you lived in Claremont, in the general election you could vote for the representative of district D here in Golden Hill, sherman Heights. Now only voters within the district can vote in the general election.
Speaker 2:So how does that change your campaign strategy and what are some of the pros and cons of that change?
Speaker 1:It's been debated, whereas in most situations I am a proponent of district only elections, the basic idea that you want people from the district to be the ones who… the most grassroots possible, the most grassroots possible.
Speaker 1:The challenge in our district in San Diego Unified, is prior, especially to the last redistricting, so the boundaries were redrawn a little bit following the 2020 census, but prior to that, what you roughly had at five districts three of them were almost entirely north of the eight and two almost entirely south of the eight, and the majority of students in our district actually live south of the eight, and so if you don't allow voters people who live south of the eight to vote in three of the districts, then the risk that that entails is, if school board candidates want to think provincially and only about what's in the interest of my district, issues like equity become harder.
Speaker 1:So, really, throughout the time that I've been on the board and certainly I think it's true now there's been a consensus within the school board that we prioritize resources to the schools and the students who are most in need, most of whom live south of the eight, and I think the board that we have now maintains that consensus and a strong belief, which means, to their credit, the board members that represent districts in the northern part of the city are committed to equitable distribution of resources, which benefits students who live in my district, students who live in Sharon Whitehurst Paine's district, next next to mine.
Speaker 1:But structurally I think now that we have district only elections, it does raise a concern. You know that if you are representing Scripps Ranch or La Jolla and you really only want to appeal to your, the constituency that votes for you, you may choose not to do that. You may choose, you know, not to distribute resources in a way that is more equitable. So I was against moving to district only elections and the general elections. For that reason I think so far I've been proven wrong because we've got the three board members now that represent the northern parts of the district. Sabrina Bossos, shayna Hazen, cody Pedersen are strong believers in equity and I hope that that continues under the new system.
Speaker 2:So you've been on the board for quite some time yeah, I believe you're the most senior member and if you could kind of give the listeners just kind of some highlights of your time on the board, how long you've been on and what are some things you've accomplished and then why you want to continue. I mean, we've read anybody who's read anything in the news knows how hard the last two, three years have been on school boards all over the country, right? Folks just saying I didn't sign up for this. In many cases they're completely unpaid positions and others they're very modestly paid positions, not at all commensurate with the work and the stress and the exposure. So what have been some highlights of your career and then why do you want to continue?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Now. Thank you, David. So I was first elected in 2008. So this was my 16th year on the San Diego Unified School Board, which I never would have thought, or had I known that I might not have run there on the first time.
Speaker 1:But no, listen, I don't think there is an elected office where you can actually make more impact than the school board. First of all, the issues around education are, I believe, the most important issues in our society. If we want to have a more just society that creates opportunities for people moving forward and that equips young people to take on the big challenges that we know that they'll face in the future, or that we actually don't know that they'll face in the future, there's nothing more important than investing in public education, and we did some work a few years ago as we were starting to think about where do we want our schools to be by the end of this decade, by 2030., and we started that with a study of different countries around the world that have emphasized as their key organizing principle investments in public education, and it's very different types of countries you can range from Canada to Singapore, to countries in Africa, south Africa, others that have all come together and realize that if we care about our future, then what we need to do is we need to focus on our public schools, and that needs to be what drives us forward, and I believe that I don't believe that we do that in this country to the extent that we see that in other places, but I actually think it's as San Diegans, as Californians, as Americans most of us would agree that the most important institution in our society are the public schools. So having the privilege of being elected to represent our public schools is an honor and also a responsibility that I can't think of any place that's more important. So, again, I give a lot of credit and I respect people who serve at all different local, state, federal elected positions. I just don't think that any of those positions gives you the opportunity to make the kind of impact that a local school board does.
Speaker 1:And we've done a lot. I mean, we've got big challenges going forward. We've got the perennial challenge that what public schools and a public school system should be is the most important and comprehensive system institution in our society to attack generational poverty. There's no better poverty program, anti-poverty program, than public schools. If we're doing our job right, thank you. But doing that job of overcoming inequities in our society, overcoming racism, overcoming just years of inequitable public policy making, part of which you and I had been discussing earlier, manifested itself with the floods and where we saw damage and where we didn't. But if public schools are to kind of overcome all of those institutional barriers to young people having a fair shot and an opportunity in the future, we've got a long way to go and you know.
Speaker 1:So, again, this is my 16th year on the board. I believe we've made huge progress in a lot of important areas. However, when we look at most measures of outcomes for our students, we still see tremendous inequity, you know. We see our students who are living in families dealing with poverty, our students with special needs, our English learners, immigrant students, still are far behind, you know, their counterparts in most measures of academic success, and so there's a long way to go. The conditions facing our families, I think, are actually more difficult today than they were when I was first elected 16 years ago. Primarily the housing crisis, cost of living, cost of living yeah, the stresses on our families are even more, you know, severe than they were 16 years ago. But there's no place that has the potential to deal with those barriers more than the public schools, and I think we can make progress.
