Hundreds protest proposed education cuts | Richmond Times-Dispatch

Hundreds protest proposed education cuts | Richmond Times-Dispatch

Singing along with Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It," hundreds of teachers, schoolchildren and supporters rallied at the state Capitol yesterday to protest proposed cuts in K-12 education.

The rally, the brainchild of an Orange County school bus driver, drew educators from counties across the state, such as Hanover and Henrico, Pulaski, Westmoreland and Fairfax.

On a blustery day at the Bell Tower, many held signs with messages such as: "Cuts hurt kids," "You can't spell 'governor' without a teacher," and, sarcastically, "Reopen rest stops -- flush a child's education."

The House of Delegates and the state Senate have two weeks to reconcile rival spending plans that feature deep cuts to K-12 education.

The House would cut aid to K-12 education by $620 million, the Senate by $418 million. Both sides say they would offset some of the cuts through retirement savings for localities.

Gov. Bob McDonnell, who had sought $731 million in K-12 cuts, told reporters in Lynchburg on Friday 

Castro: It's about school, kids

Castro: It's about school, kids

Before City Hall, before Harvard Law School, before Stanford University, Mayor Julián Castro was just another Hispanic kid in the San Antonio Independent School District.
His life mirrored that of many in the city's urban schools. He and his twin brother, Joaquín, also Stanford- and Harvard-educated and now a state representative, weren't the first in their family to go to college, but their mom — who has a graduate degree — was the sole financial supporter in their home.
Castro's grandmother took care of the boys while their mother worked. And while Rosie Castro made a name for herself as a community activist, it wasn't a role that brought home much money.
Castro is quick to tell you he wasn't special. He wasn't exceptionally gifted. But he worked hard and had role models around him who encouraged him to do his best and to keep college in his sights.
That's what he hopes to do for thousands of young San Antonians. Castro calls education a top priority and has backed it up with multiple initiatives focused on motivating young people.
“I want every child in San Antonio to be raised with the aspiration and expectation of going to college,” Castro said. “They won't all get there, but it should be everyone's goal.”
Castro isn't the first mayor to focus on education. The city budget has long included money for education, including funding for early-childhood and after-school programs, scholarships, literacy initiatives and job training.
Former Mayor Henry Cisneros was a driving force behind the creation of t

Nation & World | New school board may hit brake on busing | Seattle Times Newspaper

Nation & World | New school board may hit brake on busing | Seattle Times Newspaper

New school board may hit brake on busing

When Rosemarie Wilson moved her family to a wealthy suburb of Raleigh a couple of years ago, the biggest attraction was the prestige of...

By ROBBIE BROWN

The New York Times

RALEIGH, N.C. — When Rosemarie Wilson moved her family to a wealthy suburb of Raleigh a couple of years ago, the biggest attraction was the prestige of the public schools. Then she started talking to neighbors.

Don't believe the hype, they warned. Many were considering private schools. All pointed to an unusual desegregation policy, begun in 2000, in which some children from wealthy neighborhoods were bused to schools in poorer areas, and vice versa, to create economically diverse classrooms.

"Children from the 450 houses in our subdivision were being bused all across the city," said Wilson, for whom the final affront was a proposal by the Wake County Board of Education to send her two daughters to schools 17 miles from home.

She vented her anger at the polls, helping elect four new Republican-backed education board members last fall. Now in the majority, those board members are trying to make good on campaign promises to end Wake's nationally recognized income-based busing policy.

At stake is the direction of the 140,000-student school system, the largest in America to consider family income in school placements. Wake has long been the most prominent example of a district that dropped 

Coyote Chronicle - CSU system joins "Es el Momento" campaign

Coyote Chronicle - CSU system joins "Es el Momento" campaign

The CSU has joined Es El Momento (The Moment Is Now), a national multimedia campaign aimed at advancing the U.S. college graduation goal and increasing high school completion and college readiness among Latinos.

“What the Latino community needs is a set of tangible solutions that mentor Latino youth, educate parents about the nuts and bolts of getting to college, financial aid process and making the most of college,” said CSUSB assistant professor Louie F. Rodriguez.

The multi-year campaign was launched on Feb. 23 at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. and is being led by Univision Communications and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“We need to develop a situation where it is normal and expected that Latino youth will go to college, just like we see in middle-class communities," Rodriguez said.

“Increasing college readiness among Latinos is critical to meeting President Obama’s education goal of making the United States the leading nation in college degree holders by 2020,” said CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed. “CSU is committed to supporting this national effort by maintaining several ongoing initiatives to overcome students’ college barriers.”

The three-year effort will focus on creating a college-going culture among U.S. Latinos and setting expectations for high school completion and college readiness.

In this program parents will learn about the structure of California’s educational system, are trained to successfully establish relationships with school principals and teachers, and get tips on how to establish a home environment that is conductive to learning.

School budget cuts harm society - Community Voices - Modbee.com

School budget cuts harm society - Community Voices - Modbee.com

We all recognize that the very foundation of our democratic society is dependent on an educated citizenry. The freedoms we enjoy are contingent on each generation understanding their civic responsibilities. The 21st century global economy demands a highly skilled and educated workforce. Therefore it is incumbent on all of us to maintain the highest possible standards of education to support our leaders of tomorrow.

