Artie M. "Chip" Owen, the chairman of the Southeastern Economic Development Corp., has responded to Mayor Jerry Sanders request for information into the organization's practices of approving bonuses.
Along with the memo, Owen provides a detailed list of SEDC employees' budgeted salary and actual compensation. It reveals for the first time the actual proportion of the bonuses and shows that almost every employee of the organization received some form of bonus or additional compensation over the past five fiscal years.
For example, in FY 2007-08, SEDC's staff accountant, administrative support coordinator, executive assistant, senior accountant, finance director, and a project manager all received bonuses and extra compensation of at least $20,000.
Carolyn Smith, the organization's president, earned $293,499.05 in bonuses over the course of the past five fiscal years.
Below is a chart I put together showing how Smith's bonuses and additional compensation grew over five years relative to the growth of her budgeted salary.
Friday, July 18 -- 6:37 pm
Derryl Williams, a member of the Southeastern Economic Development Corp. board, just sent Mayor Jerry Sanders a letter criticizing the agency's culture and its president, Carolyn Y. Smith.
The letter states:
The culture of SEDC over the years has been to manipulate, cajole, ignore and intimidate the board into utter and complete silence. Materials for review are provided late and board members have customarily been thwarted in their opportunities to raise questions.
The letter adds fuel to claims made by two other board members earlier this week about the way the SEDC board meetings are conducted. The two board members said they had not been given enough time to review SEDC's budget before approving it, and that a budget committee has not met in the last 18 months.
Williams writes in his letter that he and two other board members have tried to increase the flow of information to the board and have tried to perform adequate oversight of the agency.
Those efforts have been blocked by Smith, Williams writes:
Using corporate counsel and Special Agency Counsel, the President of SEDC controlled questions and the flow of information so that board members could not obtain sufficient answers to assist in making good judgments.
Williams urges the mayor to remove certain board members while instating others who will perform the duties required of them.
He also asks the mayor to install alternative legal counsel to the board.
Friday, July 18 -- 5:32 pm
Mayoral spokesman Fred Sainz just told me that Southeastern Economic Development Corp. President Carolyn Y. Smith will not be resigning.
Mayor Jerry Sanders and three City Council members today called on Smith to resign in the wake of a voiceofsandiego.org investigation that uncovered a clandestine system of bonuses for Smith and other SEDC employees. They demanded a response by 5 p.m.
Sainz said that the city's chief financial officer, Jay Goldstone, just off the phone with SEDC board Chairman Artie M. "Chip" Owen, and Owen said Smith would not be stepping down. (Yesterday the City Attorney's Office opined that Owen had violated the state's conflict of interest law for maintaining a business relationship with a developer with a development agreement with SEDC.)
A personnel item has been added to the SEDC board's closed session agenda for its regularly scheduled board meeting Wednesday, and Owen told Goldstone that the board will discuss Smith's continued employment, Sainz said. The board controls Smith's employment.
Friday, July 18 -- 5:08 pm
The corporate counsel for the Southeastern Economic Development Corp. has informed the agency's board that it can't call the emergency board meeting requested today by Mayor Jerry Sanders and three council members who are pushing for the resignation or termination of agency President Carolyn Y. Smith.
In the e-mail, attorney Regina Petty also warns board members against discussing personnel matters pertaining to SEDC employees. She notes that SEDC board Chairman Artie M. "Chip" Owen has scheduled a closed session "personnel agenda item" for the next full board meeting, scheduled for Wednesday.
Here's a copy of the e-mail, which was sent to board members at 3:33 p.m.:
Dear SEDC Board Members,
Some of you may have already learned of the attached request for the resignation of SEDC's President. Mr. Owen has scheduled a closed session personnel agenda item for the regular Board meeting on July 23, 2008. In my opinion, the extant circumstances and any personnel action which the Board may determine to take do not clearly meet the Brown Act's definition of an emergency which is "a work stoppage, criplling [sic] activity, or other activity that severly [sic] impairs public health, safety, or both, as determined by a majority" of the Board members. Gov't Code sec. 54956.5. Both a special meeting or personnel action to be considered by the Board require 24 hours written notice to the media, the affected employees and the public. Gov't Code sec. 54956 and 54957.
Please reminder that the Brown Act requirements continue to be in effect at to all SEDC Board business and you should refrain from discussing Board business among yourselves outside of the meeting to best avoid the possibility of a serial meeting. In addition, the Board in its role as an employer should be mindful of the privacy rights of SEDC personnel and you should refrain from public comment on personnel matters in advance of the meeting.
The agendas for the Board meeting on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 and for the Personnel & Budget Committee Meeting on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 must be published by the end of the day. If you have agenda topic requests for the Board meeting or wish to provide a reference to staff for factual information to be reported at the Board meeting, please direct your communication ONLY to me. Agenda topic requests must be received
by 4:15 p.m. today.
