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Things sure aren’t going well at the Harriet Tubman Village Charter school. After yet another firing last month, the school is looking to hire its fourth principal in eighteen months.
Charter schools have a certain level of autonomy but after controversy last year, the school board San Diego Unified School District inserted its own appointee to Harriet Tubman’s governing board.
Former school staff members at the school say the appointee has become the biggest problem. Aimee Nimtz, the parent the school district appointed, immediately took control of the school and has forced out three principals. District staff sent a letter warning the school that things need to improve, calling the situation a “systemic failure of leadership.’
Mario Koran has more in a new story.
Tijuana Looks to Transit Upgrades
After years of talk but little progress, it looks like Tijuana is slowly but surely improving its public transit system.
Maya Srikrishnan reports that amid its ongoing urban renaissance, Tijuana is now building a high-quality bus rapid transit line – dedicated bus lanes and large stations reminiscent of rail transit—and is moving forward with plans for their own light-rail line, too.
But as the city gets better at moving people around its own streets, there are concerns that planning at the border isn’t keeping pace.
“That’s still the question,” said Oscar Cortes, executive coordinator of Binational Relations for the Federation of Civil Engineers from Mexico. “How to connect it with the border? It’s not connected. The BRT is only integrated with the city streets.”
Crossing into the Border Report
We’ve launched a bimonthly newsletter covering everything that’s happening around the border. Go sign up for it.
The first installment summarizes the three stories Srikrishnan’s written in the last week on urban development in Tijuana.
But the new Border Report comes just in time for the long-awaited opening Wednesday of the new cross-border airport terminal, plus details on a new group of self-appointed border security guards in Arizona calling themselves Recon, reports that there’s been an uptick in immigrants from Central American countries apprehended at the border and other border details.
News Roundup
• The City Auditors office released a letter Monday saying the city’s library system lacks strong policies on basic governance like security, inventory, purchasing and revenue collection (San Diego Union-Tribune).
• Council President Sherri Lightner will remain council president in 2016. She took the seat a year ago by joining her vote with Council Republicans, ousting ally Councilman Todd Gloria from the position in the process.
• The City Attorney’s office announced Monday it had fined eight San Diego sushi restaurants a combined $19,000 because they were selling crawfish and other seafood as lobster. (San Diego Union-Tribune) U-T writer Chris Reed pointed out to us that New York City teenagers in 2008 figured out that such scams were somewhat commonplace, using a relatively simple technique to check the genetic fingerprints of fish sold at sushi restaurants. (New York Times)
• Carlsbad voters will go to the polls in February for a special election to determine the fate of a new shopping center in the area. Now, the language they’ll face on the ballot describing the cases for and against the project are official.
• European bars on Monday tapped beers from San Diego-favorite Stone Brewing Co. that were brewed in the company’s new Berlin brewery. (KPBS)
• There’s a new economic impact study out, and as economic impact studies tend to do, it shows that the industry under study provides a big impact, economically speaking. This one looks at the local value of the San Diego shipbuilding industry. The $1.75 billion industry is growing, the study found. (KPBS)