Speaker 1:The one place in my time on the board that I think we've seen the most progress is in graduation rates and college readiness rates. So in our district, san Diego Unified, when I started our graduation rate was roughly 75 to 80%. Now it's about 90%. But I think, more important than that, the percentage of students who were graduating having successfully completed the 80G course sequence that allows students to qualify for the Cal State or UC systems that was about 45% and now it's about 75%. And most importantly, among Latino students, among African American students, they were in the mid-20s. You know 25% of Latino or African American students were graduating, even eligible to apply to the UC and CSU systems. Today that number is close to 70%, basically pretty close to the district-wide average. And that's because we focused on that issue and we said it's actually going to be a graduation requirement that students complete the 80G course sequence. But if that's going to be a requirement for students, it means schools have to be able to offer the full component of 80G courses. That was not the case 15 years ago. You go to Lincoln High School, hoover High School, other schools in our district and a student who wanted to take a full 80G course load didn't have those courses available at their schools. That's changed and now every school has those courses available and students are.
Speaker 1:A lot of people, when we made 80G the graduation requirement, thought we were going to see graduation rates plummet because they thought we were raising the bar too high on our kids. Our kids had no problem meeting those expectations Again. Our overall graduation rate has gone way up since we implemented that requirement. The kids could always meet those expectations.
Speaker 1:The question was was the system equipped to meet the needs of kids? And now it is. And so you know, if you look at over a decade on one important, you know, measure of the success of a school system students graduating and eligible to go to college we've seen tremendous progress and we've seen tremendous narrowing of the opportunity gap between students. So it's possible to make big change, you know, in even in a big, complicated school system like San Diego Unified. So if it's possible to do that around things like college readiness rates, then we have to also do what we need to do when we look at literacy rates, when we look at math achievement, when we look at attendance, reducing chronic absenteeism, a lot of other measures of success, and I think we can make progress in those areas and I think that because we have made progress in this one big area of graduation and college readiness.
Speaker 2:And you've had the privilege of 16 years and so you get to. It's like that Japanese concept of kaizen or kaizen I'm not sure how you pronounce it, but it's the small incremental change.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:It's how Toyota became number one manufacturer in the world, but it took 30, 40 years, right is. It doesn't happen in one fell swoop. There's no silver bullet.
Speaker 1:You know it's sometimes it's easy. Sometimes the school board is the easiest job in a school district because we can sit up there and pass policies. So we passed a policy in 2009 saying 80G was going to become the graduation requirement. The work to make that a success is exactly what you're describing. It's counselor by counselor, with their principles, going through schedule, schedule, schedule of you know individual students and seeing where students are on track, where they're not. How you change a master schedule in a school to make sure that every student has access to the courses. That's the tough, grinding, detailed work that produced. You know that that big success. That's right.
Speaker 2:So what? What is, what is your platform? What's the platform of a campaign moving forward? So you've seen a lot, you've, you've, as you mentioned the challenges that families are facing post COVID and in one of, I don't know, san Diego's definitely top five most expensive cities in the country.
Speaker 2:Yeah, If not top three. Yeah, so we have a lot of these challenging forces. That cost of living is not likely to turn around anytime soon. Yes, what are you running on? Going forward? And I know at this date we still don't have an opponent, but that's neither here nor there for this conversation, right? Yeah, you have a platform and a vision. What is your vision for your role, moving forward, for your next term?
Speaker 1:I think it's three big things that that I'm focused on over the next, you know, several years. So the first is if we, as a district, put most of our priority and focus on the students who tend to be left behind and another way of thinking about that is students who, if we don't get it right through the schools, there's no backup plan Students who most need the schools to deliver for them, and we know who the students are and we see it reflected and again, a lot of different you know data. But if we say, as a big school system, we're going to want to do right by every student, but what we really need to focus on are those students who tend to fall through the cracks, then what we need to be honest about and clear with the community is, in order for a student to eventually do well in grades, do well on standardized testing, do well, you know, in graduating, you know, becoming college eligible, thank you we need to do some pretty fundamental work with students in terms of their own belief in themselves, their own social and emotional wellness, their motivation, their feeling that there's somebody out there who cares about them and believes in them, and people could like look at those types of you know issues and say that sounds soft, you know why not focus just on reading and math scores. But the reality that educators have known for a long time is, for students who fall through the cracks, you're not going to get to the reading and math scores If you don't do that fundamental work of making a student feel connected and motivated and believe in themselves. I was just this morning at Garfield High School. So Garfield High School, as you know, david, is the school in our district that if students are really far behind and not on track to graduate, often they go from the school, the high school that they've been in, to Garfield.
