School board members Richard Barrera and John Lee Evans weren’t the only ones traveling to plead for school cash this week: Board members Shelia Jackson, John de Beck and Katherine Nakamura accompanied Superintendent Terry Grier and spokesman Bernie Rhinerson to Washington, D.C. over the weekend.
Rhinerson filled me in on the details:
- Grier met with Obama’s education czar Arne Duncan alongside other superintendents to learn how San Diego Unified can increase its chances of snagging education funding from the feds. Here’s a photo to prove they didn’t make it up.
- School board members kibitzed with the Council of the Great City Schools and visited the offices of both California senators, four local representatives and the chairman of a House committee on education to ask them to make sure that California legislators keep their grubby hands off the stimulus money meant for school districts.
Okay, Rhinerson didn’t put it that way. “Our concern was that the state was going to hold up the state stabilization dollars that are supposed to go directly to the districts,” he said. “We’re asking everyone to push the governor on it.”
Looks like it worked: Twenty-six U.S. Representatives sent Arnold Schwarzenegger a letter the next day asking him to make sure that the money gets to school districts as soon as possible. Check out the letter here.
I’ll find out more about the costs and outcomes of the trip tomorrow.