Sweetwater Union High School District Superintendent Edward Brand is now a candidate for national superintendent of the year.

Edward Brand

There are about 1,000 school districts in the state, and the American Association of School Administrators' California branch recognizes the leader of one of these districts annually. Earlier this year, another organization, the California League of High Schools, named Brand its first-ever superintendent of the year.

The honors put an industry seal of approval on Brand's eight-year tenure as leader of the nation's largest high school district.

"It's a verification that South County is on the map and the Sweetwater district in particular is doing good things for kids," Brand said.

Brand, 50, of Escondido has presided over Sweetwater schools during a time of rapid growth and new federal and state education laws that demand improved test scores.

Sweetwater trustee Bob Griego called Brand visionary and innovative.

Brand's boldest stroke may be the Compact for Success. Three years ago, Brand negotiated a deal with San Diego State University to guarantee admission to Sweetwater graduates who fulfill a list of academic requirements during their seventh-through-12th-grade years.

Not only has he paved the way for admissions, but his administration also has secured more than $2.5 million in scholarship money for the first Compact classes of 2006, 2007 and 2008.

The district's mariachi program has enrolled hundreds of students in music classes.

At Brand's recommendation, the board approved the district's first charter school three years ago, a school that specializes in teaching dropouts.

As leader of a district where 68 percent of the 38,000 students are Latino, Brand is chairman of a countywide committee of superintendents dedicated to eliminating the disparity between the academic performance of Latino students and that of higher-achieving whites. Representatives of nearly every school district in the county have signed a pact designed by the committee that calls for all students to pass the high school exit exam by 2006, when it becomes a prerequisite for receiving a diploma from a California public school.

Sweetwater schools have accrued individual honors. Teams from the district's high schools have won the county's academic decathlon for the past four years. The district has won 17 Golden Bell Awards from the California School Boards Association for innovative programs.

Newsweek named three Sweetwater schools among the top 4 percent of high schools nationwide based on Advanced Placement results. AP classes are college-level courses through which high school students can earn college credit if they pass an end-of-year exam.

"It's really an honor that goes to all the employees," Brand said of his superintendent of the year award. "I just get to be the recipient."

To repair the district's aging schools, the board at Brand's recommendation put a $187 million bond measure on the November 2000 ballot, and 72.4 percent of South County voters approved it.

Since then, critics, primarily in the Eastlake area, have complained that Brand and his administration have done an inadequate job of managing growth in the eastern part of the district. Even after the district opened two high schools and a middle school since summer 2002, the complaints continue that the district is not moving fast enough to keep up with the large number of families moving into the housing developments being constructed east of Interstate 805.

A grand jury report this spring faulted the district for not having completed more construction projects and for underestimating the costs of its proposed projects – a mistake that could mean not all projects get done.

An assistant principal openly disagreed with Brand on the district's decision to pick a class ring vendor that was not the lowest bidder and suggested that students might pay more for their rings as a result.

During particularly contentious labor contract negotiations in 2000, 94 percent of teachers who returned ballots gave Brand a vote of no confidence in a union-organized survey.

San Ysidro community members have criticized Brand for excluding their children from the Compact for Success. The Sweetwater district includes all of South County, from National City to San Ysidro. All of South County's public middle schools except for the one in San Ysidro are part of the Sweetwater district. Because San Ysidro's curriculum hasn't yet been aligned with that of other Sweetwater schools, it hasn't been allowed into the compact yet.

Brand has presided over an annual district education summit that this year drew 500 South County parents and community members to hear about the district's 22 middle and high schools. This year the district introduced polling machines that collected instant results in an on-the-spot survey of attendees.

The summit has been the occasion for the release of an annual report that measures district performance using 16 indicators. It is through these reports that some of the most impressive gains are documented.

The AP program has blossomed in recent years. The dropout rate has plummeted. Attendance is solid. There's been a surge in the percentage of students who graduate from Sweetwater schools having completed the courses necessary for admission to University of California and California State University schools.

Though there have been gains, Sweetwater has not altogether escaped the correlation between a high-poverty, high-minority, high-non-English-speaking enrollment and low test scores. Its lower-scoring high schools have some of the lowest state academic ratings in the county.