When I first started working here, someone told me Voice of San Diego was like a prickly cactus. It’s nice to look at but no one wants to get too close.
In other words, if one of our reporters was calling, it probably wasn’t for a fun feature.
That comment stuck with me. I had just left the Union-Tribune where I wrote stories about San Diego’s neighborhoods: a backpack giveaway, community gardens, San Ysidro’s charro culture and stories of people working to improve their neighborhoods. (Don’t worry, I also pissed people off for reporting on things that weren’t working.)
Our mission at Voice of San Diego is investigative journalism for a better San Diego. We are hard on our region and its leaders because we believe we can do better and we stand for everything on this list.
We also see the value in uplifting solutions and individuals tackling big problems.
This week, our little cactus bloomed.
The Acorn Awards
For eight years now, we’ve been publishing a guide to San Diego County Schools. It’s an annual publication for parents filled with how-to articles, explainers and data.
We worked with our partners at UC San Diego to create a special metric that compares student income to test scores. This matters because it’s a well-known fact that students in wealthier communities perform better on tests than children in poor neighborhoods.
We use the metric to identify outliers. Schools that are performing well despite the challenges of the families they serve.
This year, we picked the schools in the county that performed the best on our income vs. test score metric and awarded them during our inaugural Acorn Awards.
Our intern Rami Alarian wrote profiles on each of the winners. Education reporter Jakob McWhinney also published a feature on Helix Charter High School, a winner of three of our awards. You can read those stories here.
Related: You can download our A Parent’s Guide to San Diego Schools here for free.
Get your cafecito, here’s everything else you need to know to start your week.
County Contractor Drama Cont.
Investigative reporter Lisa Halverstadt revealed this week that way before the leader of a nonprofit became the focus of a misappropriation scandal, contract partners and staffers were dealing with missed payments.
Background: As we reported, Harm Reduction Coalition’s finance chief Amy Knox is facing charges for allegedly spending at least $210,000 in public funds on personal expenses. The nonprofit contracted with the county of San Diego to distribute an overdose reversal drug.
Halverstadt learned that nonprofits that partnered with Harm Reduction Coalition to do that work had reported the unpaid bills to the county. But the county directed the organizations to bring those concerns to the Harm Reduction Coalition.
A county spokesperson told Halverstadt that it was the organization’s responsibility to pay workers and subcontractors.
You can read the full story here.
Top Cop on the Pod
San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl is joining us on the podcast. We have a lot of questions for him, but if there’s something you’d like me to ask, send me a note at andrea.sanchez@voiceofsandiego.org.
ICYMI: VOSD Podcast hosts Scott Lewis and Jakob McWhinney interviewed San Diego Unified School District trustees Shana Hazan and Cody Petterson this week. You can listen to the conversation here or watch it on YouTube.
Women Leading the Conversation
Last year, I had the honor of leading a conversation between some of San Diego’s most powerful and interesting women. We are hosting the event again and it’s not too late for you to grab a ticket. It’s all going down on Thursday, March 26, at 5:30 p.m. at the Farmer & Seahorse Illumina Theatre.
Here’s the speaker line up:
- Angela Shafer-Payne, vice president and chief development officer with the San Diego Regional Airport Authority
- Fabiola Bagula, superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District
- Erica Pinto, chairperson of the Jamul Indian Village of California
- Maya Madsen, founder and owner of Maya’s Cookies
We hope to see you there, chismosos! Get your ticket here before we sell out.