Speaker 1:And this morning, when I was there, I was talking to a parent and she said that her student had reached a point at the high school he was at and she got the call that no parent wants, which is your students are not going to graduate too far behind. And this is an immigrant parent. And her first reaction was our whole dream for being here in this country just ended Because our son is not going to graduate from high school and that means not going to have a decent future, and felt overwhelmed. So she then, you know the counselor referred her and her son to Garfield. She enrolled in Garfield and she said her son today is so motivated and is so confident in himself that he's got a plan. He's absolutely going to graduate on time and then he's going to go to community college for a couple of years and then has a very clear plan to transfer to a UC and sees a future for himself.
Speaker 1:And so I asked her so what happened? She said there are people at the school who believe in her son, who connect with him, who, by the way, also as a parent, keep her informed about what's happening. And it's not them waiting for her to ask. They're proactive in reaching out and explaining everything that's happening at the school. There was a sense of community at the school. So her son wants to get to school every day and believes that he can succeed. And seems simple enough.
Speaker 1:But, as you know, there are so many pressures.
Speaker 1:I guess you could call it on public schools, on school systems, to not focus on those kinds of factors and instead to somehow, you know, expect that we're going to push this kid into doing well in school when they haven't, without focusing on those issues of motivation and belonging and connectedness. So long way of saying, if that is happening at a school like Garfield High School, we can do that across our system. And that has to be really, really our focus. And I think that's just about an honest conversation with the public and with the community that we're not going to measure our success according to annual standardized test scores. We're going to measure our success around those seven or whatever many hours a day that we have a student. At the end of that day, that student's going to feel a little bit more confident in themselves and be a little bit more motivated than they were the day before. And there's ways that we can measure that. But we need to do it and that's what we need to be need to be really focused on and talking about.
Speaker 2:It's interesting when you mentioned that connectedness piece because as adults in a school system whether it's a big district or with a charter school organization but we expect that the place we work is a place of connection, that when we have a personal concern or something that's worrying us or bothering us, that there's someone who we can connect with, or someone more than one person who understand us and who will go.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'll check in on you and hey, are you doing, okay? Yeah, and so, while it may seem soft and squishy somewhat in our situation, what happens as adults? If we don't have that, we either leave, that's right, and we're not mandated to work there, unlike the kids who are mandated to attend school. Yes, we stay, but our performance downgrades and we become disconnected, disenchanted and et cetera.
Speaker 2:So I think these are things, if there ever was a gift from a pandemic which sounds strange to say that is that it showed us that this connection piece coming out of the pandemic, the students who you reference, who are most at risk, they weren't really connected prior and then they've had this gap and now we're struggling twice as hard to get back to even where we were prior to the pandemic and I think that connects directly to chronic absenteeism, which thankfully, the rates are getting better in the state and in your district. Yes, but we have a long way to go.
Speaker 1:We've got a long way to go, and I think, like when we talk about the sort of the progress that we made on graduation and ADG rates, we shine delight on those outcomes and then, with all the hard work, those outcomes started to improve significantly. I think one of the challenges that we have as a system, if we're really going to be serious about focusing on connection and motivation and self-confidence, is how do we measure that? And so part of what I think, what we need to take on as a district, but in partnership with our charter schools and partnership with our community-based organizations, is let's develop some really clear metrics that allow us to know is a kid connected, is a kid motivated? And I think there's good work that's been out there for years, coming out of academics, coming out of sciences like psychology and neuroscience and biology, that really do measure a person's wellness.
Speaker 1:So I think our job is to come together with some clear outcomes that allow us to know whether we're making progress and not just know as a big system whether we're making progress but allows a classroom teacher to know are the students that I'm with every day, are they feeling increasing connection, increasing motivation, increasing sense of belonging here? So I think that's something that we'll take on. There's no off-the-shelf data sets that come from the federal government or state government that we can just lift, so we have to create some of those metrics ourselves. But a community like San Diego if we bring people together to have those conversations, I'm confident we can create metrics that then allow us to monitor progress, and when we do that, I think we'll see significant improvement.
Speaker 2:So I want to ask you a question about polarization.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So you know that's a word that's been thrown around now, for should have been word of the year before COVID-19 or something. And we know that, coming through the pandemic communities got even more polarized around, sometimes along lines that were difficult to predict prior. Right we had the masking polarization, we had the vaccine polarization, we had the back in person or not, and et cetera, red, blue and by regions in the United States, et cetera. Am I correct in my understanding that technically, san Diego Unified School Board members are, it's a nonpartisan?
