Proceedings -- September 3

Pat Crowell presided and moderated a panel discussion on �A Street Level View of Challenges in Education.� Crowell identified the goal of the session: to Explore solutions and generate ideas that Rotarian leaders can carry back to their districts and have impact on education.

Paula Cordeiro, Dean of the College of Education at the University of San Diego, was the first presenter. She began with the assertion: �The key to improving education is: �joint ventures�not monopolies.� She described three trends, listed the biggest challenges, and suggested how each of us can help with the challenges to public education.

Trend 1: The privatization of schools that is taking place�charter schools, vouchers, private for-profit schooling, and the outsourcing of schooling.

Trend 2: The growth in partnerships between schools and businesses, non-profits, and agencies.

Trend 3: The growth of the idea that education is no longer a monopoly of the schools.

1. Inequities in funding. Educational opportunity varies greatly because of funding discrepancies at the state, city, district, and school levels.

2. Demographic changes. Increasingly schools must deal with student language differences and differences in family situations of the students.

3. The 3 �Rs� are no longer sufficient. Students must learn at a minimum skills in literacy, numeracy, science, technology, and the skills and values that enable them to be effective participants in society.

Larry Rosenstock, Principal of High Tech High (San Diego), a Charter School, spoke next. Rosenstock came to San Diego from Hartford, Connecticut where he was instrumental in establishing an internship program that was highly effective.

Rosenstock quoted Jefferson�s definition of the purpose of education: �To create a community.� �We must,� he said, �get people engaged in the work of schools and communities� if education is to succeed.

�The idea for the internship program was �born in Hartford of a meeting with a Rotary club that wanted to know how it could help.� He discussed the internships Hartford schools set up with Polaroid and with Hartford Real Estate. These well-structured programs, he said, had a completion rate of 99% among the high school-age students and 85% of the students who completed the program went on to college.

When students were asked what it was about the intern program that made them succeed, the overwhelming response was: �because I had access to an adult milieu where I am treated with respect.�

Rosenstock suggested, for the consideration of Rotary, that internships are an effective way to get people involved in education that succeeds with students. He urged Rotarians to help get people involved in education because of its importance to every one of us and to society. At the grammar school level, the goal of education is immersion, but at the high school level it is to get the students involved with adults and the world of work. The purpose of education, he said, quoting John Dewey, �is to transform society�not replicate society.�

Allan Birsin, San Diego Superintendent of Schools, was the final presenter. Birsin, whose district serves more than 140,000 students, called for the public and the schools to �bond together and get the most good for public education.� He said �getting involved� was the most critical aspect in making education better. He cited the passage of bonds in San Diego by a margin of 78.4% last year as an example of what can happen when the public gets involved. As another example, he cited �San Diego Reads,� a community-wide literacy campaign to place books in classrooms and recruit, train and place literacy volunteers. �What Rotary can do is get involved,� he said. �Your involvement counts intellectually and monetarily. Don�t let others monopolize education. Involvement counts, knowledge counts.�

Most of the questions related to how Rotary and Rotary clubs can �partner� with schools. Some suggestions from the panel:

1. Check with your school district office. Many have a partnership group already in place. Invite the Superintendent to a Rotary club meeting to talk about �partnerships with education.�

2. Rotary can help provide positive spirit through supporting arts and sports programs.

3. Continue and enlarge the ways in which you mentor at schools: �read to me� programs, literacy conferences, career/job fairs.

Stimulated by the presentation of the panel, Rotarians spent the next hour discussing specific ways Rotary clubs and districts can help improve our educational system. The discussion leaders included: Cliff Dochterman, Paul Sandas, Mike Kutsuris, Bill Nystrom, Jerry Barden, Martin Peters, Jim Mealey, Grant Wilkins, Ken Bose, and Charlie Cole. At the end of each session, participants �voted� for the most important three ideas suggested. The ideas receiving the most support are summarized elsewhere in this report (see Plenary Session 6, Sunday, September 6). Because they may serve as a stimulus to action, and to show the volume and variety of the ideas generated, a number of them, in no special order of popularity, are listed below:

3. Consolidate the information and communicate it to all clubs in the Zone, using Interact clubs and web sites.

b. Involve current Rotarians who are school superintendents, community leaders, etc.

5. Rotary clubs partner with other clubs in geographical areas to assist in addressing the economic and cultural conditions that underlie problems and weaknesses in the schools.

