CANDIDATES DIFFER ON EDUCATION REFORM
Some in 79th support school choice and charter options, while others argue for shoring up public schools
In the eyes of San Diego state Assembly candidate Shane Parmely, a public school teacher, charter schools are a drain on the education system, siphoning dollars from neighborhood schools.
To some of her opponents — including fellow Democrat Aeiramique Glass and Republican Marco Contreras — charter schools represent educational options, and choice is important to student success.
While some campaign issues split clearly along party lines, school reform and charter schools don’t. The five 79th Assembly District candidates’ views on schools and education policy reveal sharply differing opinions.
In addition to Parmely, Glass and Contreras, also running are Democrats Leticia Munguia, a community and labor organizer, and Akilah Weber, an obstetrician/ gynecologist and La Mesa councilwoman who is former Assemblywoman Shirley Weber’s daughter.
The 79th Assembly District seat is open because Shirley Weber was appointed California secretary of state. The race will be decided in a special election this spring, although early and mail-in voting has begun.
Glass, a restorative justice consultant and community activist, said she attended public, private and charter schools at various periods of her education. Describing herself as an unconventional, hands-on learner, she said she benefitted from the ability to switch schools according to her needs.
“Equity is giving people what they need,” she said in an interview with the San Diego Union Tribune. “And equality is giving everyone the same thing. Studies show that students learn differently.”
She said schools also can reinforce racial bias, resulting in unfair allocation of resources and the application of discipline. That observation was confirmed in a recent study by San Diego State University professors, which found that Black boys in kindergarten through third grade were more than five times as likely as their peers to be suspended.
“Multiple studies show that students of color are suspended and expelled at a higher rate than their peers, and how those expulsions contribute to the school to prison pipeline,” she said, adding that educational disparities also are common for other groups, including students with Individualized Education Programs, “students who learn differently, students who test differently.”
Despite differences on other political issues, Glass and Contreras, a local businessman and the only Republican in the field, share similar views on educational choice.
Providing educational options also was a priority for Shirley Weber, a former San Diego Unified School District board member and professor at San Diego State University.
“I would support her work on school choice,” Contreras said when asked which part of Weber’s record he most respected. “That is actually very personal to me. I grew up in a not very privileged area in Ti
juana .... My mom had a dream for me, and that was for me to attend a private school.”
As a teen Contreras crossed the border daily to attend Marian Catholic High School in San Diego, which later led him to study economics and play football at the University of San Diego.
Parmely, a teacher at Bell Middle School in Paradise Hills and the National Education Association boardmember for San Diego County, said she supports alternatives in education as a concept. But she thinks charter schools tip the scales toward private education companies, undermining the public school system.
“The voucher movement was going along in California and it failed,” she said. “When it failed, it pivoted into to charter school industry, because that was a way you can make money.”
Although many charter schools are nonprofits, critics note that some of their owners and administrators command high pay and they’re often run by for-profit companies.
Parmely said charter schools sometimes burnish their academic records by selectively admitting highperforming students and discouraging those who need more help.
When neighborhood schools convert to charters, she added, students enrolled in their assigned public schools must travel farther to attend.
Parmely also took aim at standardized testing, saying it shifts school money away from classrooms and toward the private companies that produce testing materials. The tests provide little valuable information about student outcomes, she argued, adding that she opts her own two children out of standardized tests.
“The emphasis has ended up being on raising test scores, to the point where all of the opportunity that public education is supposed to provide — like field trips and art and all of these electives, the things that make school fun — have been stripped out of the (low-testing) schools in an effort to raise test scores,” Parmely said.
Munguia, who said she was proud of her own K-12 public education, agreed with that assessment. She argued that other educational initiatives, such as the
“No Child Left Behind Act,” signed by George W. Bush, focused instruction on test scores, to the exclusion of children’s individual academic progress.
“No Child Left Behind and other education platforms were incentivizing and creating methods to teach to a test,” she said. “They were not focusing on basics of reading, writing, being able to have analytical processes, being able to communicate.”
Munguia said she supported California’s Local Control Funding Formula, enacted in 2013 under Gov. Jerry Brown. That law altered state funding allocations to allow each school district more discretion in spending education dollars where they are needed most, instead of providing pots of money designated for specific purposes.
“California took a step in the right direction in implementing the LCFF,” she said.
Akilah Weber said she supports the concept behind the Local Control Funding Formula, but she believes there should be greater oversight into how schools spend the money and more rigorous data on whether some spending decisions, such as to reduce class size, deliver better results for students.
“The theory is great, however I believe there needs to be oversight and accountability, to make sure more funds are going to the areas and students who need it,” she said.
“We need to make sure the things that are implemented are working. From a scientific standpoint this is what we do. We look at the data. If it’s working, great. If not, we need to switch it up.”
Contreras issued a similar call for evaluating educational outcomes, but he suggested approaching schools from a business perspective, focusing on measurable achievements such as graduation rates, test scores, parent involvement and extracurricular activities.
“We have to look at the whole system and have a comprehensive analysis,” he said. “If we look at education as a business organization, we would have to say, how can we rate our production?”
Election Day for the primary is April 6, and the top two vote-getters will have a run-off election on June 8 if no one secures a majority of the vote.