Very truly yours,
Regina
Friday, July 18 -- 5:04 pm The City Attorney's Office is currently assessing whether or not hundreds of thousands of dollars paid out in clandestine bonuses to officials at the Southeastern Economic Development Corp. constitute a misuse of public funds, City Attorney Mike Aguirre just told me.
If the City Attorney's Office finds that the bonuses were a misuse of public funds, violating city laws which govern public expenditure, the next stage would be to send the officials a letter demanding repayment of the money, Aguirre said.
SEDC President Carolyn Y. Smith and her top deputy, Dante Dayacap, were paid more than $350,000 over five years in bonuses and extra compensation under vaguely titled programs called "acknowledgment" and "cost of living." A voiceofsandiego.org investigation uncovered the bonus program last week and led to calls today for Smith to resign.
If the officials ignored a request from the City Attorney's Office, Aguirre said, he would consider whether or not to bring lawsuits against the officials to reclaim the misused funds.
Friday, July 18 -- 4:44 pm Emily Alpert, voiceofsandiego.org's education reporter, swept the education category this week at the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists local awards ceremony.
Alpert won first, second and honorable mention in the category for daily reporting and writing, with this story on American Indian education nabbing first. Rob Davis grabbed a first place in non-deadline reporting for this piece and this piece on what's killing the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a primary source of San Diego's drinking water, and Will Carless got another first place in online breaking news for this story on the first night of the massive October 2007 wildfires.
voiceofsandiego.org staff also picked up three second place awards and two honorable mentions. Go to the local SPJ website for a complete list of the winners.
Friday, July 18 -- 4:00 pm In March, Joaquin Sapien wrote a story about a land-use victory for the local biotechnology and high-technology sectors that was indicative of their rising voice in local politics.
In the story, Kevin Carroll, executive director of the San Diego Council of the American Electronic Association, a national lobbying organization that represents the technology industry, said this:
"The hard-fought win on preserving industrial land is only the first step in the tech and bio community flexing their new-found political muscle."
It seems the next step may be coming.
I met with Carroll today and he said ballooning energy costs may well spur the next big political push from the industry. He wants the high-tech community, largely clustered in Sorrento Mesa, to have better access to public transit so employees traveling from all over the county can have a cheaper ride to work.
In the next few months, Carroll said he'll be meeting with BIOCOM, a life science trade association, and Qualcomm executives to form a coalition that will remind elected officials that the high-tech and biotech industries are the "economic engines" of the region and that they deserve their fair share of the transit dollars.
I'll keep you posted.
Friday, July 18 -- 2:34 pm
The Mayor's Office just released the memo calling for Southeastern Economic Development Corp. President Carolyn Y. Smith to resign that we alluded to in this post earlier today. The letter from Mayor Jerry Sanders and Council members Tony Young, Ben Hueso and Donna Frye reads in its entirety:
We believe that it is in the best interest of the City of San Diego and specifically the communities served by Corporation for Ms. Smith to resign as president of SEDC effective immediately. She has served our community for over twenty years and has shown dedication to the redevelopment process.
If she does not do so immediately, we ask the Board of Directors to terminate her contract immediately at an emergency meeting of the Board.
We feel that these changes must occur immediately so that we can return this agency of City government to its original purpose of serving the communities it was established to serve.
Please contact Jay Goldstone, the City's Chief Operating Officer, ... no later than 5pm today with your chosen course of action.
Smith was given until 1 p.m. to resign before the memo went public.
The call for her resignation is a result of the fallout from a voiceofsandiego.org investigation last week that revealed a system of clandestine bonuses and extra compensation given to Smith, her top deputy and other employees without the knowledge of the SEDC board or the City Council.
We've placed a call into SEDC and are awaiting response. Stay tuned for more.
Friday, July 18 -- 2:10 pm
Our Q&A this weekend is with Exequiel Ezcurra, the provost of the San Diego Natural History Museum. I talked at length with him about a new water exhibit opening at the museum this weekend, and the Q&A will be published later this evening.
In the mid-1990s, Ezcurra served on the International Scientific Advisory Board set up by the Mexican government to evaluate the environmental impact of a proposed large-scale salt-evaporating facility at Laguna San Ignacio in Baja California Sur. The project was hugely controversial and drew attention from around the world, before ultimately being killed by Mexico President Ernesto Zedillo. I had hoped to talk to him earlier this year when I was reporting my stories about the lagoon, which serves as shelter for the gray whales that swim by San Diego's shores each year. We didn't connect then, but I raised the issue on Tuesday. Since our Q&A is focused on water, here's what he had to say about the fight over the salt works.
There's still, it seems, a bitterness among people there (in San Ignacio) that the world rallied around them for a few years and then disappeared.
That was really what I believed to have been a very bad move. I would even say mean, in the sense of egotistical, self-centered moves of some American NGOs. Personally, I thought the project should not have been done. But the NGOs opposing the project started using all sorts of foul arguments and did a lot of harm in the long term. That left behind this bitterness and this fundamental question: Does a good end justify any means?
