"Less is more."
By Dick Gale, SDEA Executive Director

Rohe spoke these words, he was referring to 20th century architecture. He called his buildings "skin and bones" architecture as he sought to create free and open spaces, enclosed within a structural order with minimal presence. Mies believed in a rational approach that would guide the creative process of
architectural design.

How can we apply these architectural principles to the SDUSD? How can
a large urban school district adopt a rational approach to create a structural order with minimal presence? Part of the answer lies with the decentraliza-tion of authority and responsibility that have become strong characteristics of the District's leadership under Superintendent Carl Cohn.

Another part of the answer may lie with the work of the SDEA/SDUSD Joint Compensation Comparability Task Force, scheduled to begin its work soon. The charge to this task force, spelled out clearly as part of the recently ratified collective bargaining agreement, should be required reading for all SDEA bargaining unit members:

"The parties are committed to cultivating educational excellence and improving student performance. Achieving this goal requires a commitment to attract and retain the finest core of educational professionals possible. We have a shared belief that compensation comparability needs to be addressed in this competitive environment. To that end, the parties agree to form a task force whose charge is to assess and recommend options to improve compensation comparability for the SDEA bargaining unit. The task force is to use 20-year earnings compared to all districts in San Diego County as a standard. The task force recommendations can include reallocating current and new resources to bring the SDEA bargaining unit 20-year career earnings to at least the median within San Diego County. The recommenda-tions will stem from a broad based review of areas including, but not limited to, budget reprioritization, certificated allocations, class size, budget allotment formulas, salary schedule structure, and new sources of
revenue."

One of the first items SDEA will ask the task force to examine is the
ADA/FTE ratios of San Diego Unified compared to the other large urban
unified districts in California. As the graph on the next page clearly illustrates, SDUSD is staff-rich. For example, our ratio of staff to students is over 45% richer than Dr. Cohn's former school district, Long Beach Unified, and nearly 25% richer than the average for all big city districts in California.

Numbers alone don't necessarily tell the whole story. For example, the Teachers Association of Long Beach (TALB) does not represent many of the same student support staff, such as counselors and psychologists that SDEA represents. But, the fact that SDUSD's ADA/FTE ratio is comparable only to the bankrupt Oakland Unified is a major concern and demands further investigation.

It is the SDEA's intention to work with District administration to ask the hard questions and discover the real answers regarding our staff to student ratio. SDEA believes that, as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe theorized, that "less is more." One significant way to substantially improve the teachers' salary schedule is to have fewer staff overall.

Just to be clear, SDEA does not advocate layoffs or the reduction of any staff that is providing essential services directly to our students. But, in order to move our salary schedule to the median of San Diego County school districts, we do advocate taking a critical look at the bureaucratic layers of administration and teacher support staff that have become a reality in SDUSD.

The work of this task force will be demanding and the choices may be difficult. But, we hope the work will reflect the truth of another favorite saying of our German architect, "God is in the details." On this topic, there is more to come.