6. Emulate successful programs such as �Caring about Kids� (a mentoring training program for Rotarians) in Auburn, CA.

7. Create and sponsor ongoing forums with local school board candidates and members.

10. Support athletic programs as a means of teaching discipline, self-sacrifice, and good citizenship.

12. Recognize students who excel in one area such as science, math and honor teachers who are outstanding.

13. Be involved directly with schools and students; for example: the �Kids Vote� program in Hawaii.

14. Provide scholarships to community colleges, not just four-year colleges and universities.

16. Give a quality dictionary to every third grader as one Northern California district did.

17. Study funding internships/apprenticeships in lieu of funding of so many ambassadorial scholarships.

18. Recognize the demographic realities and reach out to Latino�s through membership in ethic associations, recruit members of ethnic groups for membership in Rotary.

19. Encourage Interact and Rotaract clubs to seek more members from ethnic groups.

(A note about head tables: The institute committee decided to not have head tables at any of the meal sessions except the opening dinner, featuring RI President Carlo Ravizza. This helped keep the institute on schedule by reducing the number of introductions. It also promoted a feeling of unity and equality among the leaders of Rotary. --Larry Kavanaugh, ed.)

Institute General Chair Ron Beaubien presided and introduced the speaker: Peter Preuss, a University of California Regent. Preuss�s speech was entitled: �Exciting Opportunities in Education Today.� He began with two questions: �Is fixing education worth our while?� and �Should we get involved and if so, how can we get involved?� A paraphrase of his remarks:

P Higher education in California is the best in the world but our primary and secondary schools are at the very bottom in terms of funding and achievement and American schools rank poorly worldwide.

P We are not educating enough doctors and engineers. We must import these skilled people because our schools do not meet our needs.

P We are not doing a good job of �harvesting� the talent we have. We need a better stream of students coming to the university and higher education.

So, why am I so optimistic about education in this country? Because this is America. What better place in the world to improve education than here in a country where we can realize ideas?

P We have to decide what we want, we have to decide what it costs, and we have to decide how to get it.

P There are lots of less privileged people in our state and in our country and we have to make sure they are served.

An example of an idea we think will work is the first charter college-prep school for underprivileged kids that will open next week on the University of California, San Diego campus. The idea was originally voted down the by the Academic Senate of the university, but the persistence of a citizen�s committee reversed this decision. Preuss and the committee started a fundraising campaign to raise $40 million to build the physical plant for the school. Preuss�s group got big donations from the most conservative and the most liberal among the local philanthropists. The school will start with 150 students. Undergraduate students from the university will serve as tutors. In order to be accepted to the school, prospects must demonstrate both hardship and motivation. President Clinton supports the concept and hopes the model for such schools will spread across the country. This is how education can be improved:

We must �pour oil on fires� of imagination and commitment. What better place than America to do it? Good education is also good business, and good education is good for everybody. All we need is imagination, innovation, and action to make it happen.

Special Presentation: As a tribute to Director Sam Greene�s partner, Caki, attendees brought children�s books to the lunch. The books, in both English and Spanish, will be distributed under the direction of Caki, a school librarian, in San Diego-area schools and in Tijuana schools.

Keith Dindinger presided over a session that featured a speech by former U. S. Teacher of the Year Sandy McBrayer followed by a panel discussion on �A Street Level View of Problems Facing Youth.�

McBrayer agreed with Peter Pruess's assertion that our job was to �pour oil on the fires of imagination and commitment.� She told of her background in working with underprivileged kids, gang members, and incarcerated youth and of being honored for her work in San Diego and in Washington, D. C. She started the first successful school in the United States for homeless and unattended youth. She began her teaching career with at-risk youth in Juvenile Hall and in Alternative educational programs. She is now the Director of �The Children�s Initiative,� an organization dedicated to strengthening children and families through community program. �Like Gandhi,� she said, �each of us must believe: �My life is my message.�� We must ask ourselves: �What are we willing to stand up for? What do we sit through?�� In my work with homeless and incarcerated kids, I tried to see through their eyes and act with my heart, she said. �In dealing with adults about how to help, I too often heard silence. We must act, speak, and vote, she said, �We must do right�that�s what makes a difference.� �All children have a right to grow,� she said. �What we can do is look around us and see what we can do each and every day�that�s what we can do.�

Jerry Sanders, former Chief of Police in San Diego and now CEO of the United Way of San Diego, told us people are afraid of kids. �For what we see in kids today, we need to look to the home.� We are not communicating with them and we�re not spending time with them, � he said. We are focusing on the wrong things in our relationships with our kids. We need to stop assuming that the criminal justice system is the way to control them. The media is molding our young people, he said. �What they see is not reality, but it is believed.� We need a real environment with values such as Scouts or team sports) for our young people. We need to spend time talking and interacting with them. We need afterschool programs where kids can relate with adults and we need safe environments for kids. �It is an issue of time and care on the part of adults,� he said.