I could never see any scientific evidence it would have done harm to the whales. The argument is a different one. It's a World Heritage Site. Is it morally right to convert a World Heritage Site into an industrial site? And what happens if the demand for salt doesn't keep climbing? These questions should have led any intelligent person to think twice about the project. Once the project was stopped, all the Hollywood stars just took off and never came back.
It was their biggest one-year drop in tourism.
Yeah. It was really bad for them. I know almost all of them as friends. It was a terrible time for them. It was big-time bad. That generated a lot of sensitivities against the environmental movement. They perceived environmental conservationists as money-grubbers, opportunists.
That sentiment was unilateral. They felt disenfranchised from the environmental community.
Yes. The people got very, very hurt. There were also casualties in the serious environmental movement. One of them, who I have the utmost respect for, is Paul Dayton from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Paul is probably the most cited marine biologist in the world. And Paul Dayton dared say that there was no evidence that the whales would suffer with the project. But because his (scientific) opinion contradicted the campaign of conservation NGOs, they actually lynched him. Paul Dayton since then has been a quiet character. He just doesn't open his mouth. He was hit so hard and so unexpectedly, he never saw it coming. It was a media campaign in the worst sense of the word.
On also the Mexican government side, I thought it was stupid. The Mexican government hurt themselves in an incredible way. They bring in scientists from across the world to analyze the environmental impact statement. And at the end, the Mexican president says: I have visited the area ... we have decided to cancel the project. (But) the president isn't allowed to make an evaluation of an environmental impact statement. That was terrible. It violated the whole process. Why would you establish a process, have public hearings, establish an international committee -- if at the end, you're going to say: We don't want it. The casualties were in place. The battlefield was red with blood.
It sent out the discretionary message that at the end of the day, the Mexican president is the one who makes the decisions, there's no process in place for making decisions of this magnitude. Ten years later, those scars are still in place.
Friday, July 18 -- 11:47 am Councilman Ben Hueso said this morning that he, Councilman Tony Young, Mayor Jerry Sanders and Councilwoman Donna Frye will be signing a memo calling for Southeastern Economic Development Corp. President Carolyn Y. Smith to resign.
"I've decided to sign a memo of the mayor, Donna Frye and Tony Young, asking for Carolyn Smith's resignation and I think that's going to happen in the next few days, maybe next week," Hueso said in a voice mail.
Jimmie Slack, Young's chief of staff, confirmed that he was in the process of drafting a memo that will be completed shortly.
"It will ask for her to resign and if not, for the board to take action," Hueso said.
Pressure has been building on the agency, a nonprofit arm of the city's Redevelopment Agency, since a voiceofsandiego.org story broke last week about a clandestine system of bonuses and extra compensation paid to Smith, Finance Director Dante Dayacap and other emloyees.
The mayor has since launched an investigation into SEDC. Frye and Councilman Jim Madaffer have already called for Smith to step down.
Friday, July 18 -- 11:16 am
Earlier this week, San Diego Unified school board President Katherine Nakamura said trustee Luis Acle's fine from the city Ethics Commission would be discussed by the board with its legal counsel in a closed meeting Monday.
But an expert on California open records law said that the issue shouldn't be discussed behind closed doors, based on the limited information Nakamura gave about the meeting. The meeting agenda has yet to be released.
Terry Francke, general counsel for the open government advocates Californians Aware, said that it the school board's plan to discuss Acle behind closed doors "doesn't sound like it fits any of the lawful closed sessions listed in the Brown Act," which sets forth rules for public meetings.
"There's no litigation involving the school district as a party that is either ongoing or threatened," he said. If Acle faces litigation, "that's a personal liability, not one of the district."
And Acle's future isn't a personnel matter, he said.
"The Brown Act expressly and emphatically states that an elected official or a member of a legislative body is not a public employee for purposes of closed personnel sessions," Francke said. "There aren't that many closed session authorizations. We're not talking about collective bargaining or employee compensation. We're not talking about real property negotiations. And that pretty well exhausts the bases for going into closed session."
Nakamura said she couldn't comment on why the meeting was closed, but said the board had conferred with its legal counsel, Jose Gonzales, before deciding to hold a closed meeting. Gonzales was on vacation and unavailable for comment today.
But school district staffers looking at a tentative version of the meeting agenda said a Government Code section that allows closed meetings when an agency is deciding whether to initiate litigation would apply. What lawsuit they might file isn't clear.
Acle's ethics violations stem from an unsuccessful City Council run, not his campaign for school board.
Thursday, July 17 -- 7:38 pm
Vical Inc., a San Diego-based company, announced today that researchers have made a DNA-based vaccine that can safely fuel the immune system to levels expected to protect against avian flu.
Researchers have been worried that if there is a global outbreak of bird flu, existing anti-flu remedies could fail to be effective because some strains of the virus have already developed a resistance to them.
Vical said a DNA-based vaccine is preferable because it could be made in six-to-eight weeks, compared with four-to-six months for flu vaccines made the traditional way, using pieces of the actual virus grown in chicken eggs.
