Election night came with some local surprises, but few were as surprising to some as the first vote drop in the race between San Diego Unified Trustee Sabrina Bazzo and challenger Crystal Trull. It showed Bazzo, an incumbent endorsed by the district’s teachers union, was just barely ahead of Trull, who was endorsed by the county’s Republican party.
In a city as Democratic as San Diego, and an election that’s usually decided by the teachers union’s endorsement, the closeness of the race was genuinely striking. After all, Bazzo beat Trull by 20 points when they both ran in 2020.
In the days since election night, Bazzo’s lead has increased ever so slightly with each vote drop. The counting is not yet finished, but the direction votes have shifted signal Trull’s hope to pull out a massive upset has likely slipped away.
But the vote didn’t come out of nowhere: For the record, I wasn’t surprised by the tightness of this race. San Diego Unified’s had a tough year. The district has weathered multiple crises that have shaken the public’s confidence. In August, a federal report slammed the way the district had for years handled reports of sexual misconduct. Then, documents showed even before his firing for sexual harassment, complaints had been lodged against Superintendent Lamont Jackson. A growing structural budget deficit hasn’t helped either.
Given those realities, and the general dissatisfaction with the status quo expressed by voters nationally, the results make a lot more sense.
Speaking of the Deficit
San Diego Unified leaders have some tough decisions to make this year. The budget deficit they faced last year has grown to a projected $176 million and seems poised to continue to grow in coming years. Last year, the board punted on layoffs and filled much of the budget deficit hole with reserve funds. But this year, they don’t have the reserves they relied on last year.
Like last year, however, board members and Interim Superintendent Fabiola Bagula have said they’re hoping to rely on attrition rather than layoffs. To that end, the board unanimously approved a plan to offer early retirement incentives to any employees at Tuesday’s board meeting.
The plan will offer eligible staff who choose to retire early 70 percent of their yearly salary either in a lump sum or yearly installments. Officials have reached a deal with all of the unions that represent district staff save for the San Diego Education Association, which represents teachers.
A New Face at San Diego Unified
At Tuesday’s board meeting, San Diego Unified trustees announced they hired James Canning as the executive director of the district’s strategic communications and information department. Though a new face at the district, he’s far from a new face in local public affairs. Canning previously worked as communications director for Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, and before that, for then-Supervisor Nathan Fletcher.
The new hire comes as the district grapples with multiple crises from a structural budget deficit to the firing of Superintendent Lamont Jackson. To many I’ve spoken to, the crises have damaged their trust in the district. Undergirding that trust deficit is a perceived lack of transparency on the district’s part.
Board member Richard Barrera said his hope is Canning can help develop a communication strategy that is proactive rather than reactive.
“The idea is to have a large, comprehensive strategy around the way the district communicates with the community,” Barrera said. “If we have great things going on in our neighborhood schools, how do we get the word out in a way that might increase enrollment.”
Fraudsters Are Fleecing California Community Colleges
State data shows that as of September California’s community colleges have lost $7.5 million in financial aid funds to scammers this year alone, EdSource reports. That sum is more than $3 million higher than what community colleges lost all of last year and about $5.5 million higher than what community colleges lost between September of 2021 and the end of 2022.
Financial aid fraud shot up during the pandemic, when virtual instruction enabled rings of online scammers to more easily skim funds. Institutions like community colleges, which accept all students, are especially susceptible to such fraud.
It works like this: Fraudsters pose as real students and apply to community colleges online. If not detected, they enroll in classes and request financial aid, which is often distributed directly to students’ bank accounts.
Some colleges have resorted to asking students to come into the financial aid office to prove they are real before they can qualify for financial aid. But the scale of attempted fraud is staggering. Paul Feist, a spokesperson for the California Community College chancellor’s office, told EdSource that 25 percent of applications at the state’s community colleges have been flagged as potentially fraudulent. That’s up from 20 percent last year.
Excessing On the Front Page
A San Diego Unified teacher penned a recent EdSource piece about the painful and destabilizing impact of being excessed. The practice, which occurs yearly at schools across the country, is when teachers are removed from their schools due to low enrollment or funding shortages. Unlike layoffs, excessed teachers keep their jobs but are shuffled to a different school that needs an educator with their particular credentials. Earlier this year, I wrote about the experience of another local teacher who was excessed.
What We’re Writing
Cajon Valley Union Elementary School District Superintendent David Miyashiro is likely breathing a little easier this week. That’s because board president Jim Miller easily won last week’s election. One of Miller’s two challengers, Alex Welling, is a close ally of conservative board member Anthony Carnevale, who has feuded with Miyashiro both on substantive issues like district spending and on culture war fronts. Miller, on the other hand, has been more closely aligned with Miyashiro.
Many within the district feared those feuds could lead to Miyashiro losing his job. Though Carnevale did not explicitly say his aim was to fire Miyashiro, he did say he wanted to institute “accountability and a true evaluation,” of the superintendent.
“We’ve not been able to do that with the current … majority board leadership,” Carnevale said.
With Miller’s reelection, Carnevale won’t get his new majority.
Plus: Carnevale has for years railed against a collection of nonprofits he frequently calls the “groomer cartel,” but has been less clear about what he thinks they’re grooming kids into. The subtext of the allegations seemed clear to me in a political environment where conservatives have spun up a moral panic accusing LGBTQ+ advocates of grooming: these organizations are grooming kids into being gay or transgender. That’s what I wrote in a piece Voice of San Diego published a couple of weeks ago. Not so, said Carnevale the day after the piece published. Here’s what he still won’t say.