After looking at the “About The HayWord” page, it appears that it’s time to revisit all of that info. Still lists Kim Santos as editor (she’s now at the Valley Times/Tri-Valley Herald), Jason Sweeney covers San Leandro and Kris Noceda left us last week. To those not in the Twitterverse – that’s where news breaks these days — Kris left the Review to join an online news group.

Yeah, we’re already missing him — not just because he’s a good reporter and a positive newsroom presence, but also because now we have to cover his beats until a new reporter is hired. In a nutshell, that means I’ll pick up Castro Valley, Fairview, Cherryland, Cal State and Chabot College stories; Jason Sweeney is going to tackle unincorporated crime items, San Lorenzo and Ashland.

Now then, please read this official policy. We’re going to start enforcing it. I honestly don’t have much time to play comment police, so if you post something unacceptable, I will have to put you in the spam queue. Then, when I have a chance, I’ll look at the spam queue and see if there’s anything there to post. That means you will not have the instant gratification of seeing your comment go live when you hit the post button, and I can’t guarantee what kind of lag time there will be. Here’s that policy:

Blog policy: While The HayWord welcomes lively discussion and tough criticism, personal attacks on writers or other readers are not allowed. Spam, obscene language, personal attacks or abusive hate speech are not allowed. You may not pose as another person when posting. Violators are subject to a ban. We recommend that posters to The HayWord use their full names when posting, to keep this forum reliable and encourage constructive discussion.

Information from the HUSD website:

May 18, 2010

Dear Hayward Community:

On Thursday night, June 3, 2010, from 7:00-8:30 pm, I will be holding a Community Outreach Meeting at Burbank Elementary School to get community input on the state of HUSD. 

I highly encourage all interested parents and community members to attend.  The purpose and agenda points are below.

COMMUNITY OUTREACH MEETING: 
Thursday, June 3, 2010 / 7:00-8:30 pm / Burbank Elementary

PURPOSE:
· To reach out to the community to discuss the state of HUSD
· To answer questions regarding the fiscal crisis, high academic student achievement, & campus safety
· To seek assistance & continued support for Hayward Schools
· To listen to Hayward parents/community regarding their public schools
· To clarify that the school situation is of concern & the responsibility of all

AGENDA:
· Welcome & Purpose of Community Outreach Meeting:  Janis Duran, Superintendent HUSD
· Introductions:  Maribel Heredia, Vice President of HUSD School Board
· Greetings from the City:  Mayor Michael Sweeney
· Greetings from Alameda County Office of Education:  Sheila Jordan, Superintendent ACOE
· Panel Moderator: Fran David, Hayward City Manager
· Questions from Audience / Panel Answers
· Ways You can Support HUSD, Students & Families
· Raffle—DONATED Prizes
· Child Care / Donated Refreshments

This broke late today. We’ll revisit the matter for a story early next week. Here’s the press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE     
 
Superintendent Jordan issues a statement regarding the certification of the provisional appointment of the Hayward School Board Trustee
 
The following letter was sent to Superintendent Janis Duran and the Hayward Unified School Board
 
April 23, 2010
 
Janis Duran, Interim Superintendent
Hayward Unified School District
24411 Amador Street
Hayward, CA  94544
 
Dear Superintendent Duran:
In accordance with California Education Code and advice of legal counsel, I certify that as of April 16, 2010, the provisional appointment of the Hayward School Board Trustee was made effective and that Jesus Armas will remain a board Trustee until the November 2, 2010 election. I have carefully stayed within my legal responsibilities to identify whether the required conditions to call for a special election have been met. Read the rest of this entry »

… Jesus Armas. Here’s the brief for tomorrow’s paper, will have more on this later.

Former City Manager Jesus Armas was appointed to serve as an interim Hayward school board member Wednesday, and said he intends to seek a permanent seat in the November election.

That will pit him against outgoing City Manager Greg Jones and Councilwoman Anna May, who each are leaving their positions to run as a slate for two of the three slots available on the board.

School board members chose Armas from a field of 10 candidates in a 3-1 vote, with Luis Reynoso dissenting.

Reynoso was wary of the appointment because he felt district staff members were “less than transparent” in divulging the fact that Armas’ wife works as a human resources manager in the district, which he said creates potential for a conflict of interest.

In other news, today was the filing deadline for June’s election. All six of the City Council contenders mentioned in this story filed.

UPDATE: Two Hayward high schools were removed from the final list.

The California Department of Education released its list of “Persistently Lowest-Achieving Schools” today, meaning those in the bottom 5 percentile, and Hayward was well represented.

Here are the lists, in two sections: Tier 1 and Tier 2.

Hayward Unified was the only district in Alameda County to have high schools on the list, and all three were on it — Hayward High, Mt. Eden High and Tennyson High.

Interim Superintendent Janis Duran said it was “very disheartening” to see them there, considering Mt. Eden and Tennyson have made significant gains in API scores over the past five years.

In order to receive federal funds to help turn listed schools around, districts must adopt one of four intervention models. They range from the very drastic — closing the school, or reopening it under a charter operator — to the not-so-drastic-but-still-significant, which involve changing the principal and either replacing at least 50 percent of the staff or increasing instructional time.

Duran said the latter has already been accomplished at high schools because of the switch from the block schedule system.

That move, approved by trustees last year, was done as a budget cutting measure to save the district $1 million. But it may prove handy, if feds agree that it could count as part of an intervention model.