DNA vaccines, on the other hand, use bits of genetic material called plasmids that can trigger an immune response against a specific part of the virus. Plus, they’re designed to hold up better than traditional vaccines under extreme heat or cold, Vical said.
In a study of 100 volunteers, 67 patients receiving the trial dose had immune responses that could protect against bird-flu. No serious adverse reactions were observed after two injections, company officials said in a statement about early trial results. The complete Phase I clinical trial, to demonstrate whether the vaccine is safe, is still underway.
The bird flu virus -- technically called avian virus H5N1 -- has been found in birds in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. It rarely infects people, but it has killed 243 people out of 385 infected in 15 countries, according to the World Health Organization. Experts with the organization worry that the frequently mutating virus could morph into a form that could be easily transmitted between people.
At least 16 companies are working on bird-flu vaccines, the organization said. It’s unclear which particular vaccines would work against whatever strain might eventually cause a pandemic, but the ability to make a vaccine in weeks instead of months could be an advantage.
Thursday, July 17 -- 4:57 pm
I'd been trying to reach Local 127's president Joan Raymond for the past couple days to get her take the impasse between the union and Mayor Jerry Sanders on the proposed pension reform ballot measure.
She called back today. She said the union, which represents the city's blue-collar employees, put forth a proposal that would eventually save taxpayers an estimated $1 million more annually than the plan put forth by Sanders.
The union estimates that their plan would save $25.8 million annually a generation from now; compared to an estimated $24.8 million saved by the Sanders plan over the same period. The administration has consistently said its plan would ultimately save taxpayers $22.5 million. The difference in the estimates is the result of different payroll assumptions by the union and the administration.
Sanders, Raymond said, never budged from the compromise reform plan he hammered out with City Council President Scott Peters last month.
"They gave us their last best and final offer yesterday," Raymond said. "Their last, best and final was virtually the same as their first, best and only offer."
The savings realized from the union proposal comes from the elimination of the city's contribution to the Supplemental Pension Savings Program, a 401(k)-like "defined contribution" retirement savings vehicle that is separate from the pension plan.
However, even with the extra savings, such a proposal is a non-starter for Sanders because it would kill the defined contribution component of employee retirement savings, which to Sanders is key to pension reform going forward.
Sanders' plan calls for SPSP to be eliminated and the defined contribution component become part of the pension plan under the San Diego City Employees' Retirement System.
This gives the city the opportunity over time to gradually shift employee retirement savings from the defined benefit model, under which retirees get a set amount every month for life, to a defined contribution model in which employees have a retirement account that is invested like a corporate 401(k) plan.
Last week, the Deputy City Attorneys Association signed on to the Sanders plan. Sanders is still negotiating with the MEA, the city's white-collar union. The reform proposal is scheduled to go before City Council next week.
Thursday, July 17 -- 4:30 pm
The Redevelopment Agency's two nonprofit arms, the Southeastern Economic Development Corp. and the Centre City Development Corp., have both failed to file their tax returns with the state Attorney General's Office.
The AG's Office sent CCDC officials this delinquency notice on July 1, warning them that they have to file the forms with the AG post-haste or risk getting a fine.
And, as The San Diego Union-Tribune just reported, the AG sent SEDC a similar letter this morning.
In the course of investigating SEDC's clandestine system of bonuses and extra compensation, I called the AG's office, which is responsible for overseeing nonprofits in California, in early June and asked a staff member to send me copies of SEDC's Form 990s for the last few years.
The Form 990s are crucial documents because they list how much officials at an agency were actually paid over the course of a year. By comparing what the 990s say and what the agency's budget says about the officials' compensation, I was able to write this story about SEDC's hidden bonuses and extra compensation.
On June 16, a staffer from the AG's office sent me the Form 990s for SEDC for fiscal years 2003-2004, 2004-2005 and 2005-2006.
But now, as Union-Tribune just reported, the AG has sent SEDC a delinquency notice for not filing forms that someone at the AG's office sent me a month ago. Weird.
Well, it turns out that the AG staffer got the Form 990s from GuideStar, a nonprofit research organization, then just forwarded them to me..
It's important to note that both SEDC and CCDC did evidently file their tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service. They didn't, however, apparently file the paperwork with the Attorney General's Office, which regulates nonprofits statewide.
The letters state that the organizations could lose their tax-exempt status and their officials could be liable for additional penalties.
Thursday, July 17 -- 4:02 pm
A new San Diego school tailored to junior technology whizzes gave parents a sneak peek today, throwing open its doors to show off two model classrooms loaded with sleek iMac computers, laptops, interactive whiteboards and robotic equipment.
"One kid called these 'Legos on steroids,'" said Bill Berggren, a San Diego Unified program specialist in engineering, showing off a rack of cranks, plugs, cables and motors used for robotics projects. "You know how we talk about kids needing rigor, relevance and relationships? This is the relevance piece. Kids don't ask why they need to learn this."
