No to Multi-Track

This letter is in reference to your recent editorial (“Multi-Track Schools Make Fiscal Sense,” Feb. 11) giving unqualified support to continued and expanded use of the multi-track system in the San Diego Unified School District. Your support is unwarranted.

Even proponents of the multi-track system claim no educational values for it. It is simply and purely a quick fix to meet overcrowded conditions in a stop-gap manner, and as such bears no relationship to improving our current educational standards--much less providing real quality education.

Multi-track (usually as many as four tracks running out of the same school) presents many logistic and administrative problems for teachers, parents and students. A recent study group in the San Diego High School Attendance area stated in a report to the school board, “although it does provide more facility space, the stress placed on the staff, students and facility are detrimental to the educational program. . . . The constant movement of flex teachers and children, the 12-month clerical and administrative assignments, coupled with difficulty in scheduling all activities so that there is total school involvement, makes this, at best, a short-term solution.”

The multi-track system presents many problems for families with children on different tracks and often requires rearrangement of work schedules for parents, and difficulty or even inability to find day care or after-school activities.

Some special programs are harmed by the multi-track system. The school board recently removed one school from multi-track because its announced specialty, music, could not be organized around a multi-track system when a full orchestra could not be assembled at any one time! Other examples are available where the program may be actually harmed or rendered ineffective under this system.

The multi-track system has generally been applied in a discriminatory manner. Of the 19 elementary schools on multi-track in the San Diego Unified School District, all but two are south of Interstate 8 in older, impacted and minority neighborhoods. In the main, the families with the least resources to adapt to the multi-track system have been the ones to bear the brunt of it.

Widespread use of the multi-track system is yet another reason why families who can abandon the public schools do. The San Diego district is now more than 60% minority. Further abandonment of the school system will lead to two school systems, separate and very unequal.

Of course, school facilities need to be used to their fullest to make the best use of public dollars. However, there are many needs that are not being met for children that could be addressed with recreation programs, day care, before- and after-school care, health programs and community functions in the public schools. Most public schools are gated and locked before 3 p.m. every day, while the numbers of latchkey children continue to grow.

Lastly, it should be noted that multi-tracking is not free and in fact adds about $120,000 annually to the operating budget of any school on the program.

If the multi-track system is to have any educational value at all, the San Diego Unified School District should be offering parents and students something for their inconvenience. How about reducing classroom size by 30% in multi-track schools? Then at least multi-tracking could be called part of the overall education program instead of what it is: clumsy first aid for our overcrowded schools in place of real improvements and quality education.

KARSTEN GJEMRE, Coordinator

Mid-City Schools Committee

San Diego