Variations on a Bulletin Board

By Katherine Nakamura

A poetical look at California's education system and global competition written when our budget deficit from Sacramento was only $53 million that year. It has since grown to over half a billion dollars, but the themes in this essay still remain true.

So...Teachers are always kind. Administrators are always expendable. Algebra is impossible. Teenagers are too self-absorbed. Education won't balance its budget. Business has no place in education. Elementary school children are always adorable. Public education is the bulwark of democracy. Public schools are a disgrace. So on and so forth.

Really?

In my experience, I have found contradictions to every statement above. Teachers can be mean when pushed to their limits and a good administrator makes everybody's job better. San Diego City Schools sends students to MIT, Harvard, Stanford and other high achieving schools every year, so somebody must be learning algebra. Between homework, volunteer hours at community organizations, band practice, part-time jobs and being with their friends, I don't know if our teenagers have time to be too self-absorbed. San Diego Unified did devise a balanced curriculum within a balanced budget and did so on time, even with a $53 million budget deficit, so good business practices do have a place in education. Okay, the elementary school children are universally adorable, but also exhausting. Public education is the bulwark of democracy when people don't abandon it. A public school district that offers so many opportunities with 130,000 students from every walk of life actually has a lot to offer if you participate and put in the effort.

I hate to invoke "China Rising," but having visited there in June, I can tell you that the title is no joke. On many levels, they have broken out of their most essential paradigm. These days there are references to achieving success through capitalism and the Analects of Confucius than to the Long March of Chairman Mao. They are putting different ideas up on their bulletin board. In still-Communist China, students get tested, but their best schools rival corporate headquarters in their amenities and their best students are treated as national treasures. Based on their Olympic performance and the drive of their economic engine, I would say in some measure, it seems to be working.

I regret even further invoking advice from the Governor of Texas, but one morning last month over breakfast with about eight others at General Salinas' home, Rick Perry carefully explained how Texas climbed out of the oil and gas crisis of the 1980s. There were four legs on the stool. Diversify the economy. Rebuild infrastructure using toll roads. Invest in schools and build accountability. Lower taxes. He made no bones about it, schools are an integral part of Texas rising. Good schools attract quality employees and quality corporations. Schools also build community pride and a workforce that contributes to the common good. (By the way, the Governor was in San Diego, poaching some of our best biotechs to send to Texas, something he was quite candid about and successful in doing.) I wonder how Texas would have done if they had only continued to pin oil wells, long horns and football on their bulletin board?

California is unique. San Diego is unique. We don't want to be China or Texas. Regardless of Governor Perry's advice, we place among the ten largest economies in the world, thank you very much. Yet our education system, while making gains, is a work in progress. As we rethink those icons we pin to our bulletin board, we must ensure that the innovation, cooperation and work ethic that have always been California are represented. We want our children to know the crunch of autumn leaves, that the snowflakes that fall in our mountains are as different from one another as they are anywhere else, and that yellow mustard, purple lupin and California poppies will continue to cover the hills of the Golden State this spring. Nonetheless, we need to seek answers, solutions, ideas that are genuinely part of our climate, that work in our culture. But they should be ones that help us work together, not drive us apart or lead us to believe that all of the fullness and richness our society has to offer can be simply reduced to themes on a bulletin board.

Katherine Nakamura President, Board of Education San Diego City Schools