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Saturday, August 7, 2010

The lone school board race, a West Oakland charter and other board news The Education Report

The Education Report

The lone school board race, a West Oakland charter and other board news

By Katy Murphy
Friday, August 6th, 2010 at 7:25 pm in School board news

Gary YeeBen Visnick
At the City Clerk’s Office today, I learned that a handful of people are running for Oakland school board after all!
But it’s not a big day for democracy: Few Oaklanders, it seems, want a piece of the board’s renewed governing power and responsibility. Only one of the three incumbents — Gary Yee, in District 4 — will be challenged in November. Ben Visnick, the previous Oakland teacher union president, is taking him on.
That means David Kakishiba (District 2), who almost stepped down last fall because of a conflict-of-interest ruling by the school district’s general counsel, and Chris Dobbins (District 6), who was censured by his fellow board members in 2007

Serious math

By Katy Murphy
Thursday, August 5th, 2010 at 6:46 pm in Algebra/Math, students

Over the years, I feel like I’ve come to know you — your political leanings and life experiences, your writing style, sense of humor and average snark level. But what about your math skills?
For example: Can you (or any high school student you know) do this?
Show that there are only finitely many triples (x, y, z) of positive integers satisfying the equation abc = 2009(a + b + c).
Or this?