California legislators have confirmed what several high-profile reports and nearly anyone involved with students with disabilities have been saying for years about the state’s system of paying for special education: It’s insufficient, inefficient and inequitable. But while succeeding in drawing attention to what’s wrong, a three-hour joint hearing last week of the Senate and Assembly…
Monthly Archives: March 2018
The chairman of the state Senate’s budget subcommittee on education and three other Democratic senators are proposing to add $1.2 billion to what Gov. Jerry Brown is budgeting for the Local Control Funding Formula. It’s the first stake in the ground in what could be protracted negotiations over ongoing education spending in the governor’s final…
Across California, the cost of retirement benefits for public employees remains untamed. The total cost to state and local governments as well as schools and colleges has more than tripled since 2003—and projections indicate the burden in coming years will continue to grow. Payments for public employee pensions and retiree health care benefits are putting…
Court Case Could ‘Financially Cripple’ California Unions
March 12, 2018
Thirteen years ago, California’s teacher union went toe-to-toe with the state’s movie star governor and crushed him at the ballot box, funding almost half of the $121 million campaign that swamped his proposals to revamp tenure and restrict government spending. The rejection of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2005 initiatives sent a message that tangling with the…
Lakeside has a new school leader, a Los Angeles native who’s familiar with the rural county town. The Lakeside Union School District Governing Board officially appointed Andy Johnsen as the district’s superintendent at its meeting on March 8. Johnsen replaces David Lorden, who started in 2013 and left the district in 2017. The district serves…
Eric Hall to Present at CASBO Workshop
March 12, 2018
CASBO colleagues are meeting for a morning of training at the LACOE Education Center on Friday, March 16. Eric Hall will be just one of the presenters at this informative workshop. Other sessions include negotiation nuances, Local Control Funding Formula hot topics, charter school oversight, facilities and bonds best practices, holding onto your assets, Microsoft…
State Allocation Board February 2018 Meeting
March 12, 2018
The State Allocation Board (SAB) held a relatively uneventful meeting yesterday, February 28, 2018, with some good news and only one action item. The Executive Officer reported that the spring general obligation bond sale will close on March 15, 2018. The Office of Public School Construction staff anticipates receiving proceeds from this sale to provide…
…Tinker v. Des Moines is the overriding court case involving free speech in school. But there’s a big difference between the merits of Tinker and what we’re seeing now: Mary Beth Tinker was a 13-year-old middle-schooler who rallied classmates to wear black armbands in condemnation of the Vietnam War. When she and others refused to…
Wednesday is the National School Walkout. What does this mean to San Diego County? Well, it could mean that if you can’t ban ‘em, collaborate with ‘em. While some U.S. school districts are trying to prevent students from participating in Wednesday’s National School Walkout, most San Diego County schools have taken a kinder, gentler, more…
An Opinion by Al Mijares, the Orange County Superintendent of Schools. The stakes are too high to rest for a second on this issue, and we owe our kids nothing less. More than anything, we owe it to our students to provide them with safe and secure campuses where learning thrives. Moreover, we owe it…