San Diego Unified will use more than $7 million in redevelopment money to help cancel some planned layoffs for teachers and counselors, a move that city redevelopment officials argue is illegal.
The school board opted to peel back some of its planned cuts even as it braces for a deficit that could be much worse than it had thought. San Diego Unified estimates in the worst case it could face as much as $55 million in added cuts on top of the roughly $120 million in cuts it has already planned for.
"We've got to get real," said school board member Scott Barnett. He and John Lee Evans voted against the move. Barnett called it a shortsighted decision that would hurt schools in the long run. Financial experts outside San Diego Unified have warned school districts against writing off any possible cuts.
Barnett wasn't the only one with qualms. The Centre City Development Corp., the city downtown redevelopment agency that collects the money, has argued that it cannot be spent on teachers.
California Watch has published a stunning series about earthquake safety in schoolsacross the state. It's a truly phenomenal piece of journalism, the kind of stuff that inspires me to work harder, dig deeper and ask tougher questions. Here were some ofits key findings:
State regulators have routinely failed to enforce California's landmark earthquake safety law for public schools, allowing children and teachers to occupy buildings with structural flaws and potential safety hazards reported during construction. Top management with the Division of the State Architect - the chief regulator of school construction - for years did nothing about nearly 1,100 building projects that its own supervisors had red-flagged. Safety