I got the flu shot on Monday and yet am still nasally challenged today. The perils of covering schools! I don’t know how teachers do it! Luckily, the best medicine is a cavalcade of education news:
- We blog about the school board opting to delay renovations and repairs at schools and keep the schedule for installing technology intact in San Diego Unified. The tough choices come as the flow of money from its facilities bond, approved by voters last November, has slowed with dropping property values.
- We also blog about a new competitor for school board member Katherine Nakamura’s seat on the San Diego Unified board: Kevin Beiser, a Sweetwater middle school math teacher.
- The Union-Tribune reports that an assistant principal is on leave from Helix High in La Mesa while police investigate claims that the administrator was connected to a teen running away. The school has been racked by sex scandals involving students and adults before; police say there is nothing of a sexual nature this time.
- A Baptist church from Kansas known for its anti-gay, anti-military and anti-Semitic protests is coming to San Diego next week — and they’re planning to picket the San Diego High complex, the San Diego News Network reports. A local art student is planning to counter that demonstration with a noisy gathering to drown them out.
- Five teachers who were laid off because of budget cuts are suing a Sacramento-area district, claiming that the school district illegally filled jobs that should have gone to them, the Bee reports. The school system counters that it is free to give out temporary teaching jobs without pulling from the list of jettisoned teachers.
- ProPublica writes about a government watchdog report that finds that many states are using school stimulus money to reduce what they chip in for education — not to add to it as the feds had intended.
- The Associated Press reports that school closures, meant to help reform Chicago education, have thrown rival gangs together and may have fed escalating violence there, including the beating death of a Chicago teen.