Speaker 1:position.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right. So how has the district largely avoided the culture wars that I think in other regions of the country? Cost board members their positions Sure, whether you're talking San Francisco. Cost superintendents their jobs, yeah. How did you as a board navigate through that and what's kind of your vision going forward? Because you don't know what happens down the road, in elections, et cetera.
Speaker 1:You know I'm a pretty lucky school board member when you know you think about what's going on in not just around the country but even in, you know, places here in San Diego County, in that the values of our community are pretty strong and pretty clear, and they certainly reflect my values, and so it's not the hardest thing in the world to make decisions based on your own personal values when those values also reflect the community's values. So I think when it comes to you know, for instance, issues about respecting and celebrating diversity as opposed to seeing diversity as some sort of threat, respecting the experiences of our immigrant families that bring so much strength and vibrancy to our community as opposed to being a threat, You're an example of that.
Speaker 1:I absolutely am. As we know, David, it's hard to find somebody in San Diego that's not one or two generations, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know so and because of that, you know, I think we, you know, we celebrate. You know, the experience of a young person in our district who might be the first person in their family to go to school in this country, to, you know, learn English, all those kinds of things and to contribute. I think that's a pretty strongly held value, you know, among San Diegans. And, and I think, issues like freedom of speech, freedom of thought, you know, the ability to think critically. I mean, einstein is an absolute model community of families that come together and say we want our students to throw themselves into ideas, even if those are ideas that are different from what we might, you know, talk about at home. To have that experience of having to do that and having that experience of having discussions with people who are different than you, and having that ability to think critically so you can develop your own ideas and not just have them fed to you. I mean, I think that's a lot of what the spirit of the Einstein community is about. But I think that's also reflective of, you know, the San Diego community as a whole. So you're not going to have many people in San Diego that are interested in banning books and because of that to the extent that there would be people, either out of a sincere position or out of political expediency, that are trying to drive that kind of divisiveness, they're not going to get very far in a community like San Diego.
Speaker 1:So I love that about our community. I'm proud of the fact that, for instance, when we raise the pride flag outside of our district and students are the ones who run that ceremony, it's students speakers, it's students who raise the flag. That sometimes we have students from other parts of the county come to San Diego Unified and participate in that because they say they can feel safe here and feel like there's a home here. So I'm proud of that. But I also am very empathetic to board members in communities that when they try to do what they believe is the right thing by kids, face backlash, that there's a little bit more of a groundswell for support than would happen here in San Diego. So I think we're lucky to have a community that has a strong sense of values that embrace all of our students. But I think that also gives us a responsibility to stand up and show an example of a school system that believes in all of its students in an environment, like you say where there are people who are questioning those values.
Speaker 2:So I want to pivot a little bit to innovation and innovative ideas that the district has been exploring, and I think I'm well. Everything costs money, yeah. So Actually, let's go to the money first. Yeah, come back. I am gonna ask you about this concept of housing for district staff and Between that and the partnering with charter schools that we spoke about last time. That's right, it's one of a kind, I think, in the nation, yeah, facilities, the district's done a lot of really innovative and powerful work. But I got we have to talk money, sure, yeah, yeah. So If anybody's been reading the news, you know, obviously Nationally and then statewide you know that if you watch the governor's announcement in mid-January Of the 68 I mean 42, sure, why are you guys always saying 68? It's always been 42 and and and then of course, that trickles down to leas. That's right. And I know that there's some news stories running. I'm quoting numbers.
Speaker 2:I don't know how accurate they are but, somewhere in the range of 150 to 200 million or 180 somewhere in there. Budget shortfall, I think, for this current year at Cindy unified. So talk to us about the Budget work that happens. Boots on the ground. Yeah, big district yeah and then also with an eye to Sacramento and what, what's gonna happen when they revise comes.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. Yeah, the number that we're looking at right now is just a little north of a hundred million. There's a lot of oh okay, right.
Speaker 2:It's better than 180, but it's 68 billion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, although it's all relative.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so and there's really kind of three factors that are coming together all at once. The state, as you said, has a deficit and and Does debate, that you know, among folks in Sacramento about what that deficit is. But that deficit is Is different from what we saw, for instance, when I first came onto the board in 2008. The country was in a recession and California was in a recession, and so you you kind of understood that that was gonna mean you know that was gonna have a negative impact for schools. In this case, the deficit that the state's facing is is the result of People being given an extension to file their taxes from April until October, and so when the state passed its budget in June, it was working on assumptions of tax revenue that turned out to be overstated, and so You've got this you know issue that the state is is facing, which is they? They overshot their estimates of about how much would come in in tax revenue. The good thing about that is that's not that kind of Result of a real economic downturn that you look out and you say, oh my god, you know, over the next several years it's gonna get worse and worse. I think governor Newsom described it as a correction and I think that in that aspect, I think that's pretty accurate. You know so the state should be able to get back on its feet. You know, going out into other budget budget years, but this year it's real, and that impacts school districts.
