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  • Colleagues remember Delaine Eastin, the only woman to be elected state superintendent

    Colleagues remember Delaine Eastin, the only woman to be elected state superintendent


    Former State Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin.

    Credit: John Joanino/Advancement Project California

    Delaine Eastin, the only woman elected as California’s superintendent of public instruction, died Tuesday from complications of a stroke. She was 76.

    She assumed the nonpartisan office in 1995, when the superintendent’s main power was persuasion. In a court decision preceding her election, the State Board of Education had wrested sole power to set state education policy from the state superintendent. But admirers said she used the public pulpit and verbal skills to effectively champion issues she cared about. These include raising academic standards, lowering class sizes and instilling the importance of nature in schools.

    “Delaine was regarded as one of the great orators of the Legislature,” said Jack O’Connell, a fellow Democrat who served with her in the Legislature and succeeded her as state superintendent. Next to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, Eastin was the most in demand on the speech circuit, he said. “Few could engender the kind of emotion and passion she delivered in every speech.”

    Delaine Eastin

    Calling her “a trailblazer in public education who will forever inspire us,” current State Superintendent Tony Thurmond said Eastin “was integral in establishing standards for what students should know and be able to do,” then developing statewide assessments and a school accountability system for the results. She also strengthened the framework for financial oversight of school districts through county offices of education and a quasi-state agency, the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team.

     “When I came into office, there was no testing. There were no academic content standards. And there was no system of school accountability at all,” Eastin told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2003. “And we had the largest class size in America.”

    Taking advantage of the state’s financially flush years, she made smaller classes a priority and helped persuade Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature to invest $2.3 billion to cut the size of K-3 classes from 30 to 20 students.

    In 1995, she called for a garden in every school. With the help of Berkeley restaurateur Alice Waters, she inspired the establishment of gardens in more than 3,000 schools. California became the first state to join the Clinton Team Nutrition effort to improve school nutrition. She oversaw curriculum guides on how to teach the academic content standards through nutrition, gardening, and cooking.

    O’Connell called her “fearless in the constant fight for better school funding and put herself in the middle of every battle on behalf of kids.”

    She was an early advocate of early childhood education, establishing a preschool task force of educators, business leaders, civil rights and children’s advocates that called for universal preschool. She established the state’s Teacher of the Year program; Thurmond honored her in this year’s state ceremony.

    Sen. Dave Cortese, D-San Jose, a former school board member in San Jose, said Eastin left “an indelible imprint” on California’s school system. “Delaine was more than a colleague; she was a mentor and friend,” he said.

    Born in San Diego, she moved to San Carlos as a child and was the first in the family to graduate from college, earning a bachelor’s degree from UC Davis and a master’s from UC Santa Barbara in political science. After teaching women’s studies and politics at De Anza College and Cañada College, she worked as a strategic planner for what was then Pacific Telephone before being elected to the City Council of Union City. She served four years in the Assembly in a district representing pats of Alameda and Santa Clara counties.

    After serving the maximum two terms as state superintendent, she returned to politics in a brief run for governor as a voice for progressives in the 2018 Democratic primary. She was sixth with 3.4% of the vote. (For a transcript of an interview with then Executive Director Louis Freedberg during that campaign, go here.)  

    Eastin recalled to Orange County Register reporter Hanna Kang last year that women legislators were few and “especially close to each other” when she was in the Legislature. “Women did look after one another because we sort of had to, because we would be dismissed or spoken down to in some instances unless we stood up for each other.”

    “I remember in the early days, there were people who wouldn’t let me on the members’ elevator because I was a girl, and I couldn’t possibly be a member,” she said.

    Plans are underway for a public celebration to be held this summer.





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  • Delaine Eastin remembered: Making the most of being schools chief in California

    Delaine Eastin remembered: Making the most of being schools chief in California


    Former State Superintendent of Public Instruction Delaine Eastin.

    Credit: John Joanino/Advancement Project California

    Despite the office’s imposing title, California’s superintendent of public instruction has little actual power to do much about education.

    The governor has far more influence, as does the State Board of Education. And then there are the local school boards, which, by law, are responsible for the nearly 1,000 school districts in the state.

    That is why it was remarkable that at least 500 people packed into the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Sacramento last week to honor Delaine Eastin, who was superintendent of public instruction over two decades ago. She was the first, and so far, only, woman to occupy the post.

    The state superintendent position is largely what you make of it — and Eastin, who died in April at the age of 76, made the most of it.

    Part of her success had to do with her outsize personality. She regularly girded colleagues for any number of political battles with Shakespeare’s rallying cry, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.”

    Part of her impact was rooted in her sustained belief in public education, of which she herself was a product. A native of California, she attended public schools and earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of California.

    “Children are the living messengers we are sending to a time we will never see,” she would say. To those who argued that public education costs the state too much, she would offer the rejoinder, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”

    And to those who wondered why they should support children in districts other than their own with their taxes, she argued, “This country runs on other people’s children.”

    Some of her success had something to do with her oratory, which was honed in her high school drama classes. As an assemblymember before becoming state superintendent, she was regarded as one of the best speakers in the Legislature. She regularly got standing ovations in the multiple speeches she made around the state. Former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, a legendary speaker himself who attended the memorial service, would often send her to speak in his place. 

    Her legacy includes her single-mindedness in promoting smaller class sizes in California’s K-3 grades. She was a force in creating California’s Academic Performance Index in 1999, the first statewide system for ranking schools based mostly on test scores.

    She was also a leader in promoting California’s first efforts for universal preschool — a vision that is now coming to fruition with the expansion of transitional kindergarten to all 4-year-olds. 

    Less well known was her backing of Alice Water’s Edible Garden Project, which began at the Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley in the mid 1990s. “If it had not been for Delaine, we would not have had an Edible Garden Project,” said Waters, the founder of the renowned Chez Panisse restaurant just blocks from the school. On a video, Waters shared that there are now 6,500 edible school gardens around the world.  

    Above all, Eastin was a huge backer of California itself. Californians, she would often say, “are people who grew up somewhere else and came to their senses.”  

    Throughout her life, she was single-minded in promoting women for public office.

    Eastin’s last appearance on the political stage was in 2018 when she “had the audacity to run for governor,” as Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis described the run. It was a quixotic effort at best — something Eastin was well-aware of, Kounalakis said. “She ran largely to talk about the importance of public education.”

    As the two of them traveled together around the state during the campaign, Eastin would say, “This is what the future could look like” if they both were elected. But Eastin only got 4% of the vote. Kounalakis was more successful, becoming California’s first woman lieutenant governor.  

    While she did not make it to the governorship, there was something biblical in the arc of the life of a woman who did not have her own children, despite wanting them — but was nonetheless able to improve the lives of millions of them in her home state.

    Her staff in the Department of Education recalled the many times they would set out early, half awake, on yet another trip to an outlying district.

    “It’s going to be a great day,” Eastin, ever the motivator, would tell them. “We get to visit schools.”  

    •••

    Louis Freedberg is interim CEO of EdSource.

    The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.





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