San Diego Unified’s board has for years been an incredibly unanimous body. By and large, its five members move as a unit. Trustee elections have also been relatively muted affairs. Incumbents win, newcomers with the right endorsements – mainly from the powerful teachers’ union – also win, and everyone just moves on.
But with the district in the throes of multiple crises – primarily the firing of Superintendent Lamont Jackson for sexual harassment and a federal report slamming the district’s handling of other sexual harassment allegations – who will be on the dais come next year is a critical question.
Even so, there’s only one sitting board member facing a challenger this year, Area A trustee, Sabrina Bazzo.
Last month, we hosted a debate at our annual politics summit, Politifest, between Bazzo and Crystal Trull. Here are some takeaways from their head-to-head.
Transparency and Accountability
Since I started covering San Diego Unified, I’ve heard a consistent complaint about the district’s leaders: They lack transparency. That’s underpinned a lot of the stories I’ve reported, from the abrupt closure of iHigh that took some families and teachers by surprise to frustrations surrounding the newly built Logan Memorial Educational Campus.
Trull, who has long echoed those sentiments, highlighted them again during the debate.
“Communication, transparency [at San Diego Unified] has been an issue … for as long as I can remember. It’s something that the district has talked about working on, and some would say that they really haven’t made many strides,” Trull said.
When it comes to whether the district’s recent scandals will bring a reckoning, Trull hedged.
“It’s a reckoning in that now the public knows what many people in the district have known for years…The district is unable or unwilling, we’re not sure, to really handle these things,” Trull said. “But is it a reckoning that the district will actually do something about it? I’m not sure. I’m not convinced.”
Bazzo, for her part, said she agrees with some of the criticism, specifically on a lack of transparency.
“There are times that (I) don’t always know about things at a timely manner,” she admitted. “It’s an area that we have very much been trying to focus on.”
But she also put some of the onus on parents, saying, “You have to be an involved parent too. You have to want to know what’s going on in your schools.”
When it comes to the district’s handling of sexual misconduct, she referenced the fact that officials have beefed up the office in charge of handling such complaints. She also said not all claims they’ve gotten were true.
“We have gotten claims before, and they haven’t always been valid, because anyone can really say, ‘Oh, this person did this to me,’” she said.
When they have gotten valid complaints, the district usually follows through, Bazzo claimed, even while acknowledging there were sometimes “gaps.”
Over the years, Voice has reported on many instances when such “gaps,” have resulted in educators escaping accountability for their misconduct for years, and in some cases being promoted after allegations were made. The case of Jackson, against whom complaints were made years before any action was taken, is just the most recent example.
Standards-Based Grading
In 2022, San Diego Unified introduced a new way to grade students: standards-based grading. The strategy focuses on ensuring kids actually learn the material rather than getting their work in on time. That may mean kids can submit make-up work or even retake tests they performed poorly on, allowing them to increase their grades.
While seemingly well-intentioned, it’s sparked frustration among some who feel it undermines education and puts already high-performing students at a disadvantage. Stakeholders have also complained that it’s been unevenly implemented across the district, another familiar refrain for San Diego Unified.
Bazzo said standards-based grading is all about equity and ensuring students who need more help have increased resources and support. But she did concede that the transition hasn’t been great.
“In some cases it’s not being done right. So, we’re trying to make sure that it’s consistent across the board and done in the way it’s supposed to be done,” Bazzo said.
Trull, on the other hand, was much less rosy on the change. She said when her daughters were in middle school, they had 12 teachers between them and only two were using standards-based grading. The board, Trull said, had implemented the strategy without doing its due diligence.
“The idea is very noble [but] the way it was rolled out was not helpful,” Trull said.
Bazzo on School Choice
When I spoke to Bazzo for a Q&A released earlier this month, she raised concerns about the impact school choice has on neighborhood schools. School choice allows parents to send their child to a school outside of their neighborhood. Historically, many parents have done so if they feel their neighborhood school is underperforming.
While the choice process may be good for individual families, it’s led to worries that removing high-performing students from struggling schools only further harms those schools, a process sometimes referred to as brain drain.
Bazzo also brought school choice up during the debate, saying parents routinely opt to send their kids to high schools like University City or Mission Bay instead of places like Clairemont.
“Why are we letting that happen?” Bazzo asked.
She does want parents to have choices but said it may be time to limit the number of kids who can choice out of schools like Clairemont.
“We need to have some conversation possibly around the choice process and why so many of our students are being allowed to go outside of their area when they have amazing schools at Claremont,” Bazzo said.
Trull on Teacher Seniority
Teacher seniority is a big deal at school districts like San Diego Unified. It can determine who gets laid off, pay and where they work. That last factor has often meant that more experienced teachers transfer to higher-performing schools. Meanwhile schools that have long struggled, specifically those south of Interstate 8, end up with the least experienced teachers.
Trull seemed to suggest she wanted to upend that tradition and push for contracts that didn’t give so much deference to teachers in choosing where they work.
“I think it’s up to us as a district to make sure that those contracts are arranged in such a way that it actually meets our needs as a district,” Trull said.
“I would want to look at those contracts and make sure that we’re creating teacher arrangements so that we can allow those teachers who have a depth of experience – incentivizing them – to bring those to school sites that maybe aren’t as desirable as others,” Trull said.
Given the power of the district’s union, and the fact that district leaders have long been opposed to similar initiatives, that goal would be an uphill battle.
Virtual Parent’s Guide Workshop
Education is complicated, trust me, I report on it for a living. That’s why every year we put out a handy guide for parents trying to navigate local education systems. We also do occasional workshops to walk people through some of the data we fill our guide with. Well, tomorrow, Oct. 17, we have a virtual workshop at 5:30 p.m. Follow this link to sign up if you have questions about school choice, school performance, transitional kindergarten or more. Looking forward to seeing you!
If a kid fails a test, as long as they are not white they should be able to take the test as many times as they need to get into Harvard.