Education: Fogbound Schools

San Francisco Educator Edward Kloster estimates that more than half the students in his institution need help with their reading. He is particularly concerned about the 250 or 300 who cannot even decipher words. Kloster is not, as one might suppose, a teacher in an elementary school. He is chairman of the reading department at City College of San Francisco, and his nonreading students are graduates of San Francisco's public high schools. They are just one reason why many San Franciscans agree with the county grand jury, which last month declared: "The most serious problem facing the city is the deterioration of its public school system."

In the past, the grand jury—selected annually to investigate the city government—has praised the schools. This year's blistering indictment is just one of many attacks on a school system that is becoming increasingly beset by troubles as pervasive as the city's fogs. Since 1969, reading and math scores for San Francisco students have been dropping steadily; they are now well below national norms. School board meetings are repeatedly disrupted by noisy, contentious community factions attacking each other, the board and Board President Eugene S. Hopp. At a recent meeting, police had to quell a minor riot that erupted when spectators attacked 13 uniformed American Nazi Party members, who were present to protest school integration plans. The board has already missed an HEW-imposed January deadline for approving an integration plan for secondary schools.

The Supreme Court has added to the board's difficulties by requiring it to set up special English courses for the sizable minority of students who speak only Chinese (TIME, Feb. 4). On another front, attorneys are preparing to defend the city against a $500,000 suit filed on behalf of a boy who claims that he was allowed to graduate from Galileo High School with only fifth-grade reading skills. As a result, he is unqualified for any job "other than the most demeaning, unskilled, low-paid labor."

One of the major problems for the board has been the accelerating flight of white children from the public schools —aggravated by the fear of further integration and accounting for most of the drop in total enrollment from 90,600 in 1968 to 77,000 last fall. Although San Francisco's population is 57% white, only 27% of public school pupils are white (v. 40% in 1968); some 28,000 white children now attend private and parochial schools in the city. The remaining public school pupils are a polyglot collection who speak 33 different native tongues. The 73% from nonwhite minority groups include blacks (30%), Chinese (16%), Mexican and Latin Americans (14%) and Filipinos (7%).