About this blog

I am currently a Governing Board Member of the San Carlos School District, elected November 2007. I created this site to keep in touch with folks who want to know more about what is happening in the District and what it's like to be a Trustee.

Please note that ANY OPINION EXPRESSED HERE IS PURELY PERSONAL AND DOES NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT OFFICIAL POSITIONS OR POLICY OF THE SAN CARLOS SCHOOL DISTRICT NOR THE OPINION OF ANY OF MY COLLEAGUES ON THE BOARD.

I encourage everyone to visit the District web site as well as attend School Board meetings.

Note that I reserve the right to edit, reject, or delete posts based on spelling, grammar, readability, or my judgment of what is appropriate discourse.

 

March 2010
M T W T F S S
« Feb    
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031  

The Ides of March

The following letter was sent out jointly from the Superintendent, School Board, and San Carlos Teachers Association today regarding the March 15th day for potential termination notices to teachers. The letter pretty much says it all.

To the San Carlos Community,
We are writing to inform you about a difficult step the San Carlos School District [...]

Video on How California Education Finance Works (and doesn't work)

For the last few months, I’ve been contemplating putting together a video to explain how education finance works in California. It is an incredibly complex topic, and requires a bit of history and context setting. Doing this was partly inspired by a series of presentations done by SCEF, talks by Joe Simitian on [...]

“Race To The Top” Races Past California

In what can hardly be described as shocking, California was not selected as one of the finalists in the Federal Race To The Top (RTTT) program. 41 states applied to be eligible for this program, which could include awards of potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. However, most education leaders in this state [...]

SMART-E Camps Registration Open

I had written earlier that our Superintendent was pursuing a number of “revenue enhancement” ideas to mitigate at least somewhat the painful budget cuts that we need to make. Today, registration opened for SMART-E Camps (Sport, Music, Art, Technology-Enrichment Camps that will be held at Arundel and Central schools this summer. Besides generating [...]

No one said it was going to be easy…

The following is a memo sent out from the Superintendent today regarding the budget and the status of the contract negotiations with our certificated teachers’ union. I think he sums up the situation very well.

———–

Dear San Carlos Community Members,

I write to give you an update on the status of negotiations for the 2010-2011 [...]

The Tough Work Now Begins

Unfortunately a good chunk of the remainder of the school year will be devoted to trying to solve our current budget mess, and this process kicked off in earnest with a Board study session we had on Tuesday, Janaury 26th. With the recently proposed State budget, our friends in Sacramento whacked education again. [...]

With friends like this...

At the Governor’s State of the State address, he vowed to “protect education” despite the addititional $20 billion shortfall that the State is facing through next fiscal year. I guess I’m not sure what dictionary he uses, but the word “protect” may have a different definition in his than it does in mine.

In the [...]

Can California Government be fixed?

Most folks in any way exposed to the workings of Sacramento know that it’s one of the most dyfunctional government systems we have in the country. It’s a systematic issue and not one related to specific legislators, as I actually admire many of our state elected representatives. However, they are paralyzed by a [...]

These Budget Issues Affect Real People

Probably the lowlight of yesterday’s Board meeting was our budget discussion. As I reported in early November, we continue to have a serious budget crisis due to the continued decrease in revenue from the State. And unfortunately the State appears to be in a new fiscal crisis and most people believe it will [...]

Déjà vu, all over again

The e-mail from the Superintendent sums it up:

November 4, 2009

A Message From Dr. Craig Baker,
Superintendent
San Carlos School District

The Budget Crisis

I’m writing to tell you that last night, the San Carlos School District Board of Trustees met to discuss our current and future financial situation, which, unfortunately, has taken a turn for the [...]