Your Bright and Early comes earlier than usual because I’m headed out the door for a 7:15am high school calculus class. You might think I’m crazy, but I really do love my job. Now for your newsblitz:
- We blog on the looming deficit for San Diego Unified for next school year — a figure that could run from $119 million to $175 million. And that’s not all: The school district has to find nearly $17 million for the current year to offset overspending. The Union-Tribune reports on the deficit too, along with City News Service.
- Marsha Sutton at San Diego News Network opines that zero tolerance policies for discipline don’t make any sense. Truthout takes on the larger topic of whether schools’ disciplinary practices “closely resemble the culture of prisons.”
- State Assemblyman Marty Block held a forum last night at Hoover High to gather testimony about changes in how San Diego State admits students that critics worry will disadvantage locals. KPBS reports that a key question seems to be how — or whether — the university consulted anyone before making the change.
- San Francisco schools were denied millions of dollars last year after state inspectors found that they were violating the complex rules for the federally subsidized school lunch program, the Chronicle writes. Nothing was wrong with the lunches: Schools had failed to follow rules by letting children walk off with too few items or failing to serve milk.
- If you think San Diego Unified has conflict problems, read this: A Sacramento-area school district born from the merger of several smaller districts is suing the former attorney for one of the school districts that joined up to create it, the Bee reports. They claim the attorney is withholding files that belong to them.
- Education Week reports that the feds are turning to experts and the public to help them develop common tests to use nationwide. This would be a big change from the system under No Child Left Behind, in which each state has its own tests, making it difficult to compare how different states and school districts are doing.
- The Tennessean writes that a program designed to lure more experienced teachers to poor schools by offering them more money hasn’t worked in Nashville. In fact, the opposite has happened: in the last year poorer children have been more likely to be taught by less experienced teachers.
- Bargaining between the D.C. school district and its teachers union has ground to a halt, the Washington Post reports. Fallout from teacher layoffs doesn’t seem to have helped.