Speaker 1:The second big factor, of course, is during COVID, schools Received a big infusion of federal support, well beyond anything we'd ever experienced. You know so the federal government, for the most part, provides money to support special education, although not nearly as much as it's supposed to provide, and provide some support for Students who are economically disadvantaged. But in a district like ours, federal Funding is usually less than 10% of our overall budget. Well, during COVID, you know, with the COVID relief packages, there was a huge infusion of federal money and that money is about to expire and, you know, one of the frustrations that I think all of us have is that was great to get that federal money. However, we should have always had that level of funding. That wasn't a A luxury, you know, to have funding that can pay for the number of counselors that our students need, to pay for things like Afterschool and summer programming. None of that's a luxury, it's always been a necessity. It just hasn't been there, and it was for a few years because of the COVID relief packages.
Speaker 1:But now we're going back to the disinvestment you know that's characterized Investment in public schools, both from the federal and the state level. That existed pre COVID. So we got a state deficit, we've got the expiration of federal funds and then we have declining enrollment, so we have fewer students across our district, and that is largely, you know, the result of what we talked about, the housing crisis, which makes it more difficult for families with children To be able to live in San Diego. So you put all those things together and that creates for us what we're anticipating as $100 million hole that we're gonna have to fill for next year. So how do we go about filling that hole? It always has to start with priorities. You know. That's part of the reason that we have to be clear as a board and with the superintendent, to say we are going to prioritize Resources for those students who are most in need, to fall through the cracks and the strategies that we know are critical for those students we have to preserve and If that means we, you know, make cuts in other areas, that's what we're gonna have to do, and and some of that means you know this is sort of a wonky term, but, david, you deal with this all the time Some of that means going through a zero-based you know budgeting process.
Speaker 1:So, rather than just say how much money did we have this year as Compared to what we're gonna have next year, and so where do we make cuts, you know, in different, you know line items. It's about let's wipe the slate clean, let's talk about what our highest priority needs are. How much money do we have to pay for those? And then you build a budget that Protects those strategies While sacrificing some other things. And it's not like the other things aren't important, but they're less important than the resources that are most vulnerable kids need.
Speaker 1:So what happens in a big district like ours is every school goes through that process and Determines what are our real needs you know, given the number of students that we're likely to have next year and they come up with a budget and they send it up to the district and the district compiles all those school budgets and then the district has to do its own process of what supports do we offer from the central office and how do we zero base those? How do we, you know, determine what's most important and then we come up with that number. This is what it's gonna cost to run the district, based on what our students most need. And there's a shortfall and it becomes clearer you know where we need to make cuts. So that's the process that we're in right now.
Speaker 1:As we speak, most schools have developed their preliminary site-based budgets. The district central office has been at work in this process now for you know, several months and we'll come to it and you know we'll see where we're at. And there's thing you know, our superintendent, lamont Jackson. He's a veteran of good times and Lean times and we're in a lean time. Lamont was actually our director of human resources during the recession, but what that means is Lamont also knows how to account for things like every year you're gonna have a number of, you know, district employees who retire, right, you're gonna have, you know, people who go out on leave, and so if somebody's position is cut, that doesn't necessarily mean they're out of a job. It could mean that they're replacing somebody who's out on leave. And so, to the extent that you know, we can, you know again your point about the devils and the details and how we can drill down and make those, you know, decisions.
Speaker 2:You know, human being, by human being, that's, that's, that's the work we're Taking on do you think we're gonna see Wide spread pink slips across the county of San Diego? I'm not gonna put you on the spot with seeing unified, but for listeners who don't know, there's a spring date by which districts have to inform employees If our teachers, I think, in particular Whether, if there's a chance, they won't be coming back in the fall.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's right. And again, I you know I can't speak for other districts around the county, although I know those three factors.
Speaker 2:Right, affect me as well. Yeah, all the charters as well.
Speaker 1:That's right. Um, it's impossible, you know, to imagine that there won't be some pink slips. Um, but a lot of this is also, you know, this question of you know, based on our experience. So the Based on our experience, how can we mitigate that number? How can we, how can we predict with some security that, given the number of retirements, the number of people who go out on leave, where we feel comfortable Saying we're gonna guarantee somebody a job because you're right, if you don't give that notification Before March 15th, you're guaranteeing that somebody's gonna, how much risk are we willing to take and say we're gonna guarantee you a job because we're confident there will be a job for you. So that process is going on right now and and and we're gonna continue to, you know, kind of push that envelope. You know as much as we can. And it's important, you know, for sometimes you have People who we all know and love, that you know sort of advise school districts on, you know budgets and finance, who they act like a pink slip is almost like a, a non consequential act. Hey, give somebody the March 15th notice and then if there's a job, no problem, you bring them back, and I think all of us, you know who's gone through this experience.
