Morning, Alameda.

It has come to my attention that many of you don’t know that you can find Alameda Journal articles online here. They usually post live some time the day before the print paper comes out. So, if you’ve written a letter to the editor and want to know if it’s going to run or you want to browse the latest headlines, check there.

Today’s Journal includes a very nicely-reasoned, pro-Measure H (which, as many of you know, I support) “My Word” piece by Michael Schmitz: “Voting for Measure H can protect our assets.” As well as an editorial, “Local schools can’t wait for Sacramento“, which puts in very plain language the state of school financing.

Keep Alameda Schools Excellent, the group formed to support Measure H, also has some good info about the “May revise” of the state budget. Which, as best a I can discern (though no one seems to have a handle just yet on what exactly the budget will mean) shifts how the money is going to be cut, but still cuts a significant chuck from schools. Instead of suspending Prop. 98, it cuts the cost of living adjustments. Instead of cutting special education, it reduces monies for rising utility costs. “The revised budget is a shell game,” School Trustee Bill Schaff told the Journal yesterday, “leaving our schools the biggest loser…we still must anticipate a $4 million hit to Alameda schools.”

Please enjoy this brief and very jolly video of the Saint Joseph’s High School Percussion Ensemble.

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Morning, Alameda! Anyone out there want to discuss, face to face, eye to eye, any heated topics like, say, Measure H? Want to talk about our moral/ethical obligations to our fellow citizens? Want to discuss how, despite, say, an ideological commitment to ‘liberty,’ we all at some point in our lives, as infants or elders, or when injured or sick, require the help/support/even money of others. And while we might, on a good day, be able to keep up the charade that our ‘liberty’ is not contingent on others, at some time that notion will be faced with the cold, hard reality of its impracticality. Coffee anyone?

[A note: Tom Pavletic, who has not Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday’s “Life on the Island” is up online already.

(Thanks to all of you, by the way, for your compliments on the fabulous picture that goes with the print column—Laura Oda, a photographer and ‘photo chief’ for the Journal’s parent company, deserves all credit for her patience and craft.)

This Friday, May 2, at 7 p.m. in Kofman Auditorium (in Alameda High) there will be a benefit concert to try to keep music in grades one, two and three in our district’s schools. The concert is brought to you by Bay Farm parent Lorri Garrett and a host of other hardworking volunteers in the Save our Music crew. You can buy tickets to the hip-happening event online here and also learn more about the class acts, including on- and off-island talent as well as many of our district’s bright-eyed third graders. If you can’t make the show, there’s also an online auction, with items including tickets to the San Francisco Opera, a $100 gift certificate to Scott’s Shoes and a drum head signed by Metallica.

Measure H
As always, Read the rest of this entry »

Last November, the people who run the Alameda Community Learning Center, a charter school for children grades 6-12 housed at Encinal High, submitted an application to Alameda’s school board for a charter for a new elementary school called Nea (NCLC). The Alameda school board denied the charter and so, as the process goes, the ACLC/NCLC folks took their appeal to the county board of education (they can appeal next to the state next). Last night the county turned down that appeal. School 94501/94502 has more details.

Tom Pavletic can blame Alameda’s school funding troubles on a bloated administration, but the actual fact remains that public schools up and down California don’t have enough dollars to provide the services they’re expected to. (Here’s a chart comparing administrative costs in Alameda Unified to those of other county districts—Alameda ranks 12th of 16.) Every district is hurting and hurting hard; every district needs outside funding sources, be it parcel tax dollars, grants or donations. Most districts are doing their best to get by with a combination of the three. Rob Siltanen, who blogs at School 94501/94502, linked yesterday to an Los Angeles Times article, California public schools seek private money just to cover basics, which attempts to track some aspects of the state-wide problem.

Education funding is complex. Why does Alameda get less than other districts? Why do local districts have to set their budgets before the state budget is final? If you want to learn more about Alameda schools, come to an informational meeting featuring some of our town’s dedicated citizens, School Board President Bill Schaff, Alameda Education Foundation Executive Director Brooke Briggance, and Jerry Nussbaum, of Kane & Associates.

Tuesday, April 29, 6:30 – 8 p.m.
Ruby Bridges Elementary Multipurpose Room
351 Jack London Ave.

Free child care will be available

The Education Report’s Katy Murphy has a new post (with some interesting discussion) on the bill written by Assemblyman Sandré Swanson to halt the creation of charter schools in Oakland. Assembly bill 2008 is relevant to Alameda because, as a district like Oakland with declining enrollment, our town is poised to face, on a lesser scale of course, some of the financial challenges brought by the creation of charters.

New at 11:10 p.m: Below is Oakland Tribune video of today’s protest and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. If you watch until the end—it’s only two and a half minutes so probably you can hang in there—you get to see the governor say one of the most amusing/perplexing things that’s been coming out of his office lately. He talks about how education in California is currently ‘overfunded.’

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Thanks to school board member Mike McMahon for the link to this KPIX story on today’s protests. Enjoy the video of parents and students talking about why public schools matter. Hopefully more links to come.

New at 4:46 p.m: Here’s the KCBS story.

New at 4:48 p.m: Here’s an ABC 7 story from today on the long-term impact of cuts to education in our state: Higher Education cuts could be devastating to California.

New at 9:45: The Oakland Tribune’s Josh Richman also filed a story on Schwarzenegger’s visit. He writes about the governor’s softening rhetoric on taxes and the state’s decaying infrastructure.

Peter Hegarty’s story about the school walk outs and parent and teacher protests that greeted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when he visited the USS Hornet in Alameda today is here.