Every once in a while, we have an “eat your Wheaties” meeting. Tomorrow night is one of those meetings.
There are three major items in the printed agenda, including a report from the Arts Education Master Plan task force, the renewal of the Teach for America contract, and a sweeping resolution that would reconfigure our P.E. programs and approach to JROTC. We also expect a large showing from UESF members, who are coming to rally for both a wage increase and increased investment in the Safe and Supportive Schools policy.
After tonight’s Personnel and Labor Committee meeting, it’s hard to see where the Teach for America contract will find enough support. Commissioners Fewer and Wynns spoke passionately against the program, and President Haney voiced concerns as well. In the past, Commissioner Walton has voted against the program and stated he doesn’t think the model is right for San Francisco. While I’m loath to tie the staff’s hands when it comes to recruiting badly-needed teachers, even I feel ambivalent after tonight’s presentation. The proposed contract is for 15 teachers — a drop in the bucket towards our recruiting needs this year, even though we’re specifying only hard to staff credential areas like math and special education. Teach for America interns attend a five-week summer boot camp before entering the classroom and most end up in our lowest-performing schools. Many who come through the program are good teachers. Some aren’t. Most don’t stay in San Francisco, or in teaching at all, over the long term. Last year I passionately defended the Teach for America contract. This year, I’m wondering if it’s worth all of the fighting. Maybe, if the Board sent a message against business as usual, we might get a different result over the long-term. I’m still undecided about how I’ll vote.
The JROTC resolution is kind of a mess, because authors Wynns and Murase have adamantly refused to split various half-baked P.E. policy revisions from some badly-needed reforms to our JROTC policy. Here’s what I support in the resolution:
- Recognizing the new JROTC credential, which has been approved by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing as an appropriate credential to teach JROTC;
- Allowing the JROTC course to meet the state’s P.E. requirement, so long as the course is found to satisfy the state’s required P.E. framework;
- Continuing to allow students who take JROTC as an elective to enroll in P.E. independent study supervised by instructors holding the new JROTC credential, rather than requiring the instructors to have a P.E. credential;
- Removing the district’s prohibition on the program receiving central office funding as well as site-based funding (this is probably the most controversial JROTC-provision).
Unfortunately, the resolution also contains some sweeping provisions allowing students at alternative high schools to take P.E. independent study, and provisions allowing students enrolled in high school athletics and marching band to receive P.E. credit. Any or all of these things might be good ideas or they might not be, but the controversy that perennially surrounds JROTC, as well as the complexity of the current resolution, has drowned out any other reasonable policy provisions.
The fact is, three board members will likely not support anything related to JROTC, so I don’t really understand the strategy of trying to hide some needed JROTC policy revisions behind other sweeping P.E. issues. At every committee meeting I have voiced my concerns about the way this resolution is written, but so far the authors have refused to consider splitting the P.E. issues from the JROTC issues. We’ll see what happens tomorrow night — I would hate to see the JROTC instructors and the kids who love the program pay for the Board’s inability to reach a compromise.
Anyway, after we discuss all of the above, we also have closed session. Eat your Wheaties. It’s going to be a LOOONG night.
Rachel Norton 