Category: Education

By Thomas Ultican / Tultican / March 10, 2022

Attorney Cory Briggs has filed a suit against San Dieguito Union High School District (SDUHSD) over their new Trustee Area map. California law requires school districts to rebalance the board member areas after each decennial federal census.

Led by Trustee Mike Allman three of the five district trustees apparently decided to use this requirement for political advantage. In the process, the suit claims they not only broke the spirit of the law but actually acted illegally.

By Joni Halpern

Today there is a raging controversy, especially on the part of White Americans, about “critical race theory.” There seems to be a belief commonly held among White Americans that critical race theory is being taught in K-12 schools, or that teachers who might have learned about it in the course of their academic education are going to use it to make White children feel guilty about their race and culture.

People who believe this do not know what critical race theory is. They are wrapped in rage without understanding the theory. In the process, they are making school boards and teachers afraid to engage in any legitimate teaching about the racial history of this country. The unfortunate truth is, most people who oppose critical race theory don’t even know what it is or how it came about.

By Thomas Ultican / Tultican

Alameda County has designated Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) with a “lack of going concern” label. Translation: They are going broke and must follow orders to save their district. However, many Oakland citizens are not ready to genuflect; leaving school board members in a trap. Twenty years of billionaires financing attacks on Oakland’s public school system has created a toxic political environment.

In October 2021, the OUSD board voted to end its policy of permanently closing schools every year.

By Thomas Ultican / Tultican

San Francisco Mayor London Breed is leading a recall effort to replace three of the city’s seven school board members. Her neoliberal supporters would prefer to replace all seven but the four board members elected in the last election cannot be recalled. If they are successful, Mayor Breed will appoint the replacements. Along with board member Jenny Lam who Breed appointed previously, these new appointments would make four of the seven school board members Breed appointments rather than elected representatives.

We’d heard things weren’t going well at High Tech High charter school and network in Point Loma for the teachers or students. And today’s San Diego Union-Tribune article by Kristen Taketa confirmed it.

6th grade teacher Ryan Luz spoke with Taketa and explained the teachers’ view. Here, in brief, are those complaints and issues:

By Rory Devine / 7SanDiego / December 31, 2021

During the pandemic I have been covering education, one of the most important issues of this time. When the pandemic started, I was privileged to be able to follow teacher Joanne Ensign through her experience, from when schools closed and on-line learning kicked off to when schools re-opened and in-person learning began.

It was inspirational.

By Manu Agni / Op-Ed San Diego Union-Tribune / Dec. 13, 2021

The Mid-Coast Extension of the UC San Diego Blue Line Trolley rolled into campus for the first time just a few weeks ago, but it’s already making a huge impact.

For decades, UC San Diego has been a sleepy hollow for students — up on a mesa in La Jolla, isolated from the rest of San Diego. Since the founding of campus, the way to get up to the mesa was always to meander up La Jolla hills on old roads that date back to the time of Camp Matthews and when “biotech” wasn’t in San Diego’s lexicon. More recently, this has meant spending hours in a car, stuck in crippling traffic congestion, or crawling along on a bus subject to the very same traffic.

Apparently, on Wednesday 15 teachers and three education specialists walked out of their classrooms at High Tech Middle School in Point Loma.

Teachers have recently formed a union called the High Tech Education Collective and have been in contentious meetings with the administration over pay, late paychecks and other issues.

The CEO of the schools had a meeting with staff on Wednesday before school started and it did not go well.

The school claimed the walk-out was an “unlawful work stoppage” and that school kids were left unattended

The CEO of the schools had a meeting with staff before school started and it did not go well.

By Thomas Ultican / Tultican / November 30, 2021

Nancy MacLean’s amazing book Democracy in Chains documents Charles Koch’s anti-democratic and anti-public education agenda plus his relationship with Nobel Prize winning economist James Buchanan (Democracy in Chains page 184).

She quotes Buchanan speaking about their shared libertarian agenda, “The project must aim toward the practical removal of the sacrosanct assigned to majority rule.” MacLean writes of Buchanan, “The collective enemy he was constructing included nearly everyone in education except academic economists” (Democracy in Chains page 119).

Kudos are certainly due to the San Diego Unified School District and its leadership for naming a new elementary school opening in 2022 in Mission Valley after the Kumeyaay village that was located in the vicinity long before the arrival of the Spanish.

The new school will be named Nipaquay Elementary (Nipaquay is pronounced ni-puh-kwai) and will open within the Civita development. Construction is 75 percent complete for the school that will have 500 students and 23 classrooms.

By Thomas Ultican / Tultican

An intricately connected network of organizations is controlling dyslexia discourse in the US and taking over dyslexia screening and remediation. Thirty-nine states now have adopted dyslexia laws. Most of these laws contain the International Dyslexia association’s (IDA) remediation recommendation of being “multisensory, systematic, and structured.” Researchers Jo Worthy et al state, “This approach is not well supported by research, but it is officially sanctioned through legislation in many states and has had a profound effect on policy and practice.”

IDA, the Academic Language Therapy Association (ALTA), and the International Multisensory Language Education Council (IMSLEC) are three big players.

by Ernie McCray

I just ran across an article about an old friend from when I was growing up in Tucson.

Among so many things I found interesting in the piece was something he said about a place I hold dear:

Dunbar. The “Colored” school.

He said: “I’m sorry I didn’t get a good education.”