It looks like New Haven Unified is close to naming a new chief business officer to manage the district’s $104.4 million budget — and the headaches that come with dealing with budget cuts. Its last CBO, Carol Gregorich, retired as of Monday, and the district interviewed candidates for her position last week.

New Haven’s spokesman confirmed this afternoon that the district has a person in mind to fill Gregorich’s shoes, but he wouldn’t divulge any more details. He said the district hopes to call a special meeting on Tuesday so that the board can appoint this person.

The district also is in the process of looking for a new director of operations. The last guy, Enrique Palacios, has taken a job with the Gilroy school district as the assistant superintendent of administrative services.

With the current state budget crisis, it may come as no shocker that there seems to be more CBOs leaving this year than usual, as one HR person at a local school district told me.

7/1/08 UPDATE: Ann Crosbie has responded to my e-mail. I asked her to comment on a perception held by some in the community that the Fremont Education Foundation is a breeding ground for trustees. (Current Trustees Nina Moore and Lara York serve on the foundation board, as does school board candidate Desrie Campbell.)

Crosbie no longer sits on the FEF board but remains involved with the foundation’s afterschool band and teacher grant programs. She’s also a member of the League of Women Voters and had served on the school district’s community facilities committee. She stated in her e-mail:

“I do not think it is problematic to be involved with FEF. Lara and Nina have also been actively involved with the League of Women Voters, as have many city officials. Nina, Peggy and Lara were all members of the CFC, as was Bryan [Gebhardt], I believe, and myself.”

Crosbie also stated that she’s “not currently running on a slate.”

(ORIGINAL POST:)

Parent Ann Crosbie has announced her candidacy for the Fremont school board. With three seats up for grabs, she’s the fourth person to toss her name in the ring. (The others are Bryan Gebhardt, Desrie Campbell and Lily Mei.)

I called Ann this morning, hoping to interview her, but apparently she’s in Ireland at the moment. Hopefully she’ll respond to my e-mail today. (I still have hope that I can churn out a story for the paper.) In the meantime, you can learn more about her at www.crosbie4kids.com.

Just got a call from the ACLU saying that Fremont’s school district is poised to change its abstinence-focused sex education curriculum in the middle schools, which the first amendment group says likely violates California law.

Earlier this year, CBS5 did an investigation, which found that the sex education program in Fremont middle schools had been developed by Await and Find, a pro-abstinence group that received federal grants for abstinence only education.

 The CBS5 report said that students were given charts showing that condoms fail 12 to 16 percent of the time when the actual failure rate is about 2 percent.

An item before the school board tonight requires that, among other things, the district:
1) Use a comprehensive sexuality education curriculum which includes abstinence discussions.
2) Train teachers in comprehensive sexuality education.

UPDATE: The East Bay Express has corrected their mistake online as of Friday (see link below).
—
In Thursday’s The Argus, we will have a round-up of Newark-related election news, including the outcome of retiring city schools Superintendent John Bernard’s try for a seat on the county board of education.

Barring a possible editing mistake, the story will explain that Bernard came in second place in a three-way race for the Area Three trustee seat in Oakland.

Other newspapers, namely the East Bay Express and Berkeley Daily Planet, reported on their Web sites Tuesday that Bernard would head to a runoff in November because winner Ken Berrick got less than 50 percent of the vote.

But county Deputy Registrar Cynthia Cornejo assured me that the seat is chosen by plurality, meaning the candidate with the most votes wins. So there’s no runoff.

So wherever those other reporters got their information, it’s wrong, unless the official source is wrong. Maybe they just assumed there would be a runoff, but the old journalism adage is “check your facts” — as in with the registrar’s office.

So who cares about Measure K, we’re keeping the Newark news straight. (Now I just hope nobody finds an error in my story.)

Here’s some more about Bernard, if you want it.

You’re way too young to remember the song that headline refers to if you’re an intended attendee of Friday’s “All City Sixth Grade Dance” at the Silliman Center in Newark (pictured with our logo, by the way).

