It’s been a busy week in school headlines, from the continuing controversy over San Ramon Valley’s baseball saga, to parents who don’t immunize their kids and the ouster efforts in Mt. Diablo.

An El Sobrante school was shut down last week after whooping cough - pertussis - swept through the private East Bay Waldorf School. County health services stepped in after at least 16 children came down with the disease at a school where very few parents immunize their children. Kids whose parents refuse to put them on antibiotics are banned from school for 21 days, until the disease has run its course and they are no longer contagious. Wait. Parents are refusing antibiotics??
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Fascinating story in today’s Times on the sudden proliferation of school-related blogs. Some 8 percent of regular Internet users have a blog these days, according to a 2006 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, and nearly 40 percent of adult Internet users — that’s 57 million people - read blogs. Huge numbers! So it’s not surprising that school advocates have started tapping into that. We’re so excited about this schools blog trend, we may have to add a whole new category to our blogroll.

We’re already fans of several Mt. Diablo-related blogs, including the one launched by Gary Eberhart and Paul Strange, the Mt. Diablo parent site, and the brand new Northgate High parent blog. (We enjoy dropping by Andre Gensburger’s always lively Mister Writer blog too - and may we just add our chorus of kudos to the Clayton Valley Women’s Ensemble for their choral triumph?)
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Two-thirds of the nation’s teens have accidentally used texting shorthand - LOL-style abbreviations or emoticons - in their academic work. “OMG!” say researchers at the Pew Internet and American Life project.

“The findings don’t surprise local students and teachers, who say that instant messaging has become the primary form of communication for a generation weaned on BlackBerry and Motorola Razr phones,” writes San Jose Mercury News reporter Julie Lyons. “They often don’t realize what comes out when they let their fingers do the talking.”

Playground bullies are in the spotlight again after an Oakland 7-year-old landed at Children’s Hospital with a fractured skull, courtesy of playground thugs. Despite the name of the school - Piedmont Avenue Elementary - this school is one of the Oakland School District’s most violent campuses, and not a part of the nearby Piedmont School District. Horrifying story, and not the first time this particular little boy has been targeted at school. Where, we wonder, is the pro bono attorney to sue the bejeezus out of the attackers’ families, the principal, teachers, playground supervisors and school district? Because you know that if this had been a Piedmont kid, the mega-lawsuit would have been filed after the first attack, not the third.
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Frustrated with California’s state budget cuts and how they’ll impact your school? Join the San Ramon Valley Council of PTAs’ “Flunk the Budget” Rally this Friday at 12:30 p.m. at Danville’s Sycamore Valley Elementary School. Everyone’s welcome. You don’t have to live in San Ramon to advocate for a balanced approach to fixing the budget crisis that includes, say PTA supporters, both cuts and revenue increases.

Public education came to a screeching halt in millions of classrooms this month as children spent day after day bubbling in answers to state standardized exams. But Seattle sixth grade teacher Carl Chew had had enough. Last week, he refused to administer the WASL, the Washington Assessment of Student Learning exam used to satisfy requirements under No Child Left Behind. Chew’s explanation? “I have done this because of the personal moral and ethical conviction that the WASL is harmful to students, teachers, schools, and families.” And he cited 24 reasons why the exam was bad for kids, families and schools.

But school administrators regarded it as an act of civil disobedience and escorted him off campus. Now, his superintendent says Chew will be suspended without pay for two weeks for insubordination, and he’ll be expected to administer the exam next year.
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Concerned about what’s happening in the Mt. Diablo school district? Two more parent and community meetings have been added this week - meet with trustees Gary Eberhart and Paul Strange tonight at 7 p.m. at First Christian Church in Pleasant Hill, to discuss the district’s recent fiscal missteps, budget cuts and bid for change. Meet Saturday, April 26 with trustees April Treece and Dick Allen at 9:30 a.m. at Rocco’s in Walnut Creek.

Other school-related meetings? Click “comments” and add them here.

An assortment of headlines from schools this week…
In Japan, a high school baseball game was halted after one team racked up 66 runs in two innings. Around here we have mercy rules that stop terribly lop-sided games, but there, it was the losing coach who called an end, citing fears that his pitcher, who had already thrown 250 pitches in an inning and a half, was going to injure his arm. (And boy, do we feel better about our childhood strike-outs now…)

Locally… In the latest chapter in the Mt. Diablo secession saga, the city of Walnut Creek passed a resolution this week, forcing the county to hear testimony on the proposal to shift school boundaries. But it doesn’t look like it does anything to change the basic problem that made the proposal illegal in the first place — the petition orphaned a neighborhood, leaving an island of Mt. Diabloness in the midst of Acalanesland — so good luck with that.
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Well, here’s an interesting twist. By late last week, Mt. Diablo’s secession petition was “dead in the water”, according to county officials. Seems the petition, which would have redrawn boundary lines to move some of Mt. Diablo’s top-ranked schools, including Northgate High, into the Acalanes and Walnut Creek school districts, orphaned a neighborhood – left it sitting as an island of Mt. Diabloness in the midst of other districts, which violates state law. (How the petition organizer, attorney Ruth Carver, could have redrawn the map and not noticed is beyond us. She says she just assumed that neighborhood was already part of Acalanes.)

Now, we just heard that the city of Walnut Creek is considering a resolution that would, in effect, undo that.
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An 11-year-old boy is Ohio’s newest hero, after he grabbed the wheel of a runaway school bus and brought it to a halt against a pillar. The driver had left the bus unattended while he took a potty break when the bus, carrying 27 kindergarten and grade school students, began rolling down the hill. A few bumps and bruises, but no one was seriously injured. The driver, on the other hand, went to the hospital with chest pains. Um, one would.

And a 6-year-old Livermore boy is a local hero after he called 911 from his car seat. His grandmother fell ill while driving and handed the boy her cell phone. The little guy directed rescuers to the car, which was stopped on the shoulder of the freeway. Everyone’s fine, including granny.
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Top East Bay school headlines this week …

A petition to transfer Northgate High and its Walnut Creek feeder schools out of the troubled Mt. Diablo district just passed a major legal hurdle. The county school board’s committee on district organization has accepted the petition and tentatively scheduled a public hearing for April 9 at 6 p.m. at Lafayette’s Acalanes High School.
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