Speaker 1:We know that the act of giving somebody a pink slip has consequences. It's destabilizing, it's disheartening. It might very well mean that that person goes and leaves the district in our case, or leave San Diego, you know looks for something else. It also can be very disruptive to a school. You know any school that we look at charter school or district school where we see consistent improvement over time In various you know measures of academic achievement especially. You can almost guarantee that there's been stability in that staff. You know particularly the teaching force, a group of people. First of all, teachers, like all professions, get better over time. So a teacher who's in their sixth year is a better teacher than a teacher in their first year. And if you have a school where the majority of the staff has been there a number of years and also knows each other and has worked together for a number of years, that school is generally gonna get better over time.
Speaker 1:And when you issue pink slips, the process can be very destabilizing, you know. So it could result, for instance, in we give a teacher a pink slip, we find a job for that teacher later on, but it's not back at the school that they were at and that destabilizes the school. So that you know, we're very Aware and careful about not issuing too many pink slips. And my experience you know I was elected to the board in 2008 when the recession hit and even in those years were, as a district, we were issuing an excess of a thousand pink slips. Almost all of those folks ended up back with a job in the district and so, knowing that, you know you kinda look back and you say we should have pushed ourselves harder to avoid, you know that trauma in the spring when we knew by the fall and maybe given out a hundred, given out a hundred rather than a thousand.
Speaker 2:You're exactly right, david, yeah yeah, yeah so that also gets to the heart of staying competitive and in job market that's. You know, the pool for potential teachers is shallow and All around the state schools of education are seeing a decrease in enrollment. Yeah, for a whole host of different reasons. Your district has really taken on this idea of staff housing. Yeah, so talk to us about the plans for that and and how that's gonna look in the future we're really excited about this.
Speaker 1:We think that by the end of this decade we could be on track to have 10% of the employees in the district live in quality, affordable housing that's essentially built by the district, and the way we get there is we passed a big bond measure that you know the charter community in the district work together to pass In 2022. And two hundred million dollars in that measure was committed to the development of affordable housing for employees, and we're able to do that because there was legislation prior to that bond that, for the first time, allows us to use bond money to build housing for our own employees on property that the district owns. So we have plans right now at the district headquarters on normal street At the old central elementary campus in city heights. We've rebuilt central across the freeway, but that campus is now A big campus that we can build housing on, and there are other pretty substantial properties around the district that are great candidates for us to come in and build quality, affordable housing.
Speaker 1:When we say affordable, you know kind of the. The measure of that that we're sticking to is Somebody should pay no more than 30% of their income on housing and that can look like. So we just, we just are about to fully open a project that we built in Scripps Ranch on district property and in that project we have 53 units that are reserved for affordable housing. All 53 of those units have been leased out to employees of the district and that's a two bedroom apartment that somebody is a family is now renting for a thousand dollars a month eleven hundred dollars a month, as opposed to three thousand dollars a month, which you know it would be sort of the rent that they would pay otherwise, especially in that in that community Is there a lottery system, or must?
Speaker 2:I could imagine they're over subscribed.
Speaker 1:I think, yeah, no, in this case it was a kind of a you know, first come, first serve. We are going to have more demand than you know units that we've got available, we anticipate, and so then how we go about prioritizing which units, you know who gets access to which units first. That's a process we're actually talking to our unions about, you know, the unions that represent teachers, the right, that represent bus drivers and custodians and others, and we'll come up with a process that's fair. And part of that process is also, you know, for instance, this concept of faculty housing is not new.
Speaker 1:It's typical with universities, yeah, right, and but universities often will prioritize newer employees, right lower paid, lower paid and then you know there's a certain point where you're Kind of able to move up and you know, move out and free up those units for for somebody else. So I think that's what we're going to be looking at and with the housing project in our district, it's really exciting.
Speaker 2:What's is that historic building going to stay? Yes, the historic. I think it was the original. Wasn't that the original San Diego state?
Speaker 1:when it was called San Diego state, san Diego Normal college yeah, so normal street comes from that and normal means a teacher's right college so is. San Diego state began there, at that building on normal street, as a place to train teachers and and then actually became the first headquarters of San Diego unified. That building will stay and we will maintain it, preserve its historic status. Right now it's empty and and so we're going to repurpose it, and there's a lot of different ideas in the community. We could look at it as a new training facility for teachers. There have been conversations about that building becoming the new library and university heights. Not sure that that is going to be possible. There's also plenty of community based organizations that serve our kids that need quality space, so there are a lot of opportunities to think about what we're going to do with that building itself, and then the rest of that campus where the district headquarters are now, will be rebuilt as an affordable housing development for our staff.
