How to Defuse Partisanship : Pete Wilson’s appointment of DiMarco as education aide certainly helps

Before he was elected governor, Pete Wilson talked a lot about change. But there weren’t many signs of change in his recent appointments of two men who were holdovers from the George Deukmejian Administration.

But in the selection of Maureen DiMarco as his top education adviser, Wilson has given the first strong signal that he indeed wants to renew a relationship with educators for the benefit of California’s children.

DiMarco, a member of the Garden Grove school board and a past president of the California School Boards Assn., will be the state’s first secretary for child development and education, a newly created cabinet-level post. She is a solid and popular choice.

DiMarco is a Democrat who has been allied with State School Supt. Bill Honig, a harsh Deukmejian critic. By appointing DiMarco, Wilson has moved to erase the partisan line in the sand that had been drawn so deeply by Deukmejian and the Legislature. That bitter division kept many crucial education and child-care issues mired in petty who-shot-John disputes. As the state legislative session ended in September, DiMarco, who was there to fight for more education funds, complained that a long history of mistrust between educators and the governor’s office had deteriorated the relationship so much that the two sides were barely civil. “There were times when saying ‘good morning’ seemed to hurt somebody’s feelings,” she said.

By combining DiMarco’s education duties with child development, Wilson shows that he sees the importance of integrating child-related services. “What I see happening to children before they reach the schoolhouse door is scaring the daylights out of me,” DiMarco said recently. “We can’t fix drug abuse and teen pregnancies by putting out a better textbook.”

It’s great that DiMarco recognizes the difficulties that are facing California public education. She’ll need a great deal of support and luck to tackle them.