From http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20050521-9999-1m21brand.html

Edward Brand says goodbye to Sweetwater

After 10 years as superintendent of South County high school district . . .

By Chris Moran
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

May 21, 2005

CHULA VISTA – South County schools would have changed with or without Edward M. Brand.

It was not the superintendent, after all, who built the subdivisions in Otay Ranch and Eastlake that swelled Chula Vista and made Sweetwater Union High School District the largest secondary school district in the nation.

South County grew, and so did its collective aspirations. Newcomers buying half-million-dollar homes wanted top-notch schools in their neighborhoods. As the importance of a college degree became more evident, families demanded better college preparation in their high schools.

Meanwhile, state and federal law set up sanctions for schools that didn't improve the learning of students from groups that Sweetwater schools were filled with – Latinos, non-English-speaking students and children from low-income families.

In an era of change for South County, Brand ushered in even more. He led Sweetwater through a decade of rising expectations by having four schools built and 20 renovated or in line for repairs. He answered the community's higher-education aspirations by founding the Compact for Success, which guarantees admission to San Diego State University for Sweetwater graduates who take the proper preparatory courses and earn at least a B average.

"What he's done is create an atmosphere of possibility," said Larry Perondi, an assistant Sweetwater superintendent.

But like a pharaoh who orders construction of a pyramid that won't be completed in his lifetime, Brand won't be around to witness the fruition or failure of his grand design. He starts a job as superintendent of the San Marcos Unified School District in July, years before the school-building program is completed and the seventh-through 11th-graders that he has such big plans for come of college age.

Compact for Success

Brand took over when the district needed to change.

Sweetwater reported in 1995 that only one in five graduates completed college-preparatory requirements, compared with more than a third throughout San Diego County.

Brand made college preparation the focus of the curriculum. South County schools increased Advanced Placement offerings – courses for which students could get college credit if they passed a standardized exam – and students flocked to them.

The AP spike got several Sweetwater schools mentioned on a 2003 Newsweek list of the nation's top high schools.

Sweetwater High School in National City and Southwest High School in San Diego's Nestor neighborhood have recorded the greatest state academic ratings gains of all high schools in the county since the state started ranking schools based on test scores six years ago.

At the same time, the percentage of students who are completing college-preparatory courses, while up from a decade ago, has declined in the past five years. Nine schools are on a federal watch list that calls for rapid improvement in test scores or sanctions that could include replacing the staff or handing over campus management to a private company.

The Compact for Success is Brand's signature achievement.

Brand connected a district with low rates of college enrollment among its 70 percent Latino student body with a university looking for ways to reach out to minority applicants after the state's voters banned racial preferences in college admissions. He did so by brokering a deal with San Diego State President Stephen Weber that theoretically could lead to having South County students constitute four out of five undergraduates at the university.

The compact includes San Diego State campus visits for seventh-graders and more algebra for eighth-graders. High school students are pushed into college-preparatory courses. New senior-year courses prepare students to pass exams that determine whether students need remedial, non-credit courses at San Diego State.

Celina Cordero said she has talked about the compact repeatedly with her 11th-grade daughter at Chula Vista High and her eighth-grade son at Chula Vista Middle School about getting the college degrees their parents didn't.

"They are more aware of what needs to be done," Cordero said. "They are more aware of what colleges are expecting."

About 29 percent of Sweetwater 11th-graders are on track to become compact students at San Diego State.

"I'm not satisfied with where we are," Brand said. "I am extremely hopeful that we've got a good head start with a lot of momentum on making a difference."

Dramatic beginning

Brand's ascension to superintendent came after his two predecessors – Anthony Trujillo and John Rindone – were fired during the previous four years.

Rindone directly supervised principals until his dismissal in 1995.

His father, "Papa Joe" Rindone, had a similar hands-on approach as Sweetwater superintendent from 1956 to 1976. He is said to have flown over South County in a helicopter looking for land for future schools.

Brand spent less time visiting schools and talking directly with principals, leaving that to assistant superintendents while he worked on districtwide issues.

During much of Brand's first year, he worked in the shadow of Rindone, who sued for wrongful termination and backed a recall campaign against the three trustees who ousted him.

The trustees survived the recall election, the lawsuit was settled for $185,000 and Brand began to make the hires that would make Sweetwater his district. Brand told the school board in March that 42 percent of Sweetwater's administrative team is Latino, compared with 17 percent at San Diego city schools, for example.

As the leader of a district with 41,000 seventh-through 12th-graders (as well as 40,000 adult students) and more than 5,700 employees, Brand has had detractors throughout his tenure.

New homeowners in eastern Chula Vista felt betrayed to find that Eastlake High School had 3,200 students and not enough desks at the beginning of the 2003-04 school year. San Ysidro residents were disappointed the community that could perhaps benefit most from a guaranteed admission deal with San Diego State was excluded from it until this year. Teachers angry about protracted contract negotiations delivered a 94 percent vote of no confidence in Brand five years ago.

In November, elections shifted the makeup of the Sweetwater school board, and its members started to resist the details of Brand's recommendations if not his larger plans. Though they would later reverse course, in March board members who support the compact nonetheless rejected Brand's request to send $105,000 to San Diego State to run a compact office.

Brand's most notable accolades come from outside the district. He's been named state superintendent of the year by three organizations, the state school boards association has heaped awards for innovation on Sweetwater, and the county superintendent of schools chose him to lead a countywide effort to help Latinos and blacks catch up with whites and Asians in passing rates on a critical math exam.

