By Carol Kim
Over the past few months, I’ve been speaking with voters to get a deep understanding of their priorities for the city at large and the communities they live in. As an educator and parent with children in the public school system, improving education in our city is a priority I share with many of the folks I’ve talked to.
Though the city does not have direct jurisdictional authority over decision-making in the San Diego Unified and Poway Unified School Districts, there is a lot of collaboration that can (and should) happen between the city and the school districts that operate within its boundaries. As a city councilmember, I would have the authority to foster this type of cooperation between jurisdictions —allowing us to leverage tax dollars and resources to serve both the needs of our students and the broader community.
These days, our strapped school budgets make it tough for teachers and other adult staff at schools to provide the individual attention and care that can really make the difference in the life of a young person. Large class sizes and cutbacks in funding for extra-curricular programs mean that these faculty and staff members are spread incredibly thin, and our kids are suffering for it.
To address this problem, I would work with the city and school districts to look for cost savings and efficiencies — something I know can be done based on my professional experience working for a national education non-profit. The savings we uncover could then be redirected into classrooms.
I call this initiative the “The Power of One.” We all have memories from our school days of that one adult — a teacher, coach, program coordinator or counselor — who cared about us and let us know it. These are the individuals who facilitated our success in school and allowed us to thrive, often in spite of circumstances that challenged us on a daily basis.
Imagine, then, the good we could do together by helping to create the savings in school budgets that would allow schools to hire one more teacher or provide one more program that could reduce class sizes or engage our students in ways that go above and beyond traditional instruction.
One way we can generate savings is to expand joint-use programs that leverage existing school fields and facilities. Many of our communities face a deficit in park space. This lack of space is almost impossible to overcome in areas — such as Clairemont, Mira Mesa and Rancho Penasquitos — that are pretty well built out but are still growing in population. To alleviate this, we should facilitate agreements between the city and schools that would allow the general community to access school fields during non-school hours in exchange for support from the city in the form of maintenance and upkeep costs for those facilities. Memoranda of Understanding, or MOUs, between the cooperating agencies would direct any funds freed up in the school budgets as a result into the classroom.
We could use these funds to hire additional faculty members to support our students. The exact type of person needed at each site would be determined by the schools working with parents and the community. Having spoken at length with San Diego business leaders, I believe the new staff should include instructors well-versed in fields like computer science, engineering and biotechnology, thereby developing a pipeline of highly skilled workers from K-12 to our emerging local industries.
The new staff could also include workplace learning coordinators who organize and place students in local businesses for internships that provide excellent opportunities for project-based learning. As needed, the funding could even go towards establishing (or expanding) performing and fine-arts programs, robotics programs, athletics, and career technical student organizations such as Future Business Leaders of America or SkillsUSA.
I believe, as do the people I’ve spoken with in neighborhoods across my district, that we must do everything in our power to make sure our children grow up in a city that nurtures and develops them — a city that is safe, well-maintained, and takes their futures seriously. Building a bright future for our youth might not be the only way to ensure the well-being of San Diego, but I would argue that it’s the best way. In our incredibly diverse city, we might be separated by political, ethnic, and/or religious differences, but we all united in how much we care about our children. Let’s work together, creatively and without preconceptions, on their behalf and for our mutual benefit.
Carol Kim is an education consultant and candidate for San Diego City Council in the 6th District.