Speaker 2:So I can't wait that. That's the end of this decade, you said I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we'll see. The first project that will come online is probably the old central elementary, and that's likely to happen in the next two to three years. The normal street will probably take another four or five years from now, and then there are other properties you know around around the district that. So I think by the end of this decade you know we have roughly fourteen thousand employees in our district right now I'm confident that we could see a thousand to 2,000 employees living in affordable housing. Significant percentage, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you've been very generous with your time. I always appreciate. I know you're very busy between budgets and rain. I'm looking out the window and I'm wondering is this gonna be a repeat of the destructive storm? Let's hope it's not. I wanted to ask you a question about student board members and then I'll let you.
Speaker 2:if there's anything else that we haven't touched on today, I'll let you finish with that. So, student board members I'm not sure if, seeing you unified, I imagine that there are other districts around the country that have and around the state in the country that have student board members, but I've been impressed by watching board meetings about the high level of engagement. I look at some high school kid and I go ooh, I'm glad I'm not competing with you against you for a job in about 10 years.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, I'm just not even gonna I'm just not, we'll just give up. Yeah, I'm giving up, like nuanced policy questions and you know ask. It's pretty remarkable. So talk to us about how that the presence of students in a very legitimate and influential way started on the board all the way up to now, actually, where I think state law is allowing districts to pay them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's been, david, it's been one of the most exciting, you know, things that I've experienced on my time as a board, and it's all been driven by students. So students lobbied for state legislation that allowed for the creation of the student board position several years ago. The process that that legislation enabled was if a group of students in a district signed a petition that came to the school board, then the school board was required to create those positions and create a mechanism for those positions to be filled. So we had students who petitioned us under the you know, under the law that, frankly, not a lot of adults were even aware of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wasn't Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah and said, yeah, it's time for San Diego, unified, to create a student board position. And so then we worked with those student activists and we created a system where all high school students can now vote for a student board member. And so with the elections that we just had last spring, there were, I think, in excess of 4,000 high school students you know who voted in that election and initially we created one student board position. And then, you know, with that student board member at the time, zach Patterson, who is, you know, our pioneer we said, you know, we wanna make sure that the voice of that reflects the diversity of our students is represented in the student board position. So let's create a second student board position and the sec. So the first position all can, any high school student from any school can run for that position. The second position is you have to live, you have to attend school. At a high school that has more than 60% of students qualify for free and reduced lunch.
Speaker 2:Connecting to your previous statement around that being a priority, Around equity being a priority right.
Speaker 1:So now we have two positions. Our two current students One, matthew Q Toriano, who's actually in his second year as a student board member, is a junior at San Diego High School, and our newest student board member, bless and lavender Williams, is a senior at Lincoln High School. And they're incredible, like you say. I mean, they are the model of an elected official.
Speaker 2:And they grill you.
Speaker 1:sometimes they grill us they grill the staff and that's they grill schools charters sometimes.
Speaker 1:Oh absolutely right, and they do that on the dais and then behind the scenes they're doing their homework. They're, by the way, talking to their constituents all the time. They've got formal structures which allow students to let them know what they care about, what their priorities are, so they can reflect that in their representation. They're thoughtful and just really, really exemplary elected officials. In our region we just because the students and the students have a statewide association of student board members that lobbied the legislature in Sacramento to give districts the option of compensating student board members so that legislation passed.
Speaker 1:San Diego, unified, I think, became the first district in the state to now vote to compensate our student board members and they're paid at the same rate that adult board members are paid. And the reason that that's so important and one of the leading advocates for that was blessing our student board member from Lincoln High School who said look, for a lot of students we have to work to support our families and this is a lot of work. Being a student board member is 20 hours a week or more that we're putting in, and so for a student who wants to, you would want to run for that position, would want to serve as a student board member and the barrier is I can't give that time when I've got to work to support the family. Now they can get fairly compensated and they're able to serve and so and I think it's gonna get better and better over time. But all of these, all the progress that's made, is by the students advocating themselves and then adults stepping up as allies and supporting them.
Speaker 2:Has there ever been any thought of students younger than high school participating right, maybe middle school? I ask in a very selfish for selfish reason. Right now we've got our highest grade is eighth grade. We've had conversations about in the future incorporating maybe having a process within ASB to elect a student, of course, when we have our high school that could expand. No, that's right.
Speaker 1:I think it's a great option. There are certainly. You know, we can all just imagine certain middle school students that we know that would be outstanding in that position. I think I could be wrong about this, but I think there would have to be legislation to expand it down. You mean pay wise. Or just in general really, and I think even to be a representative, you know, as a student board member. But yeah, I think that's, and maybe the first step is to allow middle school students to vote.
