The Education Newsblitz: Shifting Money Away From Gifted Kids

Keep sending us your burning questions for the school board candidates for our forum on May 20! Now for the newsblitz:

• We blog that a pattern earlier noted in the San Francisco Chronicle — schools shifting money away from gifted programs to cover budget cuts — has also happened here, in Poway schools. 
• We also blog that the school board unanimously condemned the recent Arizona immigration law. The Union-Tribune gives some more details about the Arizona law and the public arguments over whether the school district should have passed this resolution.
• Marsha Sutton at SDNN highlights one moment of levity in the debate over the Arizona resolution: John de Beck saying that for once, he agreed with former Superintendent Alan Bersin.
• City News Service writes that a grand jury report found that San Pasqual Academy, a school for foster youth, is effective but underused.
• Escondido Union School District is getting a prestigious county award for its use of iPod Touches in the classroom, the North County Times reports.
• Also in the North County Times: Oceanside schools finalized layoffs for 61 of its teachers.
• The Arizona governor signed another controversial law yesterday, this one banning ethnic studies classes from schools, the Los Angeles Times writes.
• Educated Guess blogs that virtual schools face < a href=”http://educatedguess.org/blog/2010/05/12/bricks-and-clicks-part-two/”>stifling rules that were meant to clamp down on independent study scams, but hybrid schools that have a physical building and online classes may be able to sidestep those rules.
• The city of San Francisco is bulking up its summer programs after local schools cut back on summer school, the Chronicle writes.
• Also in the San Francisco Chronicle: San Francisco teachers agreed to four furlough days this year and next to help cut down on the number of teacher layoffs. (San Diego teachers made a similar agreement with five furlough days a year.) And a state grant for foster children is in trouble.
• Texas schools are facing questions about whether they’ve been dubbing some dropouts as homeschoolers, masking the true depth of its dropout problem, the Houston Chronicle reports.
• And the Hechinger Report hosts an op-ed on why we need a K-16 system.

— EMILY ALPERT