Millennial Tech Middle School will open this fall on the former Gompers High School campus. It's a magnet school focused on science, technology, engineering and math that will draw students from the entire school district; students must apply to attend. That means the school needs to court parents to sign up their kids. Leaf-green banners outside the school show beakers, atoms and gadgets; inside, San Diego Unified staff showed off a nearly $30,000 three-dimensional printer that lets students create plastic objects after designing them on a computer.
Point Loma parent Maria Gibson hadn't yet decided whether Millennial was for her 11-year-old daughter, but she was impressed by the new school. As she toured Millennial, she said that long waiting lists had deterred her from applying to the charter High Tech Middle School. Her neighborhood school, Dana Middle, is pushing for more technology in classrooms. But there's something alluring about the blank slate of a new school explicitly geared toward science and technology, she said.
"Books are obsolete the minute they get printed," Gibson said. "Kids don't learn that way anymore."
She gestured to a classroom full of kids, intently watching an adult demonstrating a lesson on a digital whiteboard. On a hot day during summer vacation, Gibson said it was impressive that the lesson still held their attention.
Millennial got a slightly delayed start in planning when the school board disputed the location of the new magnet was earlier this year. Trustees had considered locating the school at Memorial Academy, a troubled charter school in Logan Heights, but ultimately chose to create a different public program to compete with the charter on its site.
But Principal Helen Griffith said she was undeterred by the delay and the challenge of opening a new school. She has helped to open two other schools in San Diego: Lincoln High School, which opened last year, and Crawford High School, which reopened as four small high schools in 2004. Her concern is taking the federal grant money that Millennial has received as a magnet school and using it wisely, so that the highly computerized school is sustainable when the funding disappears.
"If we become a model school," Griffith said, "people will invest in it."
Thursday, July 17 -- 3:48 pm
The city of San Diego redevelopment executive under fire over her agency's bonus programs has a clause in her contract that could pay her between $200,000 and $300,000 if she is terminated.
Southeastern Economic Development Corp. President Carolyn Y. Smith's employment contract, first inked in 1994 and amended in 1996, states that she is entitled to a month's severance pay -- based on her annual compensation -- for every year of employment under the agreement.
She has served as SEDC president for 14 years. It is unclear what compensation would be used to calculate any separation package. Her base salary is $172,000 for the fiscal year that began July 1, as it was last year. However, with bonuses and extra compensation included, Smith earned $261,000 last year, according to figures compiled by the Mayor's Office.
If the payment were to be based on her salary, it would be an estimated $200,000; it would be slightly more than $300,000 if based on her total compensation from last year.
The contract also states that SEDC isn't required to pay a severance if she is terminated "due to acts of dishonesty, gross misconduct or fraud."
The SEDC board, which is appointed by the mayor, oversees Smith's employment and would have to vote to terminate her employment. There is no indication the board is considering such an action; its next full meeting is scheduled for Wednesday.
City Councilman Jim Madaffer called for Smith to be terminated last week, saying that SEDC should be disbanded and its duties absorbed by the city of San Diego's Redevelopment Agency. The agency is currently structured as nonprofit organization and its major decisions -- such as development agreements and its annual budget -- still must be approved by the City Council.
The City Council can remove individual board members or the entire board of organizations such as SEDC with a two-thirds vote, said City Attorney Mike Aguirre.
Thursday, July 17 -- 3:09 pm The relationship between Superintendent Terry Grier and the teachers union in San Diego Unified has gotten off to a rocky start -- and so did his relationship with the teachers association in Guilford County, North Carolina, his last school district.
Grier has mentioned Guilford County Association of Educators president Mark Jewell as a union leader who "knew how to disagree," and said the two had a civil relationship. Here's an excerpt from a May interview, when Grier explained how he foresaw his relationship with the union in San Diego:
Frankly, I hope it grows stronger. I had a good relationship with the union in North Carolina. Mark Jewell, the union president there, I consider a friend and a professional colleague. We didn't agree on everything. Mark knew how to disagree.
Relationships are two-sided. I want to have a strong relationship, and I hope the teachers union does here. But a strong relationship doesn't mean that every time you do something that someone else disagrees with, they react in a different way than perhaps I would.
But Jewell said their relationship took finessing. And it didn't begin well.
Jewell said he would give Grier a D or a D+ grade as superintendent when he came to Guilford County, and a B- when he left. Grier's plans included a controversial move to use a county-paid supplement to teacher salaries to pay bonuses for teachers in "hard-to-staff" schools, Jewell said. He was overruled.
"The teachers were up in arms," Jewell said. "We viewed it as a tax on the teachers."
Over several years, Grier became more inclusive of the teachers association and better at communicating big changes before they went to the school board, Jewell said. That could be a promising sign for San Diego, where the rift between the union and the school district helped derailed discussions of a parcel tax, http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2008/07/17/news/02parceltaxdown071708.txt"target="_blank">as I wrote today.
