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New S.F. schools chief begins unenviable job
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Carlos Garcia is sworn in as the new San Francisco schools superintendent by Mayor Gavin Newsom in a ceremony at City Hall on Monday.
SAN FRANCISCO (Map, News) - Sandwiched between two inductions — one official, one for public display — San Francisco’s new schools superintendent, Carlos Garcia, spent his first day on the job meeting hundreds of people.
In the next few weeks, he said, he plans to set goals, outline priorities and work with the school board and district staff.
“People don’t care what you do in your office,” Garcia said after Mayor Gavin Newsom swore him in before a crowd of people at City Hall. “One commitment I give to San Francisco is, in all my decisions, the children will always come first.”
A teaching veteran, Garcia signed a three-year contract with the San Francisco Unified School District last month that includes a $255,000 annual salary, a $30,000 signing bonus and other perks, including stipends for a home and vehicle.
Garcia, who is from Los Angeles and was principal of San Francisco’s Horace Mann Middle School from 1988 to 1991, officially took over for interim Superintendent Gwen Chan on Monday.
In a school district facing some difficult and often acrimonious issues, Garcia realizes he has a lot to learn: School assignment, declining enrollment, teacher-contract negotiations and an achievement gap are all weighing heavily on the cash-strapped district, which passed a $362 million budget for 2007-08 last month.
Garcia said his first priority will be to close the achievement gap between San Francisco’s white and Asian students and those who are African-American and Hispanic — populations Newsom said The City has failed.
At an all-day retreat Saturday, Garcia and the seven board members plan to review the district’s mission and policies, decide how to work together, and set a handful of goals and priorities.
The board did not have a retreat with former Superintendent Arlene Ackerman until three years into her tenure.
“That put everybody at a disadvantage,” board President Mark Sanchez said.
One of the biggest issues facing the district deals with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision regarding race and school assignment.
The court voted 5-4 to restrict using race to integrate schools, except under special circumstances involving individual students.
San Francisco has not used race to integrate schools since the mid-1990s. For the last two years, however, the district has been reviewing whether it should bring race back into the equation. District General Counsel Miguel Marquez said talks would resume in the new school year.
On Monday, Garcia said he was disappointed with the ruling.
“It’s a ruling that is not up to date in this modern-day society,” he said, adding that the district is “waiting for the smoke to clear” before making any decisions on its own policy.
Will Carlos Garcia help turn The City’s schools around?
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Comments from Examiner Readers
8:25 PM MST on Thu., Jul. 19, 2007 re: "S.F. City Hall, new schools chief off to good start"
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5:41 PM MST on Tue., Jul. 17, 2007
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2:52 PM MST on Tue., Jul. 17, 2007
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2:31 PM MST on Tue., Jul. 17, 2007
re: "School board hires new supe, Ackerman drops suit"
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2:18 PM MST on Tue., Jul. 17, 2007
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12:28 PM MST on Tue., Jul. 17, 2007
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12:28 PM MST on Tue., Jul. 17, 2007
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7:22 PM MST on Wed., Jun. 13, 2007
re: "School board hires new supe, Ackerman drops suit"
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5:56 PM MST on Wed., Jun. 13, 2007
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bruzlee said:
if he going to be like the last one, what's her name, Hackerman? trying to stay until she's retired. this was what's she was after. a school board should be local, someone who's educated here. not someone from kentucky.
161 agree | 181 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
In the end, parents have a much bigger impact on their children's education than schools. Parents who let their children go out on school nights are guaranteeing their children's failure in school. Make them stay at home, and sit with them while they do homework - that will virtually guarantee success. Too many schools, too many administrators, too much money spent on busing. Cut the fat, and push the additional money to bring resources to southeast and other underperforming schools. Years ago, the school board kicked the Boy Scouts out of the schools. They promised a replacement program - none exists today. They kicked out ROTC, without any replacement program. In both cases, they chose the interests of adults over children. That tells you where the interest of the board lies.
167 agree | 161 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
With the Board's political agenda and the teachers union's full-employment agenda, the new guy will have little chance of bringing quality to the schools. He needs to close schools, weed out ineffective employees, cut the administrators, and emphasize academic basics. All "English Learners" should be in English immersion. Nothing holds immigrants back more than their inability to speak English.
173 agree | 171 disagree
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skeptical reader and good speller said:
To equate the dissolution of the ROTC program with racism (sceptical reader - sceptic is right!) is absurd. Others would argue that a military program that targets minorities as more expendable in war time is racist, they are the right ones.
148 agree | 176 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
- He left Horace Mann years ago and it was performing just fine when he left. - Gwen Chan doesn't want the job. I can't imagine why not. - The Superintendent is an administrator. The Board of Education sets policy. Keep that in mind when you are deciding who to criticize. I wish him the best of luck with this District. And why not? Why anticipate failure? If you want our most vulnerable students to succeed, you should hope that a new Superintendent can help them.
173 agree | 134 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
so what did he accomplish at horace mann? it is now one of the lowest performing schools in the district.. guess tht doesn't matter since ackermann left the DC schools in disarray (they still are) and got a better job here (made off like a bandit here too!!!) history repeats itself, all over again, and again, and again
159 agree | 213 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
so what did he accomplish at horace mann? it is now one of the lowest performing schools in the district.. guess tht doesn't matter since ackermann left the DC schools in disarray (they still are) and got a better job here (made off like a bandit here too!!!) history repeats itself, all over again, and again, and again
162 agree | 139 disagree
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Examiner Reader said:
uhh.... that's a lot of money.... i say keep Gwen Chan, she's doing a fantastic job! the one thing the school district needs to clean up is the fact that students still need to travel across the city to attend school rather than attend local schools. that needs to be fixed, JROTC is a good program but we have more important things to fix and that is getting students to the school districts they belong to. If people consider it racist because asians would be attending Lincoln and Lowell and Latinos - mission then i think there needs to be a change in how students get accepted into schools.
213 agree | 173 disagree
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Sceptical reader said:
I give the new superintendent 2 years before he bails out. This school board is more interested in forwarding their political agenda than they are in educating students. At some point in time those interests will clash, and they will throw more kids under the bus, as they have repeatedly done, most recently by eliminating ROTC, a proven, successful program (with nothing to replace it). I don't agree with the US military policy on gays, but the school board ignored their responsibility to students inn order to make political points with the most powerful political group in SF, one that happens to be predominatly White and Male. Denying these predominately minority children the right to hear what ROTC has to say smacks of racism.
195 agree | 179 disagree
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