voiceofsandiego.org: Schooled... Trying to Eliminate Auditors Who Aren't ThereAuditors say there's one small problem with the idea of San Diego Unified saving money by cutting auditors who look at issues other than finances: It doesn’t have any.
Eliminating those employees was one recommendation from the BRACE Team, which scrubbed the school district budget for savings that will impact the fewest number of children possible. It also recommended ending the fraud hotline, which allows anonymous callers to report financial waste and abuse. Cuts to the audits and investigations department would save the district $448,000, according to the report.
Few universities make required reports to the government about the financial conflicts of their researchers, and even when such conflicts are reported, university administrators rarely require those researchers to eliminate or reduce these conflicts, government investigators found.
In a report expected to be made public on Thursday, Daniel R. Levinson, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, said 90 percent of universities relied solely on the researchers themselves to decide whether the money they made in consulting and other relationships with drug and device makers was relevant to their government-financed research.
NUTLEY -- To save money in the district’s $59 million budget, two Nutley board of education members want to pin some parents with the detention bills.The board members, Steven Rogers and Walter Sautter, say they are hoping to adopt a policy by next school year that would charge parents for detention, which they estimate costs the district $10,000 a year in overtime and maintenance fees.
"It may not seem like a lot of money, but it adds up over time," Rogers said. "Parents need to step up to the plate and to be held responsible and accountable for their children’s habitual actions."
During a board meeting last month, Rogers, who also works as a police officer in town, and Sautter, a former science teacher at Nutley High School, outlined a proposal to fine parents whose children are consistently sent to after-school detention. Rogers and Sautter have not determined the size of the fines or how to define a student who is habitually in detention.
The proposal, which is being reviewed by the school board’s attorney, would be the first of its kind in the state, said Frank Bellusciop, spokesman for the New Jersey School Board Association.
The idea has drawn opposition from other board members and residents who say detention is an integral part of a public education.
"I understand what they’re trying to do, because we’re very conscious of the budget, and there’s going to be a tremendous amount that we’re going to have to cut in the upcoming year," said board member Kenneth Reilly. "But I don’t think it’s legal, because we’re responsible for detention."
Belluscio said although districts may charge for some extracurricular activities and field trips, charging for detention may be in violation of the state Constitution.
"Discipline is part of a public education," he said. "Since detention would have to be used to enforce discipline, it is doubtful that you could charge for that, the same way you can’t charge for someone taking a history class or math class."
That's $26,000 for a single year at a University of California campus, not the four usually needed to graduate. The UC Board of Regents voted today to increase basic education fees for undergraduates by 32% to more than $10,000 for the 20010-11 academic year. Throw in the roughly $16,000 per year required for room, board and books, and the UC system fees approach $30,000 per year -- and feel a lot like the cost of an Ivy League education with few of the perks. (None of this is to say, mind you, that the regents won't be forced to raise fees again in 2010, with the state facing a massive budget deficit of $21 billion over the next year and a half.)
CHICAGO (WBBM) -- Evidence of gunshot residue on Michael Scott's left hand offers the strongest indication to date that the Chicago Board of Education President took his own life. But, the Chicago Sun-Times reports, the family of the Chicago School Board president was weighing an independent autopsy nonetheless.
Police have determined that the .380 caliber gun found beneath Scott's body had belonged to Scott for nearly three decades, and say gunshot residue was found on Scott's left hand.
Despite that, Police Supt. Jody Weis said Wednesday that he wants to see the results of ballistics tests and video surveillance cameras, which he expects next week, before concluding that Scott shot himself in the head.
Tavon Frazier is a skinny 9-year-old squirming in front of his Styrofoam lunch tray. He's eaten most of his chicken taco and his friends, all wearing the navy polo shirts of East Oakland's Korematsu Discovery Academy, are wiggling around him, chewing on their flour tortillas and nibbling on baby carrots. Tavon didn't stop at the salad bar on his way to the cafeteria table today. He says sometimes he'll get applesauce when they have it, but mostly he doesn't like vegetables, especially broccoli and carrots. His ideal cafeteria meal would be "donuts and cupcakes and a cake," he says with a mischievous sideways grin.
Tavon Frazier
Efforts to make sure that Tavon doesn't end up eating donuts every day and maybe even learns to like broccoli are underway in Oakland's public schools, though how successful these efforts will be remains to be seen. Between a convoluted and chronically underfunded system, divergent visions for what exactly healthy food is, and a cast of characters that range from bureaucrats to poor kids to soccer moms to farm-to-table visionaries, the school food situation in Oakland is messy. But the consequences for inaction are no joke.
