Just to let my loyal readers know, the blog will be a little slow this week — I’m working on a big project that has me running out to schools, poring over data and (wo)manning the phones. But I’m lining up some guest bloggers on a really interesting debate. Stay tuned!
- We blog the breaking news from the San Diego Unified school board meeting: Schools have stopped giving any information to military recruiters until the district has investigated — and if necessary, fixed — the alleged practice of giving forms to parents that have “yes” already checked for giving student information to the military.
- San Diego Unified also picked an interim deputy superintendent last night, an employee who now oversees elementary school principals. Want more details from the meeting? Check out my Twitter feed.
- Carlsbad kiddos are getting to tinker with robots thanks to a new grant, the North County Times reports. They are made out of “high-tech Lego bricks,” which sounds like the coolest thing ever.
- The NCT also reports that San Pasqual schools are doing some soul-searching about what they want in their next superintendent, with help from the County Office of Education.
- A south Sacramento middle school had more suspensions than any other school in Northern California, the Bee writes. Is that a good thing? Most discipline experts are trying to move away from suspension because it takes kids out of class. (Check out how San Diego Unified is handling behavior, for instance.) But the school argues that it’s using suspension to nip problems in the bud and keep the campus peaceful.
- The Santa Cruz Sentinel reports that a California state senator went to D.C. to assure the feds that if his bill gets Schwarzenegger’s signature, the state will qualify for a second batch of school stimulus dollars that states are competing for, called Race to the Top.
- A teacher who refused training to help teach children with limited English can be fired, a state appeals court ruled yesterday. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the San Joaquin County teacher argued that the training was unnecessary because no English learner had ever tried to sign up for her high school music class.
- The New York Times visits the school cafeteria kitchen and explores why it’s so hard to cook schoolchildren meals from scratch.
- NPR continues its series on teachers with this lovely piece about a former Citigroup vice president who is becoming an elementary school teacher, one of many people who are being lured to teaching from other professions.
- And I nearly missed this piece from the Salt Lake Tribune about the turnaround of a struggling Utah elementary school, the first in the state to be restructured under No Child Left Behind. The school, which has a large Native American population, now works more closely with the Ute tribe.