But the power dynamic in North Carolina is fundamentally different than in San Diego, said Richard Barrera, a candidate for school board who works as a labor organizer. North Carolina is a "right to work" state and its teachers contract is much more limited than in San Diego, Jewell said.
"Terry believes he had a good working relationship with the union in North Carolina. And he probably did," Barrera said. "But he's got to understand that that union was in a fundamentally weak position and by necessity, (the union) had to make concessions and accommodations to district management that a union in California doesn't have to make. You're talking about apples and oranges."
Thursday, July 17 -- 1:05 pm
Why will some San Diego Unified schools enjoy smaller classes while other schools -- some of them poorer or lower-achieving -- won’t?
The question came up last week when San Diego Unified listed the schools for the plan. Superintendent Terry Grier had earlier said that small class sizes mattered most in schools that serve low-income families, yet the schools selected weren't necessarily the district's poorest or lowest-achieving.
Jennifer White, a former principal recently chosen by Grier as an Elementary School Improvement Officer, recently explained to me why the schools chosen for the program weren't necessarily the poorest or lowest-achieving schools in San Diego Unified.
(You might remember White -- she used to lead Webster Elementary, which ratcheted up its test scores and nearly eliminated suspensions through this nifty program. No surprise that White will now be helping elementary school principals hone their programs.)
Here's why: When Grier got pushback from schools on a different idea -- keeping students in the same classes between kindergarten and second grade -- he slimmed down the project from a district-wide initiative to 30 schools. And he converted it into a pilot project that will study whether the method works. He also combined the pilot with his plan to reduce class sizes in 30 schools.
But to be an effective study, White explained, the schools needed to be randomized, not chosen for their test scores or their demographics.
"It should help make everyone clear -- this is why we're going in the direction that we are," White said.
Thursday, July 17 -- 12:41 pm Building a canal to move drinking water from Sierra Nevada around the Sacramento delta is the best strategy for balancing costs and environmental needs, according to a Public Policy Institute of California report released today.
The Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta serves as a conduit for Sierra Nevada snowmelt to be pumped to Southern California. Melting snow flows through the delta, a 738,000-acre area bounded by Sacramento, Tracy and Antioch. But pumps at the southern end of the delta have contributed to a sharp decline in the delta's ecosystem -- five fish found there are listed as endangered species.
The nonpartisan report says that building a canal to move water around the delta, a project defeated by statewide voters in 1982, is a cost-effective way to boost environmental protection while still allowing the vital water source to continue providing drinking water for the state.
The report studied four options:
Building the canal.
Maintaining the status quo.
Building a canal while also continuing to pump water through the delta. (An interim solution known as "dual conveyance.")
Stopping water exports from the delta.
Stopping exports altogether offers fish the best chance of surviving, the report says. But that would prove enormously costly for millions who are dependent on the delta as a water supply.
The report says:
A clear tradeoff exists between a peripheral canal or dual conveyance and ending all exports. The canal and dual conveyance are better in terms of costs to the economy. Ending exports is better for fish. Selecting between building a peripheral canal and ending all exports will require a value judgment. The tradeoff may be easier to make if some economic benefits of a canal-based alternative are used to enhance ecosystem investments and improve environmental conditions in the Delta.
Thursday, July 17 -- 11:21 am Between freshman and senior year, nearly 23 percent of high schoolers in San Diego Unified dropped out, the California Department of Education reported today. Dropout rates are even higher among some minority groups: 30.5 percent of Latino students and 28.7 percent of African American students quit the system.
Though the overall dropout rate in San Diego Unified is slightly lower than county and state rates, Superintendent Terry Grier said the data was sobering. And he worried that the data, which are from the 2006-2007 school year, were already too stale.
"This is unacceptable. It's embarrassing. And it's disappointing," Grier said. "... I'd like to see us cut this rate in half within the next three years."
Grier said he plans to reduce the dropout rate in San Diego Unified by emphasizing a different three Rs: rigor, relevance and relationships. One initiative is a "middle college high school" of 150 to 200 students, housed at San Diego City College, where students can earn college credit.
Another idea Grier floated is starting two "virtual high schools" where students lagging behind in credits can take online courses and do independent study. The virtual schools would have physical locations with computer labs and a handful of teachers, he said.
The data released Wednesday are more accurate than dropout rates California has reported in the past. For the first time, California used individual student data to track where students went over a four-year period, instead of tracking aggregate numbers. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell wrote in a press release:
"For too long, we had to rely on complicated formulas to make educated guesses about how many students were graduating and how many were leaving school without a diploma," O'Connell said. "Arguments over differing approaches to this calculation often resulted in confusing and distracting conversations. Now, using student-level data, we can improve the accuracy of our count of how many students drop out, increase accountability, and focus on preventing dropouts.
Wednesday, July 16 -- 6:21 pm
After being wooed for more than a month by folks in Sacramento for the state's legislative analyst job, Andrea Tevlin, San Diego's independent budget analyst, has pulled out of the running for the high profile job.
