Category: Education

Children’s Creative Center Art Show & Fundraiser – Saturday, April 30

By Ruth McGraw

Drawing and painting were always easy for me. When I was five, I drew a giant green peace sign on my parents’ freshly painted wall. Needless to say they were less than pleased, but that was when I knew I wanted to paint every wall, every where.

In what feels like a former life, I served in the Marine Corps and then as a Civil Service agent, and achieved my bachelors in Homeland Security and Emergency Management. I am very proud of my service and grateful for the friendships made and life lessons learned.

However, those days are passed. I finally realized that the taxing paranoia of constantly waiting for the “worst case scenario” was inhibiting my growth as a person. I was tired of expecting and seeing the bad in the world.

Why Students and Teachers Won When the Vergara Decision was Overturned

By Jim Miller

Last week I reviewed Thomas Frank’s Listen Liberal: What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? in which he lambastes professional-class Democrats for thinking that there is “no social or political problem that cannot be solved with more education and job training.”

This makes perfect sense because, as a class, professionals are “defined by educational attainment, and every time they tell the country that what it needs is more schooling, they are saying: Inequality is not a failure of the system; it is a failure of you.”

By Anna Daniels

Milena (Sellers) Phillips’ book “Always Fly Away” is not the work of someone who has made a career of writing books for children. This brightly illustrated book written for elementary school children is a reflection of how the author herself has come to understand the world as much as it is a children’s story.

“Always Fly Away” acknowledges the necessary transition that takes place when young children want to start exploring the world with an ever growing degree of independence. It also helps to develop the critical judgement that young children need to recognize when a situation doesn’t feel right and what to do when this happens.

By South OB Girl

What is up with the news recently, Point Loma?

Bomb Threats at Pt Loma High Linked to Online Gaming Group

First the bomb threat at Point Loma High School last Wednesday, April 1th. Which was the third bomb threat made against PLHS this month (threats were also made on April 5 and 6).
According to San Diego police, the teen was linked to an online gaming group that made bomb threats – often called “swatting” – in five other states including Georgia, Michigan, Massachusetts, Texas and Illinois.

Attempted Abduction of Woman Student from Nazarene Jogging on Moana

Then the attempted abduction of a young woman on Thursday, April 14 near Point Loma Nazarene University. …

A not-so-common idea for a building that belongs to us

By Jeeni Criscenzo

For three years, 150,000 square feet of space in downtown, belonging to the citizens of San Diego, has stood vacant. Each night, for these past three years, impoverished human beings have spread their cardboard beds on the brass inlays of the terrazzo at the entrance of the old Central Library on E Street.

But any suggestion that this place could provide shelter for homeless people is dead on arrival, so I won’t be wasting words on that idea. But I do think we need to come up with a fair and just use of this building that retains the spirit of its original reason for being built. After all, it belongs to us, if we are willing to fight for it and put a little imagination into its transformation.

By Ernie McCray

(Written for the closing of the Social Justice Conference at City College)

“Black Lives Matter”
is heard
from a chorus of voices
in a protest in the street.
“All Lives Matter”
someone screams
from a car rolling by
on the street,
in denial
that Black Lives Matter
wouldn’t have come to be
if All Lives Matter
had ever been a reality
in this country
at any time
or any place.

By Korla Eaquinta

The new fence around Cabrillo Recreation Center is finished. The community has been concerned about access as the gates have been locked up most of the time.

The following is an email from Alvin Nguyen, Center Director detailing the new procedure for the field to be accessible. (Please note that no one is allowed to be on school grounds nor on the field at the Rec center during school hours.)

Starting March 1, 2016, we will be following the procedure according to the above Cabrillo Gates Map.

I have listed a breakdown of the procedure below for your convenience:

A one-hundred year old tree in the courtyard of OB Elementary School was a victim of the strong El Nino winds that hit Ocean Beach and San Diego on Sunday and Monday, Jan. 31st and Feb. 1st.

Fox5 covered the tragedy and this is part of their report:

“It’s so sad. The kids are just so sad to see it go….It’s part of our school, a part of our tradition,” said 2nd grade teacher Angela Wunder, who has been teaching at the school for decades.

(Photo: txindoki/Flickr/cc)

By Ernie McCray

As we opened our hearts, this past Veteran’s Day, to our nation’s warriors with hearty “Thank you for your service” like cliches, alongside heaping praise on them for being strong heroic and brave – I kept thinking of two young men I met a little over a decade ago.

They were among the first to die in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I met them at career fairs at their schools, while I was sitting at a table letting kids know that they …

By Freak Gormlie

This is Round 2 of my Halloween eve report of the town council meeting of last Wednesday, Oct. 28th. (Here’s my gonzo-type account of Round One.)

It is scary to think what OB would be like without a town council to – in a sense – keep it all together. And this current board is luckily still headed up by Gretchen Newsom as she moves into her third term. Probably the OBTC’s most liberal president in its history, Newsom, as most know by now, is also a candidate for the mayor’s seat in this here town of San Diego.

Where Have All the Students Gone?

The big monster item on the night’s agenda was framed by the question: “OB Elementary – Where have the Children Gone?” The issue had surfaced recently – in response to the transfer of 2 teachers – when parents and students staged a picket in front of the school back on October 5th.

Tonight, three from the school and school district were on hand to answer questions: Principal Marco Drapeau, a trustee from the school district Dr. Mike McQuery and Roy – with just a hint of a true Irish accent – one of the 2 people in the district demographics department.

By Jim Miller with Ian Duckles

Last week I had the pleasure of seeing Thomas Piketty speak on economic inequality at UCSD.

In his talk, Piketty hit on the central themes of his seminal work, Capital in the Twenty-First Century: how our current level of economic inequality is now back to where it was before the “great compression” of the mid-twentieth century when union density, progressive taxation, and educational policies helped produce the high point of the American middle class.

Acknowledging the Playwright Project’s
“Deborah Salzer Excellence in Arts Education Award”

By Ernie McCray

Being recognized
for any contribution
I’ve made to the arts
is like being recognized
for breathing
a breath,
like being identified
for being myself –
as I was raised by a mother
and a grandfather
and a great-aunt
and cousins
and a church
and more than a handful of neighbors …