When the San Diego Unified School District announced its official graduation rate this week, it did something unusual.
It also released a page of “important facts” about what goes into graduation rates, organized into a series of questions a concerned citizen might ask about the numbers.
It was intended as a response to the last few months of reporting by our Mario Koran on the things that are and aren’t included in the news that the district had a 91 percent graduation rate in 2016. The district doesn’t mention VOSD or Koran directly or indirectly, but it’s pretty clear.
On the podcast this week, Sara Libby and I go through some of Koran’s most significant findings, and break down how the district chose to obliquely respond to them. It was an interesting maneuver, to say the least.
We also broke down Ashly McGlone’s latest findings in her months-long investigation into FieldTurf, the company that makes artificial turf fields that a bunch of local schools have purchased. The fields have been failing way ahead of schedule, and upgraded fields that schools bought to avoid those problems are now having their own problems too.
Plus, the lead proponents for and against San Diego’s major pension reform initiative from 2012 joined the show to break down this week’s big from a state appeal court upholding the city’s reform plan. Michael Zucchet, head of the city union that challenged the initiative, and April Boling, a lead proponent of the citizens’ initiative, joined the show to analyze the ruling and game out its implications.
Hero of the Week: Steve Fisher, who retired as the San Diego State University’s head basketball coach this week after an 18-year career in which he transformed the program into a national player.
Goat of the Week: the city of Oceanside, for seemingly backpedaling on a plan to pursue a road diet on Coast Highway. We gave the city hero status a year ago for the same project, but promised at the time we’d make the city a goat if it lost its nerve. We had no choice.