Endorsements
from
the San
Diego Union-Tribune
Courtesy
of
SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE PUBLISHING
COMPANY
May 22, 2006
County Ed choices
For
Hartley and Jones, with a caveat
The San Diego County
School Board has come a good way since its nasty ideological battles of the
late 1990s. That's hardly an era worth repeating. Yet ideology and
partisanship have resurfaced in the run-up to the June 6 primary, which will
decide who wins in District 3 and District 5.
The race in District
5 pits current board President Susan Hartley against Oceanside investor Gary
Felien, Republicans both.
Felien's campaign for
fiscal responsibility and accountability rings a welcome bell. No doubt the
board could benefit from his financial experience and expertise. But as a
last-minute candidate, Felien seems to be the last-minute choice of a
Republican clique that was directly involved in the infamous ideological
conflicts and has refocused its message from small-tent social conservatism
to fiscal conservatism.
We're all for fiscal
accountability, especially as education budgets have soared far higher than
students' scores. Felien himself seems less rigid on social issues than the
folks most promoting his candidacy. But the prospect of an ugly past
haunting not just his candidacy but the board if he wins helps swing our
endorsement to the moderate Hartley, who takes to heart the reality that the
board is a nonpartisan position.
In District 5, Sharon
Jones, formerly on the La Mesa-Spring Valley School Board and appointed to
the county board in February, vies with Rick Winet, president of the La
Mesa-Spring Valley board. Unlike Felien, Winet has both experience in public
education and passion for it. Like Felien's, however, Winet's campaign bears
the imprimatur of the same Republicans whose strident streak on social
issues trumps their fiscal conservatism.
Hartley and Jones
both have considerable experience with boards and associations tied to
public education. Hartley early on, and Jones since her appointment, have
particularly supported the county Office of Education's Achievement Gap Task
Force. By facilitating brainstorming sessions among the county's 42 school
districts, teacher training and targeted materials and classes, the
department has helped to narrow substantially the countywide gap between
Latino and African-American students and white and Asian students on the
math portion of the California High School Exit Exam. That's a laudable
achievement for the students – and for a board whose reason for existence is
frequently questioned, much less an annual budget hovering at half a
billion.
That hefty budget,
however, should also give Hartley and Jones pause in their seemingly shared
belief that if it's “for the kids” the cost shouldn't matter. With the
state's competing needs, there is a limit to school funding, and estimates
of “adequate” funding seldom consider how it's spent as opposed to how much.
Ever more money has not meant ever better results. For the tens of billions
of tax money spent annually – $61 billion this year – the results for “the
kids” and the taxpayers both could have been, should have been, far better
than they have been.
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