Category: Education

Here is an up to date schedule and calendar of May Day actions and activities in San Diego:

• 11 am – May Day Rally at City College – 11 am

• 12 Noon- Stand in Solidarity with Janitors – Rally at Civic Center and March to Sherman Heights Market

SEIU-USWW will be hosting a rally 12 pm at the Civic Center in Downtown San Diego and will be marching to the Sherman Heights Farmer’s Market.

• 2:00 pm – Bank Action Against Bank of America and Wells Fargo – March from Civic Center to 5th & B Street

• 3:3o pm – Stand in Solidarity with Teachers at their Teacher Lay Off rally at Roosevelt Middle School in Balboa Park,

The San Diego Education Association is hosting this rally.

• 5:30 pm – Chicano Park Festival

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / April 22, 2012

In the 1960s, when Juan Felipe Herrera was in elementary school, he lived in a homemade RV in Escondido.

“We lived in a trailer my dad made, off Lincoln,” Herrera said, “He built a house on top of a car. That way you could pull it.”

Like most campesinos, they moved a lot, the boy and his farm worker parents.

Today, Juan Felipe Herrera — UC Riverside creative writing professor, activist and artist — is California’s fifth poet laureate and the first Chicano. He was appointed to the position by Governor Jerry Brown in March. These days, with 28 books, an opera, plays and a joy that is contagious, Herrera is still moving a lot, but in a different way.

By Jim Madaffer / Mission Times Courier / April 12, 2012

The East Village skyline’s architectural landmark is taking shape. The signature dome of the New Downtown Central Library can now be seen from various vantage points downtown and beyond. After decades of dreaming, the City’s newest and most state-of-the-art public building is set to open in mid-2013.

I had an opportunity to tour the main library construction project recently and walked each floor to see what will surely become an icon of perseverance and a gift to future generations of San Diego. The construction site reminds me of an erector set with each piece of the building carefully set with precision equipment and high technology.

The $185 million nine-story New Central Library was designed by San Diego architect Rob Quigley and will undoubtedly be the signature statement of his career. Construction is on schedule and on budget.

The long-awaited report about the pepper spraying of UC Davis students by campus police last November is finally out. And the report doesn’t waste words:

“The pepper spraying incident that took place on November 18, 2011 should and could have been prevented.”

The report, by a task force appointed by the university and led by retired state Supreme Court Justice Cruz Reynoso, himself a former UC Davis prof, determined that UC Davis campus police violated their own policy and used bad judgment in pepper spraying the non-violent, sitting student protesters.

An ever-present demand of Ocean Beach residents since the mid-1970s has been to be granted “independence” by the City of San Diego. OB tenants, property owners, and businesspeople have been clamoring for the village to be its own city for all these years.

Well, it finally happened behind closed doors on Friday. City officials met and decided once and for all that the sea-side community of about one mile square with roughly 15,000 residents should be its own municipality. The announcement was met with cheers from the Planning Board to the Mainstreet Association, from southern OB where the breakers beat at the cliffs to the northern climes where musicians, ex-hippies, bikers mix it up with students, elderly, sailors and working class families.

CSUSM: The results of electing inaction

By Kit-Bacon Gressit / Excuse Me, I’m Writing / March 17, 2012

Better election fraud than rape. That’s what I always say. Not really. That’s what I’ve been saying since Friday, when I learned that Cal State University San Marcos (CSUSM) student Matt Weaver was arrested. But he was not arrested for repeatedly promoting rape (along with homophobia, misogyny, pedophilia and racism) in the pages of The Koala, the privately-owned, for-profit tabloid he edits and touts as a “humor” publication.* No, Weaver, who was running for president of ASI, the student government, was arrested and charged with three criminal counts associated with the elections:

1. unlawful access to a computer or database,
2. identity theft and
3. election fraud.

Here’s the gist of it: The university’s information security folks noticed suspicious activity …

Many months ago I wrote an article that caused a huge rift in my family; many responses from Rag readers to the point that we needed to shut down the article because of the intensity of the comments from the readers. Because I do not want to rekindle that discussion again, I am asking my daughter to read this article over before I sent it on to be published.

The first article spoke of a granddaughter of mine, age 15, that was going to be retained in her high school for not completing her assignments in any of her classes. As an educator myself, I was appalled to think that in today’s society a young student would be forced to repeat all the classes of a particular grade because work was not turned in. To make matters worse, my field of expertise was teaching teachers how to “Individualize the Curriculum” and how to teach to the needs of the student. I felt that this was not being done in the case of my granddaughter.

We’re all happy that the Ocean Beach branch library has reopened. The “grand” reopening was on Saturday, March 10th. Closed for months for repairs, it was back to busy as usual when we visited it on Thursday, March 15.

The library – really one of the hubs of the village – has new rugs, new roof, new paint, some new furniture … and perhaps, soon, will have new hours. Especially if Mayor Sanders and the City Council glide some money toward expanding the library’s hours, which was promised.

Last week wasn’t so good for Jerry Brown. First the Public Policy Institute of California put out a poll that found that the Governor’s measure was favored by only a very slim majority of California voters at 52% approval. This number is 16% below where it was in a January PPIC poll and, if accurate, pretty much dooms it. What changed? In this survey, people were given the actual language that will be on the ballot (including the regressive sales tax), which appears to kill voter enthusiasm.

Making matters worse for Brown and company, another poll followed this one that eviscerates one of the governor’s main arguments. This poll confirms that a majority of Californians would prefer to have a choice of tax measures on the ballot.

Independent Grassroots Education Movement to March From Balboa Park to State Building Downtown to Protest Next Round of Cuts to Budgets

San Diego, CA – March 10th, 2012 – 9:15am – Balboa Park (Park Ave. & Presidents Way)

The next round of education budget cuts will be devastating to our schools, our children, and our teachers. In an effort to be proactive in fostering a change in priorities at the state level, a broad coalition of parents, teachers, students, and concerned citizens will be marching from Balboa Park (corner of Park Ave. & Presidents Way) to the State Building downtown.

The Ocean Beach branch library is set to re-open this Saturday, March 10th. This, after a period where it was remodeled with a new carpet, new paint, and a new roof.

But with just a few days away from the doors being swung open again to OB, our library needs help.

The place needs cleaning and all the books need reshelving. Before it can open again, there’s a bunch of internal work that needs to happen.

By Bob Sullivan / msnbc / March 6, 2012

If you think privacy settings on your Facebook and Twitter accounts guarantee future employers or schools can’t see your private posts, guess again.

Employers and colleges find the treasure-trove of personal information hiding behind password-protected accounts and privacy walls just too tempting, and some are demanding full access from job applicants and student athletes.

In Maryland, job seekers applying to the state’s Department of Corrections have been asked during interviews to log into their accounts and let an interviewer watch while the potential employee clicks through wall posts, friends, photos and anything else that might be found behind the privacy wall.

Previously, applicants were asked to surrender their user name and password, but a complaint from the ACLU stopped that practice last year. While submitting to a Facebook review is voluntary, virtually all applicants agree to it out of a desire to score well in the interview, according Maryland ACLU legislative director Melissa Coretz Goemann.