Duran said they “are still getting clarity for interventions” and have not made any decisions regarding available options.

Longwood and Burbank elementary schools were also on the state’s list. Longwood has already been slated for restructuring because of unacceptable test scores, but Burbank has seen a turnaround. However, the method used in selecting schools for the list averaged scores over the past three years, putting Burbank on the list despite this year’s 25-point growth in API scores. Harder, which is the other school facing restructuring, had better scores than Burbank three years ago but they’ve since switched places.

“I would think that attention would be given to the fact that we have recently improved scores,” Duran said.

Here’s the state Web site with more information about the list and how the schools were identified.

UPDATE 3/9: There is a precedent for this, from 1997.

The gist of it is that the question was asked, “May the city manager or assistant city manager of the City of South San Francisco serve simultaneously on the board of trustees of the South San Francisco Unified School District?” The answer given by then-Attorney General Daniel Lungren was no for the city manager, yes for the assistant city manager.

Greg Jones said he is looking this case over, and may ask the Attorney General’s office to confirm that it still applies.  ”It is an old opinion, so there may be a different slant on this in this age,” he said. Jones expects to make an announcement regarding his plans late this week or early next.

UPDATE 3/4: David Mora, West Coast regional manager of the International City Manager Association, said that members cannot hold any kind of political office, according to Tenet 7 of their 12 tenets. Jones is a member of ICMA, but you don’t have to be a member to be a city manager.

City Manager Greg Jones announced Wednesday that he plans to make a bid for a seat on the Hayward Unified School District board. He’s got an inquiry in with the state Attorney General’s Office to see if they would consider it  a conflict of interest, but he doesn’t think it is.

“There could be occasions, regarding specific items, where the city is providing a service to the schools, but it seems to me that I could recuse myself from a vote,” he said.

Jones also said that if state officials say he can’t hold both posts, he will have to make a “tough decision” what to drop — his current gig or the bid for the board.

“From my perspective, schools are the most important issue we have in the community,” he said. “We can do all the great work for the city, but if we don’t improve schools we keep losing families, and losing future leaders of the community. People vote with their feet.”

UPDATE 2/25: Survey has been updated so that it’s no longer confusing.

The Hayward Unified School District set up a special Web page that has a load of information regarding upcoming budget cuts. It has feedback from the community meetings held in recent months, and links to information about budget timeline, who is on the Budget Advisory Committee, statements from top HUSD officials and a feedback form, where you can rank priorities for cuts.

In addition for a chance to weigh in, it gives a good idea about how much can be saved by doing what. The format is a little confusing, however. From the survey:

Respond to the following questions by ranking each one on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being most important and 5 being least important.

Q4: Reduce or eliminate staff development for teachers (currently 3 days). Saves $400,000.

So what this means is, you’d rank it 1 if you consider it “most important.” That doesn’t mean you think staff development for teachers is a most important priority, but rather that you think it’s most important for the district to cut said development.

To see other savings, read on: Read the rest of this entry »

UPDATE: Councilwoman Anna May announced that she is not running for re-election come June, instead setting her sights on the school board.  She said  she has some running mates but would not divulge names at this time. More in tomorrow’s story.

Sarah Gonzales handed in her letter of resignation today. The school board will begin the process to fill the vacancy by approving the procedure tomorrow at a special 1 p.m. meeting that also includes discussion of board goals and meeting protocol.

Gonzales said the resignation is due to health and family reasons. She and her partner are moving to Southern California to take care of an aging family member, and Gonzales is recovering from shoulder-replacement surgery.

She said the decision has little to do with the state of affairs on the school board, other than that she has a lot of work to do that makes it “impossible to do the hard work” required of a board member.

We’ll have a story in tomorrow’s paper.

UPDATE: The video of the meeting is now available online. Recommended viewing times:

33:40 —  Trustee Luis Reynoso’s first objection of the meeting to seating placement of superintendent.

41:20 — Cameo public comment appearance of frequent HayWord poster John Kyle.

1:41:45 — Restructuring item begins.

2:13:12 — Reynoso input begins. Conflict begins about 9 minutes later, ends with item moved over Reynoso objections.

2:42:20 — Reynoso input on next item begins. Conflict begins almost immediately, with request for round robin, rejection of request, accusation of superintendent giving direction. About 15 minutes later it again gets heated and ends in a brief recess before being moved.

There was a fair degree of dysfunction, which is touched on in today’s story about Harder and Longwood elementary schools facing restructuring. The video isn’t available yet on the district’s Web site, but it is recommended viewing for anyone who wants to see how trustees are getting along.

Just curious to hear comment from anyone who might have been at the meeting or seen it on television.

Some recent stories: Hayward was one of two school districts in the East Bay to be appointed a county fiscal adviser. The SRO problem was solved, in no small part due to deal brokering by the interim supe. There’s a special HUSD meeting Tuesday night at which they will talk about the search for a permanent superintendent. HUSD is also a topic at the city’s Economic Development Meeting today, where trustee Paul Frumkin and interim superintendent Janis Duran will talk about API scores. And later this week, the superintendent’s action plan, presented as item H2 at the Jan. 27 board meeting, will be the subject for the Hayward Local Agencies Committee meetins, 5:30 p.m. Thursday  at the H.A.R.D. conference room, 1099 E St.