One of the stranger concepts that I have been exposed to since taking public office is the notion of the “furlough” day. This essentially means that public agencies tell their employees not to come into work a certain number of days so that they can reduce their pay proportionally. Often such terms need [...]
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The following is a letter I sent to my personal e-mail list outlining a summary of this school year and what we look forward to next year: Dear Friends and Supporters, As another school year has ended, it seemed appropriate to give everyone an update on the state of the San Carlos School District, what we have [...] Two interesting updates were juxtaposed today. The first was summarized in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle about how a group of students, school districts, the California PTA, CSBA (California School Board Association) and ACSA (Association for California School Administrators) have filed a lawsuit arguing that elected officials in California have failed in [...] 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 [...] Last Fall I posted an entry about our schools’ API scores. As I pointed out then, all of our schools have both excellent and improving scores. I have also stated many times that, by design, our four K-4 elementary schools offer an equally excellent education. Although most parents and District staff understand [...] 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. [...] 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 [...] 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 [...] In June I blogged about the hiring of our new Superintendent. At the time, because of the short time frame we had, we assumed we would hire an “interim superintendent” for a single year and then go out for a broader search for a permanent Superintendent. Well, we got lucky and found someone [...] The beginning of the school year is always filled with a lot of energy — and this year was no exception — energy from the students, the teachers, and the parents. I now have both a middle school student as well as an elementary school student, so it was great to spend some time [...] |
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