The early acclaim for the Compact for Success inspired a knockoff deal between Sweetwater and Alliant International University and possibly another with Point Loma Nazarene University.

Perhaps the ultimate validation was that Brand got another job as soon as he started looking.

A new approach

Brand's tenure marks a financial evolution in South County schools from a purely government-funded operation to one that increasingly tapped into corporate and foundation largesse – Sweetwater Inc., if you will.

The compact got a private fundraising arm, the Sweetwater Education Foundation, which has raised $2.6 million for scholarships.

The district took over purchasing previously handled by Associated Student Body advisers. For example, Sweetwater became a Pepsi district in 1998, channeling soda sales money away from campuses and into the central office, where it in turn paid for athletics.

There has been opposition to such centralized decision-making.

Three years ago, Sweetwater High ASB adviser Jauhn Hinkle publicly criticized the administration for signing a districtwide class-ring contract that he contended would increase prices for students. This spring, trustees rejected a districtwide yearbook contract after a persuasive presentation against the vendor by a yearbook teacher.

The larger undertaking of school-building was indisputably a district function, and Sweetwater became a mini construction company under Brand.

Construction was a direct response to the new South County society and the expectations the newcomers brought with them. A growing divide marked by Interstate 805 became more obvious as new schools went up in the east and aging schools deteriorated in the west.

Sweetwater's first attempt to repair old schools came in 1997. The district fell just short of passing a $500 million bond in an election held the same day that Imperial Beach and San Ysidro voters approved school bond measures for their elementary schools.

When asked if Brand made a tactical mistake in 1997, former Chula Vista City Councilman Scott Alevy said, "It's a mistake if you don't learn from it." Three years later, a $187 million measure passed.

A county grand jury report in 2003 faulted Sweetwater for not being able to complete renovations promised in the bond measure. It did not accuse Sweetwater of doing anything illegal, but it questioned why Sweetwater built gyms before renovating classrooms at Sweetwater and Mar Vista high schools.

Alevy defended the construction of the gyms as buildings that not only include classrooms but serve as community gathering places in National City and Imperial Beach.

"It's not like they just built a gym for sweat socks and basketballs," Alevy said.

Keeping up with growth

While the older west-side neighborhoods had aging schools attended by students from low-income families, there was a different challenge east of I-805. From 2000 to 2003, the population east of the freeway grew by 25,000 people.

Chula Vista city officials questioned the district's ability to keep up with growth in a preliminary report by the city's growth-management commission last year.

Eastlake resident Kim Longo has been a leading critic of Sweetwater, and she was appointed to an ad hoc committee of Sweetwater and Chula Vista representatives to discuss solutions to overcrowding and other school-building issues. When she persisted in her criticism of Sweetwater, Brand sent an e-mail to the Chula Vista city manager seeking Longo's removal from the committee. It didn't work.

Chula Vista Mayor Steve Padilla campaigned in 2002 on his support for a Chula Vista kindergarten-through-12th-grade district. He believed, and still does, that it would better respond to the city's growth.

In March, Fernando Poveda of the citizens bond oversight committee criticized shoddy work at Eastlake Middle School, where windows leaked, and at Otay Ranch High School, where the gymnasium floor buckled. The schools were less than two years old and were not in the purview of the committee. Brand had him removed from the committee.

Complaints notwithstanding, school-construction experts said Sweetwater was on a building spree unprecedented in recent county history. The district opened two high schools and a middle school in 13 months from 2002 to 2003.

And with locally approved bond money, Sweetwater could tap into state construction aid that has made its renovation plan an enterprise of $325 million. The district has planned what it calls a "summer sprint" beginning in June that will entail simultaneous construction at 11 schools. Sweetwater's accelerated school renovations put it on schedule to finish construction in 2007, at least six years ahead of schedule.

Challenges remain

The era of change hasn't ended.

A 13th South County high school is scheduled to open next year, and trustees recently hired an architect to design a two-school campus for 3,000 seventh-through 12th-graders in 2008.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act will require an ever-growing percentage of students to pass reading and math tests. That will make it even more difficult for the nine Sweetwater schools already on the federal watch list to avoid harsher sanctions. State projections show that in less than a decade, as many as 98 percent of California schools won't live up to the federal proficiency requirements.

So Brand leaves a long-term legacy and immediate challenges for his successor.

"The real legacy will be when the next generation of kids graduates and hopefully comes back as leaders and say that their experience with Sweetwater was positive," Brand said. "Hopefully there will be a few of them that probably wouldn't have had the opportunity without the compact."

He started as a $105,000-a-year superintendent and leaves with a salary of $225,000, more than that of any other local superintendent except for Oceanside's Ken Noonan and the county's Rudy Castruita. Brand led South County for 10 years and ranks fourth in longevity in a single district among local superintendents behind Paul Cartas of the tiny Vallecitos district near Fallbrook, National School District's George Cameron, and the man he'll succeed in San Marcos, Larry Maw.

So who's next? Board members haven't met to consider a successor. But Alevy, the former councilman, said they have huge shoes to fill.

"It didn't really matter who followed Tony Gwynn. Ed's definitely a hall-of-famer," Alevy said.

There are those who are less exuberant in their endorsement. But Brand has plenty of supporters impressed with his legacy, not the least of whom are the San Marcos Unified School District trustees.

Staff writer Amy Oakes contributed to this report. Basim Shamiyeh contributed to this report.

Chris Moran: (619) 498-6637; chris.moran@uniontrib.com