"It's important that I stay here and face the challenges," Tevlin said today. "There is still a lot to be done in this office and in the city as a whole."
It does look like, however, that Tevlin will get a pay raise out of the deal. She said City Council will consider increasing her salary in the "near future."
Wednesday, July 16 -- 2:58 pm I got some interesting feedback from a couple of scientists about my story today on the adult skin stem cells that can be used as proxy embryonic stem cells.
As I mentioned in the story, critics of embryonic stem cell research -- namely the Roman Catholic Church -- often endorse the use of the act-alike cells because the research doesn’t involve the destruction of human embryos, a practice President George Bush has blocked federal funding for.
However, I didn’t directly address the position of scientists who argue that the destruction of an embryo doesn’t equate to taking a human life. Today, Carol Curchoe, a stem cell and regenerative medicine researcher at the Burnham Institute, pointed out what she considers an inconsistency in the government’s policy.
Regarding the benefits of embryonic stem cell research technology that doesn’t require the destruction of a days-old embryo, Curchoe said:
This is the point scientists get the most worked up over, because hundreds of embryos are destroyed all the time in fertility clinics, which are not regulated by the government.
Still, Curchoe was clear that the entire field of stem cell research was being "revolutionized" by the advances in reprogramming adult stem cells to behave like embryonic ones.
For us it is really, really amazing that just four genes could reprogram cells.
Curchoe said she definitely supports further investigation into the proxy cells, but a University of California, San Diego, researcher, who asked to remain anonymous, had harsher words for the emerging research.
He said Bush caters to religious conservatives and that too much science is being done to try to solve a "perceived ethical issue. ... It is a degradation of the science we already have and it’s moving the field backwards."
Wednesday, July 16 -- 2:56 pm
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders today declared impasse in his negotiations with one of the three unions affected by his pension reform ballot proposal.
Talks between Sanders and Local 127, the city's blue-collar union, officially broke down hours ago after the union rejected the city's final offer.
Under Sanders' proposal, which will go before City Council next week, city employees hired after July 1, 2009 will not be able to retire before age 60, and their maximum benefit payout will be reduced by 30 percent. (For more details read here and here.)
In total, the proposed plan would, in a generation, save the city $22.5 million annually, according to Sanders administration estimates.
The measure can go on the ballot with or without the approval of the unions, but state law requires that the mayor to at least try to hammer out an agreement with the unions representing the affected employees.
The administration acknowledged that Local 127 made two counterproposals during negotiations, but neither addressed what Sanders considers the core issues, which include the lowered retirement age and the implementation of a hybrid plan that incorporates a 401(k)-style retirement plan into city worker retirement savings.
I'm still waiting for a call back from Local 127 officials.
Last week, the Deputy City Attorneys Association signed on to the mayor's plan. Sanders remains in negotiations with the third union, the Municipal Employees Association, but MEA officials have said repeatedly that they won't agree to a new pension plan separate from other pay and benefit issues.
Wednesday, July 16 -- 2:53 pm
The questions surrounding SEDC, a city of San Diego redevelopment department, have been getting a lot of attention these days in the local media. Here's a snippet from our media partner, NBC 7/39, which has been doing a good job staying on top of the story.
Wednesday, July 16 -- 11:28 am Minute bridge-like structures that can repair damaged hearts, cancer-killing "smart bombs" and surgery techniques that don’t leave scars on a patient’s body.
To most of us non-science types, it sounds like futuristic science fiction, but engineers, physicians and scientists at the University of California, San Diego believe such innovations will transform the medical world in the foreseeable future.
The university today announced the launch of the Institute of Engineering in Medicine, a research unit that will bring a diverse team of researchers together to collaborate on the next-generation of therapies, technologies and medicines.
Basically, the idea is to have scientists with varied expertise pool their knowledge so that creative ideas and research can be moved to the next phase -- cutting-edge clinical medicines and products that can be used at patients’ bedsides. A dean at the university’s School of Medicine said the effort would "expand the toolbox" for preventing, diagnosing and treating disease and injury.
Some collaborative projects are already underway at the university. Last week, for example, I wrote about the smart bomb, a customized nanoparticle -- a microscopic-sized unit made of tiny molecules strung in long, repeating chains -- that is engineered to recognize and hone in on spreading cancer. When the smart bomb reaches that target, it drops its drug load and kills it, while sparing healthy body parts.
University research teams have also identified cells that may be able to regenerate damaged or lost heart muscle in patients with various forms of heart disease. Minimally invasive devices are being developed to make scarless surgery a reality. Therapies that increase or reduce blood flow, depending on what is needed to treat a specific disease and ways to control the body’s responses to injury and disease are all under investigation.
It’s all very promising, but the formalized collaboration effort is still in its formative stage and there’s no way to predict how quickly new therapies will be ready to be used with real, live, human patients.
I’ll keep you posted on the research happening at the new institute.
