Category: Education

Editor: This is a commentary sent to us by OBcean Richard Grosch who wrote it in conjunction with labor activist Peter Zschiesche and was published in the July 18th OpEd pages of the U-T San Diego. Grosch is president of the San Diego Community College District board of trustees, and Zschiesche is the executive vice president of the board.

By Richard Grosch & Peter Zschiesche / U-T San Diego / Originally published July 18, 2012

California has a higher education crisis. The University of California (UC), the California State University System (CSU) and the California Community College system have all been hit with deep reductions in state funding for students’ education in the face of unprecedented need for job training, college degree preparation and re-careering.

The San Diego Unified School District is selling off seven properties in order to stay afloat – including the campuses of Barnard Elementary and Mission Beach Elementary schools.

Barnard is located at 2930 Barnard Street, a block from West Point Loma Avenue in the Midway area. The 9.37 acre parcel is in the “coastal zone” and is on the chopping block for a minimum bid of $9.14 million. Originally opened during World War II for Navy children, the elementary school was acquired by the District after the war.

by Micaela Shafer Porte / San Diego Free Press

Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton, Pantheon Books (Random House), New York, 2012

Hey, all you enlightened people– for summer reading, check out this author, Alain de Botton, and his latest book, Religion for Atheists. Funny, provocative, insightful, engaging, even “cool,” de Botton is everything you could want in a rising new-age philosopher from London via Oxford and Switzerland.

Euro-intello, yes, but he probably wishes he were a surfer dude. Who doesn’t? Don’t worry about stumbling over some of the vocabulary; it’s just for fun (but go ahead and look up that word, you’ll learn something) or you can just read the pictures, pictures on every page.

For the remainder of this, go to San Diego Free Press.

Ocean Friendly Garden Party

San Diego, California – Ocean Beach and Point Loma residents have long endured problems of stormwater flooding, an eroding coastline, and polluted beaches from rainwater runoff, but now they can learn firsthand how to mitigate those problems by attending Surfrider Foundation’s Garden Party event at the Ocean Beach Hotel on Thursday, June 28th from 5-8pm.The Ocean Beach Hotel is located at 5080 Newport Ave.

“The event will be a beautiful evening of music, wine, and appetizers, but more importantly we will be introducing local homeowners to our Ocean Friendly Gardens Program” said Susan Krzywicki, Chair of the Ocean Friendly Gardens program.

“Everyone always wants to know why Surfrider is involved in gardening. Well, in nature, everything is connected. An Ocean Friendly Garden can help stop erosion, stop polluted runoff, save water (thereby lowering water bills,) create native habitat for birds and butterflies, and is part of a comprehensive landscaping solution needed for the Ocean Beach and Sunset Cliffs area,” she said.

By Kelly Mayhew / Special to San Diego Free Press

A line of chatting parents greets the hurly burly crowd of small ruffians storming out of school at 3:40 on a Wednesday afternoon. I stand among these folks, basking in the sunshine and marveling at the mix of families and kids, waiting for my son Walt to make his way through the gate. McKinley Elementary in North Park is a bright, vibrant, neighborhood school that has an International Baccalaureate program. It is also public, which is why we chose to send our son there.

One of the great under-reported local stories occurred last Wednesday, June 6th. While the rest of San Diego and the country mulled over the Primary election results, students at Point Loma High School staged a boisterous and energetic walk-out in support of their laid-off teachers.

We at the OB Rag are also guilty of simply being out of the loop on this one – as we also failed to publish anything about this huge and rare occurrence – and we publicly apologize to the students and teachers at Point Loma HS.

As it turns out, either 24 or 25 teachers at the high school received pink slips. A pink slip is a layoff notice to teachers informing them that their contracts would possibly not be renewed come September. And on Wednesday, a number of their fellow teachers wore pink to school. When students found out what the “pink” stood for, they were galvanized into action.

A “Voter Information Night” will be held by High Tech High International on Wednesday, May 30th from 6pm – 8pm. High Tech High International is located at 2855 Farragut Road in Point Loma, within Liberty Station.

The non-partisan event will focus on educating the public about candidates who are competing for President, U.S. Senate, U.S. Congress, State Assembly, State Senate, City Council, and San Diego Mayor on this upcoming June 5th Primary Election. It will also cover state and local propositions, with the bulk of the focus on California and San Diego-specific issues.

“Voter Information Night” is a student-researched and conducted event. The public’s participation would greatly further support of the students’ goal of voter awareness and voter education for the June primaries/Presidential election.

