June gloom is best defeated by reading lots of education news, I always say. We report on how federal money for disadvantaged kids was used — staffers now say erroneously — to pay for the San Diego Unified superintendent to attend a D.C. conference and pick up the tab for gourmet meals of venison and “wagyu.” The North County Times writes that school employees in Poway have rejected a bid to lower their salaries because there is no guarantee of avoiding layoffs if they do. KPBS explains the push for San Diego Unified to match its graduation standards to what it takes to get into the University of California system, and we blog briefly about it here. And SDNN reports that Point Loma High students have won a competition to make films about water conservation — you can check out their winning film.
Zooming out to the state level: The Los Angeles Times editorializes in favor of a proposed law that would continue to allow kids to go to any school district that will accept them, arguing that it “could open a new era of entrepreneurship in education.” Community colleges around Sacramento are faring surprisingly well despite the budget woes, the Bee reports. The San Francisco Chronicle notes that schools have seen a significant drop in truancy among elementary school children, and one of the reasons is that the district is taking some parents of truants to court.
On the national stage, the New America Foundation, a think tank in D.C., releases a report on how and why inexperienced teachers frequently end up teaching in the neediest schools. Education Week turns a national eye to what local schools have been grappling with all year — things being really, really bad for school budgets in California. The Washington Post does a sweeping story on preschool and its impact. And does this news from Time Magazine mean that parents are going to start getting letters telling them to exhaust and stress out their kids before the SATs?