-- DARRYN BENNETTWednesday, July 16 -- 7:41 am The November ballot remains incomplete as the San Diego City Council chose to either table or kill ballot propositions it was slated to consider today.
We already reported council postponing a decision on the pension reform proposal until the July 22 meeting.
Beyond that, Council voted 6-2 not to go forward with a measure that would increase salaries for the Mayor and Council members. And it postponed a proposal until next week's meeting involving lease revenue from Mission Bay Park.
First the salary issue. Two proposals were on the table. One, sponsored by councilmen Tony Young and Jim Madaffer, would have linked councilmember salaries to those earned by Superior Court judges. The other, sponsored by Councilwoman Donna Frye, offered far more modest salary increases. Read here for more details.
Council, it seems, chose to go with none of the above in large part due to the public furor that erupted the last time mayor and Council member pay was an issue.
Read here for more on the postponed Mission Bay lease revenue proposal.
Tuesday, July 15 -- 7:00 pm The San Diego Unified school board will address the Ethics Commission's findings against board member Luis Acle on Monday in a closed meeting, board President Katherine Nakamura said today.
She said the board would be briefed by its legal counsel, although it wasn't immediately clear what board action could come of the meeting. (In an editorial today, The San Diego Union-Tribune, a local newspaper, called on Acle to quit.)
Tuesday, July 15 -- 5:52 pm
As long as retired educators step aside from working in public schools for at least a year, they can come back to work and keep their pensions, with no approval or documentation needed from the California State Teachers' Retirement System.
Retired educators are ordinarily limited to earning roughly $28,000 on top of their retirement pay if they go back to work in California public schools. If they earn more, the teachers pension system whittles down how much they receive from their pension. Exceptions typically have to be approved by school districts and submitted to CalSTRS.
But if an educator retires and doesn't work in California public schools for a year, they can earn unlimited pay on top of their pension. That quirk in the law was supposed to end in January 2008, as we first reported in this story about educators who got a bonus to leave San Diego Unified and were later rehired. The CalSTRS spokeswoman recently informed me that the exemption has been extended to June 30, 2009.
Why does this matter? It means that it can be tough to track the full extent of the phenomenon we documented in this article -- educators getting the "golden handshake" bonus offered by San Diego Unified in 2003, then returning to work -- because retirees' return to public school employment doesn't need to be approved by the school board to keep their pensions intact. Most of the administrators we wrote about had to be approved by the school board to get exempted from the state post-retirement earnings limit -- and that's how we noticed them.
And it's worth noticing because employees who took the bonus, then came back, are a potential drain on the savings that San Diego Unified expected it would generate by replacing senior employees with lower-earning staffers.
Tuesday, July 15 -- 12:52 pm
I mentioned in a post last week that San Diego City Council will be considering the pension reform ballot proposal today.
That is no longer the case.
Mayor Jerry Sanders needs more time to negotiate with two of the three non-public safety unions affected by the reform plan. The Deputy City Attorneys Association signed on to the plan last week.
Both the Municipal Employees Association and Local 127, the blue-collar employees union, have denounced the proposed ballot measure, which is the result of a compromise between Sanders and City Council President Scott Peters.
Sanders will ask City Council to table the proposal until next Tuesday's meeting, according to Peters spokeswoman Pam Hardy.
Tuesday, July 15 -- 11:24 am
In a memo sent today to Mayor Jerry Sanders, SEDC board Chairman Artie M. "Chip" Owen writes that the entire SEDC board will meet on July 23 to discuss the issue of compensation of agency officials.
The memo is a response to an earlier memo sent by Sanders to Owen on Tuesday in response to our story on bonuses paid to SEDC officials. The memo asks Owen to respond to several questions regarding the compensation of top SEDC officials.
Owen also tells Sanders in today's memo that the agency is going to respond specifically to the mayor "within the timeframe" Sanders requested. That means the mayor should have a response by Friday.
Monday, July 14 -- 4:06 pm
This Just In Archives: Advanced Search
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Memo details bonuses and additional compensation of all employees.
Friday, July 18 -- 6:37 pm
'The culture of SEDC over the years has been to manipulate, cajole, ignore and intimidate the board into utter and complete silence.'
Friday, July 18 -- 5:32 pm
SEDC president resists the call for her to step down.
Friday, July 18 -- 5:08 pm
SURVIVAL IN SAN DIEGO
County jobless rate nears 6 percent.
Friday, July 18 -- 12:29 pm
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
San Diego Unified School District legal counsel Jose Gonzales must have been in a hurry to start his vacation.
Friday, July 18 -- 3:27 pm
CAFÉ SAN DIEGO
The risks inherent and unavoidable with these plans are manageable.
Friday, July 18 -- 12:46 pm
COMMENTARY: SLOP
Why resign when you can get paid $200,000-$300,000 for being fired?
Friday, July 18 -- 11:20 pm
COMMENTARY: RICH TOSCANO
Housing weakness spilled over into the rest of the economy in June.
Friday, July 18 -- 4:31 pm
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