Talks Fail to Resolve Magnet Rift at Gompers

The strong and bitter divisions among parents, teachers and administrators at troubled Gompers Secondary School erupted anew Tuesday over a school-district plan to heal wounds at the special science-math facility. The differences leave large doubts about whether the plan will work if put into place next month.

After more than two hours of public hearings, key rifts remained over how to help more of the school’s heavily black and Latino student population become successful academically while maintaining the rigorous special curriculum that lures a substantial number of white students to bus to Gompers.

Cooperation Requested

Board of Education members pleaded for cooperation from the Gompers community while indicating they will seek some changes in the blueprint when it comes back to them for a final vote Aug. 2.

Several Gompers teachers denounced all or part of the so-called “renewal plan” by Tom Payzant, the San Diego Unified School District superintendent. The proposal would expand the science-math magnet at the junior-high level to include all seventh- and eighth-graders who live in the school’s Southeast San Diego neighborhood and almost all of whom are black or Latino.

The magnet is now restricted to a limited number of minority students and an equal number of white students who are bused in daily.

“The district did not provide for the resident population from the very beginning of the magnet program 10 years ago, and it is attempting to shift the blame to the teachers,” teacher Rhoenna Armster told Payzant and the Board of Education, a group “that has been the most stable over the 10-year period and the group that has been responsible for the tremendous success and the national reputation that Gompers enjoys today.”

Armster and other teachers ripped into the report’s assumption that new attitudes toward minority students and new classroom techniques are required of the professional staff, who in many cases already work 55 hours a week or more helping students after class or supervising special projects that win the school its national awards.

Gompers math teachers pointed out several errors in Payzant’s report, which he used to conclude that the teachers do not attempt to improve performance of non-white resident students.

Chemistry teacher Jay Rubin said the plan emphasizes programs only for the resident students in the junior high and ignores and even harms the excellence of the all-magnet senior-high part of Gompers by requiring specialized high-school teachers to teach one or two general-subject junior-high classes as well. (The requirement is known as cross-teaching.)

“It has become politically unpopular to seek excellence in education these days,” Rubin said. “Those that advocate or wish to teach in the highest and most demanding levels of education are branded elitists, which many consider a euphemism for racist. . . . This renewal plan as it stands would relegate (Gompers) to mediocrity in the areas in which it now excels.”

Rubin and others said that Gompers teachers want their students to succeed--white, black, Latino or Asian--but that success cannot simply be wished and that education efforts must begin at the elementary level to eliminate the 20% of students who now come to Gompers and read or do math three or four grade levels below the norm.

Paul Speckart, a white magnet parent who has been active in community meetings to draw up solutions for Payzant, called the plan a chaotic blueprint that betrays academic excellence.

Another parent, Marilyn Houk, said top administrators continue to ignore what teachers have labeled as a lack of trust between them and Principal Marie Thornton.

Some Say Plan Falls Short

But several black educators and parents said the plan, if anything, does not go far enough in addressing needs of minorities.

“This whole plan should be chucked . . . because it needs to set more specific goals for students,” said Sharon Grant-Henry, an education professor at San Diego State University. She referred to Jaime Escalante--the renowned teacher at Garfield High School in Los Angeles who taught minority students high-level math--as a model to follow.

Grant-Henry alleged in her testimony that the teachers at the hearing are in effect saying “they don’t want to teach resident students.”

“People of color have been left out of everything except remediation courses,” she added. Parent Walter Kudumu, who has tried to bridge the gap between the two sides, said too many people accept as normal the situation of “black students at the bottom of the ladder.”

“This plan can be an opportunity to move more students toward excellence,” he said. “No black or Latino parent has said anything about watering down the curriculum, but some never hear us when we speak.”

Board members were concerned about the sharp attacks and lack of consensus regarding the plan, which Payzant drew up from the many hours of community meetings held during the spring after teachers came close to open revolt over the cross-teaching requirements.

Board member Kay Davis elicited information from administrators that up to one-third of the white students now attending Gompers are ready to transfer to other schools, a trend that could irreparably damage the magnet’s reputation and wound the district’s voluntary integration program.

Another board member, Susan Davis, whose son attends Gompers, talked about perhaps modifying the cross-teaching requirement as a way to ease teacher concerns over dilution of the curriculum, and colleague Jim Roache agreed.

But a majority of the board appeared satisfied with the general direction of the report, with board chairman Dorothy Smith--who has fought long and hard for more attention to minority students--asking teachers “to consider the needs of students. . . . This plan is not perfect and may need some revisions, but it is a positive step.”