I ended my weekend saying goodbye to Voicester Will Carless — we’ll miss him. Now, with a little mistiness, on to your local education news.
We interview longtime principal Wendell Bass, now retired — and readers call him a mensch. School board member John de Beck answers readers’ questions at SDNN. And if you missed it on Friday, a judge has confirmed an earlier ruling that would effectively give former County Office of Education employee Rodger Hartnett his job and salary back. But the County Office says that won’t happen yet: They’re going to appeal it.
The Los Angeles Times editorializes that schools need to shape up and fix pension problems and a restrictive teachers’ contract before asking voters to pay a parcel tax. California schools are getting IOUs instead of cash, but it probably won’t be a problem — for now. The San Jose Mercury News reports on a grand jury report blasting a school board for creating a “hostile, authoritarian environment” in a tiny district. The San Francisco Chronicle opines in favor of a bill that would continue to allow districts to accept children from outside their geographic borders. And the Sacramento Bee explains the reason why lawmakers are weighing whether to suspend Prop. 98, a law that guarantees minimal school funding.
The New York Times examines problems with credit recovery programs in the Big Apple. Education Week reports that when it comes to stimulus money, the feds are relaxing rules that normally require school districts to fork over some of their federal money for economically disadvantaged kids for outside tutoring and other programs. USA Today writes about arguments that Chicago schools never improved as much as Obama and his education czar, who hails from the Windy City, have asserted. And a blogger at Eduwonk raises a fascinating question: Isn’t the whole federal push for schools to be “innovative” in direct conflict with the mandate to make sure that reforms are based in research?