The fun runs from 7 to 9 p.m. and costs $5 per student. Wristbands to get in are available at Newark schools and will not be sold at the door. Preparation will mean the center is closed from 5 p.m. until the dance.

Besides getting down, as your parents maybe used to say, those who come to the dance can enjoy the teen game room and a photo booth. For more details, call 510-742-4406.

Right on!

An article ran today about the Academic Performance Index and how elementary, junior high and high schools compare to their counterparts throughout the state.

For those of you who aren’t tired of reading about school ranks, Newsweek recently did a story about the nation’s top high schools. The only Tri-City school to make the list was Mission San Jose High (#182). Berkeley High, meanwhile, came in at #278 and Pleasanton’s Amador Valley at #309.

Some readers also might recall that Mission San Jose High came in at No. 49 in U.S. News & World Report’s list of best high schools last year.

I know some individuals go nuts each time a new report comes out that ranks schools while others can’t figure out some people’s obsession with such lists. What do you think about school ranks and how much value, if any, should society place on them?

UPDATE: Our schools reporter tells me that the rankings released today don’t mean jack. I’m too simple to understand this stuff, but she’ll explain it in her story in tomorrow’s paper. 

Here’s a handy database for looking up API rankings which came out today for local schools: http://www.sfgate.com/webdb/2007api/

As captivating as school board meetings are, sometimes the juiciest news come out of the side conversations that audience members have and not from anything on the agenda.

That’s what happened at last night’s Fremont school board meeting, where I learned of two additional candidates for November’s board race and that another current trustee has decided not to seek reelection.

As previously reported, current Trustee Peggy Herndon won’t be seeking reelection, but former appointed board member Bryan Gebhardt will be running.

Last night, I ran into Desrie Campbell, a Fremont Ed Foundation board member, and Lily Mei of the Fremont Council PTA. Both women said they plan to run. (I hope to do a story on the two latest candidates next week.)

Also, while current board President Ivy Wu hasn’t decided if she’ll run again, Trustee Nina Moore has announced that she won’t seek a third term. Apparently her decision has been known by community members for some time, but I didn’t find out until last night. It’s quite embarrassing that the reporter is the last to know.

That said, if you know of anyone else who is running — or even just thinking about it — please drop me a note on this blog or by e-mailing me at ltat@bayareanewsgroup.com. Thanks.

There was a photo in today’s paper of New Haven classified employees protesting budget cuts before Tuesday’s school board meeting. Below are more photos from the event that didn’t make our print edition:

(Top) Searles Elementary resource assistant Frances Ogle, a bilingual paraeducator, received a layoff notice last month. (Center) James Logan High special ed resource assistant Barbara Ramirez protests budget cuts outside the district office. (Bottom) Cabello Elementary kindergartners Jasmine and Maya Leon, both 5, join Tuesday’s rally.

Recently, the school board approved laying off 76 classified workers, such as classroom aides, secretaries and groundskeepers. And in two weeks, trustees will be asked to eliminate high school busing, which would mean laying off some drivers.

This was the second board meeting in a row where classified employees rallied outside the district office. I suspect they’ll be back at the May 20 meeting to protest further cuts.

Fremont Councilman Steve Cho didn’t just raise hackles at last week’s council meeting by asking to cancel a trade mission to China. He also pitched using volunteer cross walk guards at city elementary schools and giving Fremont Unified School District the roughly $175,000 a year the city spends on professional crossing guards.

Council members didn’t seem too enthused and City Manager Fred Diaz was displeased to say the least.

For more details, click here for the story by Wes Bowers in the Fremont Bulletin, which is owned by the same company as The Argus.

I asked Cho — who, by the way, is running for mayor – about the proposal late last week, and he said he would pitch it again during a joint school board/council meeting next week. However, he didn’t seem too optimistic that either board would embrace it.