James Milikin, the presiding judge of the Juvenile Division, San Diego Superior Court, was the next panelist. He is an advocate of new approaches to juvenile reforms and involving parents in the process. He discussed what the courts have learned about kid offenders. �In examining the juvenile court system,� he said, �we found that most of the kids on probation were not being supervised after school.� The court had rules, he said, but did not enforce them. New programs are addressing the need to provide mentoring, caring, literacy training, and supervision. The results are positive�a decline of 60% in repeat offenders. �We need,� he said, �volunteers, like Rotarians, who can be role models and who will take time to care about kids.� More than 250,000 people are in prison out of a population of 30 million, Milikin told us. �Clearly incarceration is not the solution,� he said. �We need to get young offenders into treatment programs, provide supervision for them, and teach them the consequences of their actions.�

The Reverend George Walker Smith spoke next. Smith has served as the President of the National School Boards Association and participated in the White House Conference on Children and Youth. A former long-time member of the San Diego Unified School District Board, Smith works with disadvantaged youth in the San Diego area. The Reverend also is a Paul Harris, an honor he received from the LaJolla Golden Triangle Rotary Club of District 5340. He made the following points:

P The reason young people belong to gangs is because it is the only place they get a sense of identity and direction�a feeling of family.

P If kids get into trouble we should set them straight and guide them�not �ban them for life.�

P Instead of just criticizing our educational system, we need to work with them as our panelists urged this morning.

�Kids in trouble need a hand up, not a hand out,� he said, in urging us to get involved.

Cleophus Harris, a former gang member and former incarcerated youth who now works with gang members, was the final speaker. Cleophus told how he had been given a �second chance� because of the court system. He attended court school where he earned his GSE certificate and a high school diploma. He later attended San Diego City College. �Education takes away the tunnel vision,� he said. �Young people don�t know how to process hurt,� he said, �and hurt and pain grow into anger and anger into violent behavior.� We need to help young people know there is something good beyond the pain,� he said. �Young men in trouble especially need men to show them how to be men and then good citizens.�

Moderator Keith Dindinger led a discussion on �What Rotary and Rotarians can do to address the problems facing youth.� Questions and responses from the audience and panel yielded the following suggestions:

P Provide employment opportunities and internships so young people can learn interaction with adults and the gratification of being paid for their services.

P Never call people �disadvantaged.� Give �em a feeling of belonging and self worth.

P Provide mentoring programs. Recruit and sponsor mentor training through your local probation department or involve your own club members in mentoring programs coordinated through the courts.

P Adopt a school or a class. Give talks to classes on success in the world of work.

P Help youth learn how you go about �getting into� your business or profession.

A visit to the zoo, where, perchance, the animals were asking:

�Are we our keeper�s brothers?

By Harry Gnucastle

A splendidly organized trip to the world-famous San Diego Zoo brought a fitting end to a full day of Rotary pondering, head-scratching, learning and fellowship on Friday. Not so fresh from the meetings, Rotarians were herded onto buses. Rotaract club members served as hosts and tour guides. The scene of the recent birth of a finger-sized baby Panda, the zoo had other news: A baby hippo, delivered a bit underweight at 100 pounds, could be observed swimming at Mom�s side. Giraffes, the fitting symbol of the San Diego Zone Institute, blandly observed tourists who stretched their necks for a better view. The monkeys watched, bemused, as the people who stared at them bounced around, grinned and pointed strange whirring boxes at them and each other. Rotarians and their guests also were able to see from their tram seats a variety of critters, including lions and other hairy and ferocious beasts. Many zoo visitors watched the feeding of the animals and marveled at the speed and manner in which they devoured their provisions. The tour ended soon after for many as they rapidly made their way to one of the restaurants nearby.