I lost my tie!!

Yesterday afternoon, once again over 500 Seniors at JW North gathered with community leaders to present their Senior Exhibitions.  Kudos to them all, as well as their teachers and mentors.  This is not only a life skill to stand up in front of others and present, it is an assessment of their learning over the past 4 years at North.

Dr. Tony Wagner, of Harvard University, is currently criticizing the notion across America that we overly test students with the use of "bubbles" and "multiple choice" types of assessment items.  He advocates that students need to pose solutions and defend their proposition.  I would argue that the Senior Exhibitions at JW North do exactly that.

And yes, I was more than pleased to assist anyway possible in that effort.

Investment?

There has probably MORE than enough written by me and others about the current budget situation in California and how it effects schools and students. 

Recently, we had a Spring Break and I had the chance to leave town for a few days and decompress.  As part of that process, I had the chance to read a bit (not as much as I would like).  One of the books I had a chance to read was Stones Into Schools which follows Mortensen's original book of his personal journey, Three Cups of Tea -- either of which I would recommend.

I was struck me, was that this was a book about building schools in Afghanistan -- in the midst of a war and following an earlier war involving the Soviets as well as significant tribal issues.  Yet at the heart of it was the firm belief of the local citizens in the education/schooling of their children as being their future.  They were willing to invest their resources and even their lives to make that happen.  Umm...

Hoping for a REALLY Good "May Revise"

The budget seems to change on a daily basis ...and Sacramento is not even there!!  No tax extension.  Now there seems to be insufficient time make a November ballot happen (which is too late anyway). 

So what are we left with?

Increasingly, the prognosticators are suggesting that probably the "solution" for 2011-12 is to pass on a loss of $350 per student to schools and districts and then use "smoke and mirrors" for the rest of it.  Not surprisingly, neither party seems all that interested in an "all cuts" budget; however NOT solving the problem only makes the issue far worse for the next round.  Who knows?

The next big event in this circus is the Governor's May Revision of the Budget -- which would typically be held on Friday, May 13th (auspicious) -- though we never really know when any Governor will deliver this message.  The point of the revision is to update us on what the plan given the changes that might have occurred since January (which in this case are many).  Speculators aside, this is when we know the Governor's plan for resolving the budget issues -- regardless of the partisanship.

While it does not apply to our District this year, there are essentially 19,000 teachers across California that were issued notices of possible layoff.  One would have to speculate that ALL of those teachers would receive the next notice on or before May 15th assuring they will not have employment for the 2011-12 school year.

Welcome Senator Emmerson et al

Obviously, things have not improved with the budget. In fact, the issue seems to be how much we are going to be reduced in the existing environment – with the only “promise” being something in November? If you run the math on November it is long after anybody can do much for 2011-12 – and there are questions that if it were to survive a November election – how long would it take to actually get the money? To give you a quick idea of the negatives here they go (our comparable base is $5,200 per student):

• An “as is” budget with “no cuts” …we lose $19 per student and have increased operational costs (e.g., salary schedules, utilities, etc.)
• Prop 98 loss …-$350 per student (which also includes the -$19 above) …based on natural drop with no tax extension …this is the existing law
• A Democratic proposal to make all this work …for a total of -$835 per student (with all the above included)
• The LAO (Legislative Analyst Office) projection to right-size the budget …$760 per student …in addition to the $350 per student based on the Prop 98 drop …for a total of -$1,100 per student

To try and translate this back into a reduced school year …as we have tried about all the other alternatives we can think up, it might look something like this. When I went to the calendar on our website, I find our projected start date for students is Monday, August 29th. To accommodate at an $835 hit, theoretically the start of school should be moved back to Friday, October 7th. To further move the date back to accommodate an $1,100 hit we would need to start on Thursday, October 20th in time for the approaching Halloween weekend.  I wonder if this will impact the learning of our students and the long-term economy and productivity of our state?
To his credit, Senator Bill Emmerson, one of our local Senators will be in town along with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction (SPI), Tom Torlakson, to provide an insider’s view of what is going on in Sacramento and why we don’t have a budget. Senator Emmerson has attempted to bridge the partisan divide and be a statesman in this issue, but for whatever reason it hasn’t appeared to work. He along with the SPI will be at RCC today. Welcome!

Students and Staff Excel Once Again

Well once again our staff and students have done an extraordinary job during the most difficult of times -- financially.  Yesterday, California released the names of the 97 California Distinguished Schools for this school year.   The levels of the schools to be recognized change each year with this year's focus on secondary schools (grades 7-12) across the state.  Not surprisingly, we had two of our schools recognized -- Earhart & Gage Middle Schools.  They were recognized as 2 of the 5 secondary schools in Riverside County.  The other 3 included two in Desert Sands (Indio, etc.) and one in Lake Elsinore.

These awards are determined through a rigorous statewide process.  The addition of these two schools this week, brings the total of our Distinguished School Awards to 32 in Riverside Unified School District.

Hiatus

To all,

As a District we are closed this week and essentially most of our students and staff are off for a time of rest and rejuvenation.  As such I will not be blogging this week.  I wish all of you a restful time and we will begin our race to graduation when we return on Monday, April 11th.

Rick