SGC Morphs Into SSC

Spring semester controversy gave way to a summer of deliberations, but as the school year begins, Berkeley High School’s governing council has changed its structure.

In previous years, decisions in the school were made by the Student Governance Council (SGC), which decided on everything from curriculum to fund allocation. This differs from the typical high school governing body in California, which is called the School Site Council (SSC)Representation for the SSC is set by law and must be composed of fifty percent parents, twenty–five percent students and twenty–five percent teachers. In 2006, BHS combined the SGC with the SSC. As the SGC, it was comprised of twenty–one faculty members, four students and four parents.

However, last spring, representatives on the SGC brought attention to the fact that the council did not adhere to state representation standards, and felt that the ratio of teachers to parents to students was unfair.

“Last year it was more difficult to participate in the SGC,” says Natasha Berk, student representative of the current SSC. “There were too many people talking, so it was hard to say what you wanted. You had to make a list and could only speak once. Because of the unequal ratio between staff, students and parents, the majority of the discussion was between teachers.”

The SGC set out to change its structure in order to comply with state law and give more voice to parents and students. Deliberations began on how to reconfigure the structure of the councils, leading to the current government system, the SSC.

“Currently the governance structure has two decision-making bodies: the leadership team and the school site council,” said principal Scuderi’s assistant, Richard Ng. “Leadership is all team leaders of all BHS schools. SSC is teachers, parents, students and other faculty. Before, SGC consolidated two groups — now it’s split up.”

However, not everyone agrees with this solution. “The SSC was embedded in the SGC, but the school chose to let everyone vote rather than just the official SSC members,” said Linda Gonzalez, parent co–chair of the SGC from 2009 to 2010. “The easiest fix would have been to make sure the SSC members of the SGC were elected early-on in the school year and had only them vote on the key decisions under their purview, rather than the whole SGC. It would have meant the parents and students would have continued to be more involved in more decisions than they will be now, and that they would have more access to the decision–makers in the school.”

On the question of teacher representation, Gonzalez added her view that “the fear that the ‘over-representation’ of teacher leaders impacted [SGC] decisions is false.”

The new SSC structure hopes to suit as many participants as possible, but not without obstacles. With the reformation of the governing body came new discussion on the ratios for the SSC.

The ideas presented for teacher representation on May 25 of this year caused some controversy in the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) community. BUSD Superintendent Bill Huyett presented two different options for configuring teacher representatives.

One model would have one teacher from each small school and two teachers from Academic Choice (AC) and International High School (IHS). The other would have only one representative from each school but double the amount of leadership representatives.
These suggestions caused a stir among some members of the Berkeley community who were concerned that the big schools were not being proportionally represented. AC and IHS enroll around 73 percent of BHS students.
“That was definitely a concern of members of the SGC last year,” said Ng. “We definitely tried to address these concerns with membership of the school this year. New bylaws were drafted to address the concerns about misrepresentation.”
These bylaws were drafted over the summer and approved by the school board on August 6.
The final makeup of the SSC according to the new bylaws is one classified staff, ten certified staff, Principal Scuderi, six parents or community members, and six students. The staff will be composed of two small–school teachers, two AC teachers, two BIHS teachers, and staff affiliated with various small schools and programs.
Both the parent/community section and the student section will be broken down into one representative from the small schools, one from AC, and one from BIHS and three at large.
Although the committee strives for proportionate representation among school programs, some believe there are still representation issues that have not been addressed.
“In their fervor for parity among students and parents, they never address the issue of parity with representation that reflects the ethnic/racial demographics of the school,” said Gonzalez. “The previous and current bylaws still make it possible to have no representation from the group who have been least served by the district — Latinos and African-Americans.
She continued, “While they have proudly boasted that the two top vote–getters last year were myself and Lorrie Williams, an African American, they fail to acknowledge that they never voted with us on the key issues and that both of us chose not to run again this year due to being disheartened by the contentious process and lack of support from the very people who stated they wanted diversity.”
Elections for SSC positions were held on September 16. The bylaws and procedures were given final approval by the board on September 15.
“The vote passed with one board member voting no, due to her concerns over the composition of the bylaws,” said student representative Lias Djili. “She didn’t elaborate, but I’m guessing she was referring to the representation issue.”
There are still disagreements within the discussion, but with the approval of the bylaws the new structure of the governing council is in place.
“I’ve watched the board go over the process, determining what numbers for what schools, and creating the new school model,” said BUSD Public Information Officer Mark Coplan. “Clearly it is a complicated formula considering the size of Berkeley High School and the number of small schools. This will probably be as close as they can come.”