Speaker 2:You know, they may not be able to run and serve yet, but they can vote in the election. Yeah, I was really impressed, I've been impressed, and so kudos to district leadership for that. It's been pretty amazing. I'm sure those students go on to great things in college, absolutely. You know we're gonna be reading about them soon in the news.
Speaker 1:And you talk about again you know sort of the state of our. You know politics in this country right now. That's the antidote. You know these young people. You know the sooner that they can be running the country, the better. We're all gonna be Right.
Speaker 2:Then you and I can retire peacefully.
Speaker 1:That's exactly right.
Speaker 2:So I wanna wrap today's conversation with just giving you the floor again to see if there's anything we haven't touched on something that you think listeners should know, whether that's about your campaign, whether that's about the future of Cindy Unified, whether that's about you know something about the elections in Washington. Maybe we won't go there, but just final words for today.
Speaker 1:You know what's on my mind, david, and I know it's on your mind as well is what we've just seen in the last couple of weeks and, may you know, see more of this week with the flooding.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it reveals a lot. The first thing that it revealed is we are not an equitable society right now, and something like whether or not your house gets flooded out depends on whether you live in a poor neighborhood or a wealthier neighborhood. That's very real.
Speaker 2:I had someone to that point. I had someone say I didn't even know that the storm was a thing until I turned on the news that night.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and you and I were talking, you know, in parts of our community right now this is the equivalent of Katrina and in a lot of the rest of San Diego it's people are. I didn't even realize. And that tells us a lot, because it tells us the challenge that schools take on, when the majority of families in public schools, you know, certainly in a district like San Diego Unified are living with the kind of economic stress that and that families who've been flooded out, you know, are experiencing, and of course we have plenty of families, you know, who have suffered the damage of the floods. But what it also does, what it's also shown, is how important schools are to the community itself. So our principals, our teachers, our counselors really have been the first responders. We learn about what a family is dealing with before most other agencies learn about that and we respond to it.
Speaker 1:So we've had, as you have, our principals and their staff at different schools have been going out visiting families in their homes, recognizing the situation that they're in. In some cases we've been able to put families up into a motel when only now, you know, the Housing Commission is starting to provide that support as well when there needed to be a shelter in the community. It was at Lincoln High School Right now, where there's a shelter. At Balboa Park, a lot of families are getting there on school buses.
Speaker 1:The families that are dealing with this stress. It's our school counselors that are the first you know people to be able to just give families a chance to talk about you know what's happening and then start to refer families to resources. So schools are not just the way that, as a society, we invest in a better future for our community, for our country. They're also the most important institutions in so many of our neighborhoods that families rely on and believe in and trust. And to see the way our school communities have stepped up to support families through this crisis that itself was exacerbated by decades of inequity, that's been inspiring to see and it's a reminder of how important the work that we do is. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think. I mean it's tragic to think that there are certain neighborhoods that are small neighborhoods in San Diego that have probably never been in the news before this. Yes, yes, I had people say I'd never heard of South Crest before.
Speaker 1:That's right, yeah.
Speaker 2:And shame on us right. Shame on us for whizzing by different communities on the freeway and not even really paying attention.
Speaker 1:That's right.
Speaker 2:So I thank you for bringing that up. You and I were speaking that. You know it used to be the fires and then it was COVID and now it's floods. And all of those exposed real inequities in the way that we distribute resources and even where we pay attention to what's going on in our communities.
Speaker 1:That's right, and you know. It's important again for our entire community to just understand that, in our case, nearly 60% of the students in San Diego Unified are living in difficult economic conditions, and so that's our future. You know, and you know. So it doesn't matter where we live If we care about what's gonna happen in the future. This is where our kids live, and you know. And so if we wanna do right by our entire community, we should be investing in our young people right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, thank you, richard, for 16 years of service and investing in the future of all of our schools. You've been just a reliable and consistent advocate and supporter of Einstein and I thank you sincerely. I remember meeting you in my second year as middle school principal at Grant's Cafe for coffee, and I had some more hair than I have now.
Speaker 1:I think you had just done your challenge for your students, that you were gonna run a mile for every, every API. I think, yeah, that's not happening anymore. That was impressive, though. Yeah, yeah, my knees and hips don't lie.
Speaker 2:To steal a Shakira. You heard it so, but yeah, that was in the distant past. But I really thank you for the support over the years and good luck in March and November.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much, David, appreciate it. ["the.
Speaker 2:Superintendents Hangout"]. Thank you for listening to the Superintendents Hangout. You can follow me on Twitter at DVS1970. Please be sure to share this show with friends and family on social media and in the real world. Thank you to Brad Bacchial for editing and production assistance and to Tina Royster for scheduling and logistics. Thanks for hanging out and have a great day.