Bright and Early

It’s better than coffee, I’ve heard it argued. Launch into your week with the school newsblitz!

• Sweetwater school board members will discuss behind closed doors whether Superintendent Jesus Gandara violated his contract by quietly interviewing for a job in Austin, the Union-Tribune reports. If you missed the exacting reporting on this from the Chula Vista Star News, you should check it out.
• We blog that the long and winding case of a former San Diego County Office of Education employee takes another twist.
• Also in the UT: University of California students protest upped fees due to the schools’ budget crisis. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that some of the increased fees break the universities’ own rules.
• The Los Angeles Times writes about the awkward situation of having two schools on the same campus, one of them a charter, the other a magnet school. Both were once the same Los Angeles Unified school.
• And Los Angeles Unified is asking employees to take a 12 percent pay cut in the future to offset budget cuts, the Los Angeles Times writes.
• San Juan Unified schools are debating whether students can leave campus for confidential medical services without parental consent, including abortion, birth control and treatment for sexual assault, the Sacramento Bee reports. The same issue came up here in San Diego two years ago.
• Education Week zeroes in on peer review: teachers evaluating other teachers. It’s existed for a long time but has attracted more and more interest as reformers focus on teacher evaluation.
• The New York Times reports that teachers are selling their lesson plans online. One professor worries about what that does to the teaching community.
• I heard this story Friday on the radio and had no idea it was this old. Still a good one, though. NPR delves into how the Cristo Rey Catholic schools make work a mandatory part of the school week.
• Jay Mathews at the Washington Post says calling kids ““at-promise”” instead of “at-risk” may seem silly, but it might not be a bad idea.

— EMILY ALPERT