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If even a small portion of parents choose not to send their kids back to traditional schools this fall, districts could face a massive funding crisis beyond the budget crunches they already confront.
When superintendents of the six largest school districts in the state wrote to lawmakers last month demanding that more money is needed to safely reopen schools, they also asked the state to “authorize school districts to earn average daily attendance using a three-year rolling average of ADA.”
Right now, when a student attends school, districts receive the funding attached to them. When they don’t, districts lose out. With districts warning that online learning may continue in some form for the coming school year, there’s potential for a new online market where providers compete to help parents deliver the best education possible, reports VOSD’s Scott Lewis. Other parents might be too nervous to send their kids back to physical school spaces and seek out charter or homeschool alternatives.
“In that letter, the districts were asking that the state protect them from what could happen to their funding not from the budget cuts but from the loss of students they may experience. It was a subtle acknowledgement of a real nightmare in the works for them,” Lewis writes.
What You Should Know About Curfews
Four cities in the central and eastern parts of San Diego County declared curfews as early as 7 p.m. Monday. It was the third straight day of curfew for La Mesa following a night of looting and arson Saturday night.
State law allows for cities and counties to impose these curfews during a state of emergency “to provide for the protection of life and property.” They limit the right to gather and protest, but could even ban bike rides, dog-walking and grocery shopping.
VOSD contributor Randy Dotinga looked into the history of curfews in San Diego, and what residents can and can’t do when they’re in place.
Weber: There’s a ‘Pandemic of Hate’ Against Black Americans
Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, a statewide police reform leader who last year passed a law changing the legal standards guiding police use of deadly force, gave an impassioned speech in Sacramento Tuesday and joined with other members of the California Legislative Black Caucus to urge their fellow lawmakers to prioritize a number of criminal justice bills.
Weber recalled seeing the National Guard in her Los Angeles neighborhood as a child in 1965 and the subsequent looting and attacks — similar to what we’re seeing today. She urged the public to acknowledge the 400-year history of enslavement and mistreatment of black people in the United States and its ongoing impact.
“This pandemic of hate has spread across the nation to every small city of America,” she said. “We are either going to face it to fight it, or find ourselves in the same position as before.”
Black Americans have fought in every war and contributed to the country’s moral conscience, she said, but they’re always the last through the door: “We are Americans without the privilege of being American.”
Among the bills that the caucus is pushing is ACA 5, which would place a measure on the November ballot to overturn the state’s ban on affirmative action. That effort, as Sara Libby noted in the Sacramento Report last week, was championed in the 1990s by former San Diego mayor Pete Wilson.
The caucus is also pushing SB 1392, which would attempt to rein in the practice of passing rogue police officers around agencies. VOSD was part of a statewide newsroom effort to investigate cops convicted of criminal offenses, and that was one of the takeaways of the series. The Mercury News reported that a small farming town had been home to a significant number of police running from their own criminal pasts.
In Other News
- The family of a 59-year-old woman who was hit in the face with a rubber bullet during weekend protests in La Mesa and is now in a medically induced coma is calling on the La Mesa Police Department officer who shot the projectile to be publicly identified, fired and charged with a crime. (City News Service)
- The County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to ask Gov. Gavin Newsom to let San Diego allow the opening of more businesses – like hotels, gyms and museums – as it progresses through the coronavirus pandemic. (City News Service)
- The floodgates are open. A day after Mayor Kevin Faulconer threw his support behind a proposed ballot measure that would reform SDPD oversight, District Attorney Summer Stephan did the same, the Union-Tribune’s Michael Smolens reported. The San Diego Police Officers Association, which blasted the measure to us when it was first proposed last year, also said it now supports the initiative.
- A tear gas canister exploded inside the County Administration Center, the home of the county government, in an apparent accident Sunday night while the Sheriff’s Department responded to downtown protests. The building was closed Monday and Tuesday as a result. (Union-Tribune)
- San Diego County extended its moratorium on evictions for both residential and commercial tenants Tuesday. A U.S. District Court judge this week dismissed claims against the county that alleged it violated fair housing laws by concentrating poverty in southeastern San Diego. The judge dismissed some similar claims against the city of San Diego, but allowed other claims against the city to move forward. (Union-Tribune)
The Morning Report was written by Megan Wood and Andrew Keatts, and edited by Sara Libby.