Last night Coalition members, including myself, attended a meeting at Washington Elementary school hosted by Sacramento City Council Member Steve Hansen and SCUSD Board member Jay Hansen to gauge neighborhood support for reopening the school. Steve Hansen opened the meeting by saying that he had been working behind the scenes since the closure of Washington Elementary to reopen it. It's closure has left a hole in the community.
Shannon Puckett is a former teacher who has made a documentary film that you might be interested in seeing. The film is centered around a school in Alameda (Chipman Middle School) where she began her career as a teacher. It shows the rise and fall of an amazing school where the focus on social and emotional learning, hands on curriculum and project based assessments wasn't enough to satisfy the state's testing requirements.
published by Kate_Lenox on Fri, 01/23/2015 - 12:31pm
Ugh. The Bee editorial page has trotted out its conservative bull dog Ben Boychuk again. Just days after Martin Luther King Day, Boychuk is writing about his own dream--school choice.(1)
published by Kate_Lenox on Thu, 12/11/2014 - 2:10pm
The circumstances surrounding the resignation of former Twin Rivers USD board member Cortez Quinn were bad enough. Now they have resulted in an appointment for his replacement instead of an election. The Twin Rivers board made it even less democratic by choosing and approving his replacement with no public input from the voters of the affected trustee area. Appointee Cameron might have been at the top of the board's list of applicants, but that doesn't mean she would have been the voter's choice. Moreover, she is a charter school operator.
published by Kate_Lenox on Tue, 09/02/2014 - 11:30am
It's back to school today in Sacramento and the Sunday Bee opinion page had some advice for Sac City Unified's new Superintendent, Jose Banda. The Bee editorial board are self-appointed experts on education. After they got in a dig at Banda for his potential public retirement pay, they offered five suggestions to start the school year off right.
I know enough to know that I'm not education expert, but I can recommend that Supt. Banda do exactly the opposite of the Bee's advice:
published by Kate_Lenox on Wed, 05/14/2014 - 11:42am
In his column today, Sac Bee attack dog Marcos Breton goes after Sac City teachers and City Council candidate Ali Cooper. Evidently Breton sees them as ganging up on children and keeping them from reaping the benefits of the CORE waiver. This is all part of a full court press on behalf of Council incumbent Jay Schenirer. Jay's day job is "education consultant" and his company wrote and oversees the waiver. Not only did Sac City teachers help put a dent in his income by helping to get the district to withdraw from the waiver, they are supporting Cooper, his opponent.
published by Kate_Lenox on Mon, 04/21/2014 - 2:32pm
Jonathon Raymond left Sacramento last December for personal reasons. It must gall him that since his departure, Sacramento City Unified School District has declined to continue with one of his professional goals--participation in the California Office to Reform Education waiver from NCLB. After all it's the professional goal of Broad Academy graduates to privatize public education. Raymond used the opinion pages of the Sunday Sacramento Bee to bemoan the losses and outline the consequences that the district will face without the waiver.
At a press conference today at the offices of the Sacramento City Teachers Association, Sacramento City Unified Board President Patrick Kennedy announced that SCUSD will not be applying for a renewal of the CORE waiver from No Child Left Behind; although the waiver might have seemed that it would benefit the district, the way in which it was entered into has created an atmosphere of distrust. He stated that the district is committed to working collaboratively with its partners to rebuild that trust.
published by Kate_Lenox on Thu, 03/20/2014 - 1:36pm
The takeaway from last night's Community Forum on the California Office to Reform Education NCLB Waiver was that this waiver, and the commission that oversees it, strike at the heart of local control and local democracy. Process is important--it's not just something that career bureaucrats like to follow. It's the democratic process that was ignored and undermined by this waiver. Until last night there was no public hearing on the waiver, no school board discussion and certainly no board vote on whether the district should participate.
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