San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
UCLA STUDY FINDS SAN DIEGO SCHOOLS ARE LESS DIVERSE
Gentrification of neighborhoods has not helped to improve segregation of low-income students in the district
A recent study conducted by a team at UCLA found that segregation by income increased significantly in San Diego schools.
A new study shows how much — or rather, how little — progress has been made in reducing racial and income segregation in San Diego schools as several neighborhoods are gentrifying.
The study released by UCLA’S The Civil Rights Project this week looked at San Diego Unified district and independent charter elementary schools within the city proper over the course of nearly two decades, from the 2000-01 school year to 201819.
While gentrification is frequently criticized for changing neighborhoods’ character and displacing poor families and families of color, it can also potentially help schools in historically under-resourced areas become more racially and economically integrated and gain more resources, said Kfir Mordechay, education professor at Pepperdine University and one of the co-authors of the study.
But the study’s findings suggested that racial and socioeconomic diversity have not increased much at schools in San Diego.
“While the neighborhood characteristics have changed in the direction of becoming, one could say, more diverse, the school demographics just have not changed much,” Mordechay said. “The schools are much slower to change.”
Mordechay suggested that could mean gentrifying families are not sending their children to the neighborhood schools and instead are opting for private schools, or district-run choice schools or charters outside their neighborhood.
But Richard Barrera, a San Diego school board trustee who represents several gentrifying areas such as
North Park, Golden Hill and Barrio Logan, said he suspects it’s more so that people moving into such neighborhoods may not have any schoolage children to begin with.
New housing being built in San Diego has skewed heavily toward small and high-priced apartments aimed at adults without children, rather than larger homes geared toward families with children. The city has tried to spur construction of three-bedroom homes with developer incentives as part of a broad housing package the council rejected this week.
program to provide a rent subsidy for low-income older residents who are at imminent risk of becoming homeless.
Faulconer can point to a dip in the homeless population during his mayoral administration, according to the annual one-day count. But his stepped-up engagement in homelessness didn’t happen until a public health crisis struck — the 2016-18 hepatitis A outbreak that resulted in nearly 600 cases and left 20 people dead. Unsanitary conditions in homeless encampments were widely blamed.
Who wins that campaign argument between the county’s effort and Faulconer’s record will clearly have an upper hand in the race. Polls show homelessness is a top concern for voters, though most of the discussion and news coverage has focused on the city, where the bulk of the region’s homelessness is concentrated.
More generally, Faulconer is talking about public safety. A key indicator of which way the race might go is who — or whether — the Deputy Sheriff ’s Association of San Diego County decides to endorse. Conventional wisdom suggests the group would go with Faulconer, a Republican who had good relations with the San Diego Police Department and agreed to a sizable salary increase for its officers.
But the association is also an interest group and may take a pragmatic view about who it might be dealing with as supervisor.
But the candidates’ records and positions on homelessness, or any other issue, may not be as determinative as hard political dynamics — which includes Donald Trump. And right now, that’s about Faulconer.
In the recent special election for an open supervisorial seat, San Diego City Councilmember Monica Montgomery Steppe easily defeated Amy Reichert in a heavily Democratic district. The Montgomery Steppe
Kevin Faulconer
Terra Lawsonremer
camp hammered Reichert for opposing abortion, and tied her to Trump and other national conservatives.
Faulconer, who unlike Reichert has a moderate profile, would seemingly be insulated from attacks on abortion because he supports abortion rights. Further, he almost certainly will have the kind of resources to compete that Reichert didn’t.
But the other partisan tactics are certain to come into play.
Lawson-remer’s District 3 stretches along the county coast from just north of Imperial Beach to Carlsbad. Because of reapportionment, it’s a somewhat different district than Lawsonremer was elected to in 2020.
The district is strongly Democratic, but less so than the other two districts held by Democrats.
Yet District 3 has shed more conservative inland communities — a benefit to Lawson-remer. Still, Faulconer has previously won City Council and mayoral elections within portions of the district. Arguably, he could be the betterknown candidate.
Republicans in local elections generally have not fared well along the San Diego County coast, especially in presidential election years. Part of the negative Trump effect on the GOP was coastal Republicans turning to vote for Democrats in greater numbers than Republicans elsewhere.
Lawson-remer’s push for gun-safety measures and a crackdown on pregnancy crisis centers she says are misleading women certainly appeal to Democratic voters. But they’ll be plenty motivated anyway if Trump is on the ballot.
People in the Faulconer camp have talked vaguely
about a private poll that shows him doing well in the district, but the full survey has never surfaced publicly.
His results in the district when he ran for governor were not encouraging, however.
During the 2021 recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom, Faulconer ran as a replacement candidate. Newsom crushed the recall, and there was much made of Faulconer receiving a mere 8 percent of the statewide vote and finishing a distant third. Lesser known is that in District 3 he received only 12 percent of the vote.
Perhaps more significant for this race is Faulconer’s about-face on Trump. Faulconer received national attention as mayor in 2016 when he refused to endorse Trump. In 2019, he visited Trump in the Oval Office and a photo of the two went viral. Labor and Democratic organizations backing Lawson-remer will make sure that photo is in circulation next year.
In 2020, Faulconer acknowledged voting for Trump. Now he’s running in a district where President Joe Biden defeated Trump by 30 points.
There has been a fair amount of discussion about local elections becoming