One San Diego elementary school is defying a common statistic: That a family’s wealth and student success are inextricably linked.
More than 90 percent of the students at Edison Elementary School in City Heights qualify for free or reduced-price meals, a common measure of student poverty. Even more shocking – 21 percent of its students are homeless.
Yet on average, Edison Elementary students scored slightly better in English and well above average in math than the San Diego Unified School District average.
Our Jakob McWhinney looked into Edison’s “secret sauce” for the debut of The Progress Report, a new column about innovations in education that he’ll publish monthly.
One reason is that Edison’s teachers are dedicated and experienced.
“Often, schools in poorer areas tend to be de facto training grounds. New teachers often start in poorer schools and then bolt to wealthier ones as soon as they’re senior enough to have a choice,” McWhinney writes. “At Edison, the opposite seems true.”
And, those teachers have developed a system of trust and collaboration – where the school’s counselor debriefs teachers on areas where the school community could improve based on her assessments of struggling students.
Read the first Progress Report here.
If Rain Had Fur, San Diego Gets a ‘Kindle’ of a Storm
A kindle is another word for a litter of kittens, their small pattering of paws akin to the kind of rains San Diego should expect this month.
March storms are expected to “roar” through the mountains of northern California. A rare blizzard warning has been issued for the Sierra, which could see as much as 10 feet of snow at the highest peaks by Sunday.
But that same band of moisture will enter San Diego with a “meow,” writes Robert Krier for Voice of San Diego. Strong winds are expected in the mountains, but from late Friday through Sunday, forecasters predict no more than a quarter inch of rain will fall at the coast in the North County, and likely less than a tenth of an inch in the South County.
The state as a whole appears to be headed for a rare, second-straight wet year (the first time since 2010 and 2011), which is making water managers happy and turning talk of drought and water rationing into a distant memory.
Read the latest about the winter rains here.
San Diego Gas and Electric Posts Record Profits, Again.
For San Diego’s investor-owned utility and energy grid builder, 2023 was another record-breaking profit-making year. The company made $936 million, the Union-Tribune reports. That’s $21 million more than the company made in 2022.
SDG&E is a subsidiary of Sempra, a natural gas company that, among other things, builds and maintains liquified natural gas infrastructure along the Gulf Coast. In a call with investors this week, CEO Jeff Martin said the company was in “great shape.”
SDG&E’s customers, however, still face very high energy bills as the company that’s largely shifted toward building and maintaining infrastructure fortifies the grid against wildfires and prepares for mass electrification to meet the state’s climate goals. The company makes a guaranteed return on investment for pretty much anything it builds.
In a statement, Sempra spokeswoman Katie Nieri said affordability remains “top of mind” for the company.
“Our utility subsidiaries are focused on delivering solutions to customers, including shareholder-funded assistance programs and income-qualified bill discounts for those with financial hardships,” Nieri wrote.
But a local group that’s trying to replace SDG&E with a publicly-owned utility in the city of San Diego, called Power San Diego, called Sempra’s posted profits a reason to “dump SDG&E.”
In Other News
- A statewide ballot measure could strip Imperial Valley communities of any benefits reaped from companies extracting lithium beneath the Salton Sea. Lithium is the favored metal for electric vehicle and energy grid battery storage, reports Philip Salata of inewsource. The measure, called the Taxpayer Protection Government Accountability Act, is backed by multi-billion firms with interests in cutting taxes for their own benefit like Blackstone Property Partners, the real estate arm of the huge international investment firm .
- A 12-year-old Cajon Valley Union School District student faces expulsion for a Snapchat post about a fight between her and another student. The student argued in an interview with CBS 8 that the expulsion violates her rights to free speech. The student and her father plan on making this case at a March 1 hearing.
- San Diego home sales hit a record low as the median home price rose slightly, reports the Union-Tribune. January is tied with last January as the lowest-ever sales month since 1988.
- March begins the start of the migratory bird season along the Pacific Flyway which stretches from Alaska to Patagonia. San Diego is a prime pit stop for fowl to rest their wings. The Union-Tribune rounded-up a list of seven birds to watch for in the coming weeks.
- Frontier Airlines announced a new non-stop flight from San Diego to El Paso, Texas beginning in May. (Union-Tribune)
The Morning Report was written by MacKenzie Elmer. It was edited by Andrea Lopez-Villafaña.