Just having finished a review of who – and what – the San Diego Left endorses for this June’s Primary, I wanted to offer a summary of where different groups and media projects are at with the current crop of candidates and propositions. (Note: not all races are covered, especially those of smaller municipalities and non-controversial propositions).

First – of course, there is a left in San Diego politics – so, those who cannot accept it, get over it. (For a refresher course on left vs right, see here and here.) The groups reviewed for their endorsements are all left or left-of-center. And by reporting on any group’s choices does not mean that I necessarily endorse them, their choices, or politics.

I scanned the endorsements of the following news sources and organizations:

• CityBeat – the weekly magazine is generally left-of-center in their views, policies, and endorsements.

• Democratic Socialists of America – clearly a left organization – an out-and-out “socialist” stance. Here’s their endorsements in a pdf file: Download File

• Progressive Democrats of America – they have a local progressive group, on the activist left side of the Democratic Party.

• San Diego Labor Council – labor and its manifestations are usually on the left side of the political spectrum.

There is an evening public budget hearing tonight,

Monday, May14, beginning at at 6pm,

on the 12^th floor of city hall, 202 C street.

This is the evening hearing scheduled for working San Diegans to attend and give them two cents on the San Diego City budget.

Are Your Library Services “Good Enough?” Mayor Sanders and the City Council Think So

Outgoing Mayor Jerry Sanders recently declared an end to the structural deficit problems facing the city by virtue of his eight year reign of awesomeness. Revenues this past year were a modest 1.9% higher than anticipated, and Sanders was able to play the kindly king, distributing some of the revenue to deserving city departments in fiscal year 2013.

A couple years ago, I took a psychology 101 course at a San Diego community college. Our first lesson focused on the history of mental illness and its treatment.

The professor opened by describing a now-extinct illness called “hysteria,” which struck ladies only and featured symptoms from faintness, nervousness, and insomnia to irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and even “a tendency to cause trouble.”

During the Victorian Era, the professor explained, hysteria was enough of a problem to inspire heaps of medical research. And because the illness largely seemed to be stemming from the patient’s mind, hysteria became one of the first “mental” maladies to be studied rigorously by the modern medical community.

So what does any of this have to do with sex?

Since the untimely demise of the Millionaires Tax and the birth of the subsequent “compromise measure” Governor Jerry Brown has come out of the gates lauding the new ballot initiative as the result of his superior political experience and judgment. He has also made it clear that his vision is not one of progressive taxes in the service of social justice. Indeed, Brown recently challenged Democrats in the legislature to “man up” and make steep cuts to social services to help pave the way for the tax measure’s passage. In sum, his notion seems to be that only by demonstrating more austerity budgeting can we convince voters to pass the new measure.

Note: Of course Brown was put in this box by the Republicans in the legislature (like our own would-be mayor Nathan Fletcher) who all signed the Grover Norquist pledge to never raise any revenue in any instance. That said, the Governor didn’t have to adopt his role with such relish. But that’s the austerity Democrats for you.

Nonetheless, the early polling results on the compromise measure seemed encouraging for Brown with the first USC/LA Times poll showing the measure at 64% approval in late March. Sadly, this has not held. As the San Francisco Chronicle noted last week:

A new poll confirms a fear we’ve raised before – Gov. Jerry Brown’s insistence on coupling the popular tax on millionaires with an unpopular increase in the sales tax could doom the revenue package this November – putting pressure on the governor and his allies to step up their political games and save the schools from disastrous cuts.

Straight from Editordude’s desk. Here are a number of articles and issues that you may have missed, published in mainly local media. Here they are, straight, without humor or much comment.

Protest to greet Ron Paul – speaking tonight at UCSD, Friday, May 4th. Presidential candidate and right wing libertarian Paul to speak at Warren College at 7 pm, with limited seating to open at 6pm. Students are planning a protest either at the event or outside. Here’s the protest facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/events/292622367489388/296447457106879/

Crime in San Diego County is at a 30-year low. On average, violent crime – defined as homicide, rape, robbery or aggravated assault fell to about 11,000 in 2011. But the county experienced an increase in homicides and domestic violence-motivated murder, according to the “Thirty Years of Crime” report by SANDAG. msnbc San Diego

Maintenance District guru LiMandri in Hot Water. Expert on assessment districts reviewed LiMandri’s proposal to loosen how districts are created – unsuccessfully advocated by Assemblyman Juan Vargas – and sees it at as ‘a full-employment act for LiMandri, who would get a lot of new business as a consultant for forming maintenance assessment districts.’ The San Diego Reader