The Morning Report
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Our comments sections on stories and commentaries regularly light up with your discussion of the issues, so every week we highlight a sample, hoping you’ll take a tour and join in. Hope you’ll register to comment!
Here are five from the week:
• Amy Redding on “What Nathan Fletcher Wants to Do for Schools“:
Of all the mayoral candidates, Nathan Fletcher is in a very unique position with respect to the educational debate. As a member of the state assembly, he can influence education and budget decisions in Sacramento that affect the children in San Diego. If there ever is a time to work some bipartisan magic with respect to education and the state budget, now is the time. With the decisions that have been made both locally and at the state level, San Diego Unified students in the coming years are faced with cuts that will devastate the quality of their education. Increased funding from the state may not be able to save San Diego Unified, but in the very least it can help cushion the fall for the innocent victims in this situation — the children.
• Angela Carter on “Teachers Union President: No Concessions Planned“:
I’m glad to see that the pressure from members is prompting Bill (Freeman) to finally go on the record that we’re not making concessions. I am still worried by the letter from John Lee Evans. It is obvious that previous conversations have happened between Bill and John, and that those conversations have left John with the understanding that concessions are coming. I am also wondering why the union’s leadership seems so lost in fighting to get jobs back. Saying no concessions, no layoffs is fine, but that means we need a plan to make it happen like we’ve had in past years. Where is it? For the record, I’m glad Camille (Zombro) is going public with her concerns. We pay union dues, and deserve to have the people who spend them held accountable. Camille got us this contract. I don’t want to see Bill give it away.
• Benjamin Katz on “Mayor Wants New Fees for Public Info“:
This can only be seen as a failure of the Sanders administration. They have spent tens of millions of dollars on IT “modernization.” If they had actually modernized successfully, pulling public records should be cheap, quick and easy.
Google sells the “Google Search Appliance” — which puts the power of Google on to your local network. By purchasing one of these, we could make every document in the city of San Diego quickly searchable. Of course, we’d need to take some steps to protect confidential information, but the entire situation shows a failure of imagination and failure of technical expertise.
And the cost for a Google appliance… less than 1% of what the city spent on their “modernization” efforts.
• Oscar Ramos on “What Bonnie Dumanis Wants to Do for Schools“:
It doesn’t matter how many people you stack on the school board if my students are homeless or come from families with under/unemployed parents and they have no place to get tutoring after school or access the internet. If our students’ parents were employed and their families had healthy food to eat and they lived in a neighborhood that was safe with libraries that were open for them to access and had academic enrichment programs for different ages, don’t you think that our students would have more academic success? And if our schools had more academic success, there wouldn’t be this exodus of families going to Poway for the schools. I’m digressing, but my point is that the mayor can do plenty for education without wading into school board politics.
• Theresa Quiroz on “Letter: What Makes You Think They Want to Fix Pensions?“:
I always suggest to anyone who will listen — if you do not FULLY understand ALL of the provisions of a ballot initiative then vote NO. It is better to wait and try again with one you do understand than to vote for something that has a poison pill in it.
Statements have been lightly edited to fix spelling errors and typos.
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Dagny Salas is the web editor at Voice of San Diego. You can contact her directly at dagny.salas@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.550.5669.
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