The reality is that no matter how much we value public education, California is facing an unprecedented inability to fund it adequately. We know that education is not alone in this challenge. Almost every sector of our state's economy is impacted by the financial meltdown. Sadly, many of you have lost your jobs, and we are all watching as essential health and safety services are being scaled back in our communities.

School boards are making extremely difficult decisions and parents are beginning to understand that their local schools may look different in the future. Employees in many school districts have been asked to take furloughs, and negotiations regarding salary concessions and shortened school years have begun in some districts.

Governor says racial incidents must stop - SignOnSanDiego.com

Governor says racial incidents must stop - SignOnSanDiego.com:

"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said the recent “horrific incidents” that have caused racial unrest at the University of California San Diego must stop.

“The acts of racism and intolerance that we have witnessed are completely unacceptable,” Schwarzenegger said in a statement released yesterday. “There is no excuse for this kind of behavior in our system of higher education or anywhere else and it will not be tolerated.”

Three recent episodes with racial overtones involving UCSD students have led many black students and others to say they now fear for their safety on campus.

The turmoil was sparked by an off-campus party Feb. 15, dubbed the “Compton Cookout,” that mocked Black History Month, and further stoked by a show on a student-run TV station that supported the party and called blacks ungrateful, using a racial slur. Then a noose was discovered Thursday night hanging in the UCSD"

Schools in state fired up over Day of Action Hostilities unwanted

Schools in state fired up over Day of Action

March 4th has gone viral.


The upcoming Day of Action to Defend Public Education - rallies, marches, teach-ins, even political theater - began as an idea on the UC Berkeley campus last fall and has caught fire up and down California, from elementary school to graduate school, and across two dozen states.
On the surface, Thursday's Day of Action seems likely to be an unprecedented show of unity among public education advocates at all levels who are angry that politicians and university officials with fingers on purse strings are letting the system decay.


"Everybody's coming together," said Callie Maidhof, a student at UC Berkeley, where students have protested tuition hikes, budget cuts and layoffs since last fall.


But some say the event is already scorched by the threat of violence. At an outdoor dance party early Friday, a crowd of Berkeley campus protesters seized a building, torched trash cans, threw bottles and got into an angry confrontation with police.

Hostilities unwanted

Students said protesters occupied the building in part to call attention to March 4th, and don't expect the hostilities to be repeated Thursday.


"It's important not to inject that level of damage into every action, or you'll alienate lots of people who don't want to act that way," said Xander Lenc, a student at the dance party that got out of hand.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/27/BA2L1C6QNT.DTL#ixzz0gqAfygfN

Durant Hall Communiqu� : Indybay

Durant Hall Communiqu� : Indybay

Durant Hall Communiqué

by ReclaimUC
Saturday Feb 27th, 2010 3:26 PM

Accelerate: we are here to help architecture make the leap to emancipation. The architect John Galen Howard, who designed and oversaw the construction of what is now called Durant Hall at the beginning of the last century, was a hesitant man. We say: the time for fresh personal expression is now! There is no question that we are already the product of other people's assiduously accumulated knowledges, so many that they become impossible to catalog exhaustively. The accumulation of knowledge is a library, perhaps, but it is also a struggle, a movement, a tactic. Likewise, the acquisition of knowledge does not have to be quiet -- next to the sound system, self is forgotten and the commune emerges. The dance party: a distinctly promising sign of present power.

Architecture has, like other growing phenomena, to go to school before it can wisely be emancipated. It is a distinctly promising sign of future power, for a young people . . . to forget self for the time being in the quiet, assiduous acquisition of knowledge already established by others. The time for fresh personal expression will come later.
--John Galen Howard, 1913

Accelerate: we are here to help architecture make the leap to emancipation. The architect John Galen Howard, who designed and oversaw the construction of what is now called Durant Hall at the beginning of the last century, was a hesitant man. We say: the time for fresh personal expression is now! There is no question that we are already the product of other people's assiduously accumulated knowledges, so many that they become impossible to catalog exhaustively. The accumulation of knowledge is a library, perhaps, but it is also a struggle, a movement, a tactic. Likewise, the acquisition of knowledge does not have to be quiet -- next to the sound system, self is forgotten and the commune emerges. The dance party: a distinctly promising sign of present power.

Future power too. On March 4, UC Berkeley students, workers, and faculty will march in solidarity with those from other UCs, CSUs, community colleges, and K-12 schools across California and the country as a whole. Like this building, reclaimed from the graveyard of financial speculation, we will reclaim the streets of Oakland in conjunction with an international day of action for public education to be free and democratic.

For the last two years, Durant Hall has been little more than a shell, surrounded by piles of rubble and heavy machinery, themselves surrounded by uneven rows of chain-link fencing. No longer is there any trace of the library it once was -- the East Asian Library, now moved across campus to a new building named after an insurance mogul who founded the notorious AIG. Language has been uprooted, pruned, and replanted as well. The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures went with the library, and in the process lost half its Japanese, Korean, and Chinese classes as well as the faculty that taught them -- over 1,500 curious students will be turned away this year. Subtracted from the flow of campus life, Durant Hall has existed only as a barrier, an inconvenience, a silent witness to the frustration of the thousands of students, workers, and faculty protesters who surrounded the neighboring Wheeler Hall and clashed with police last November.

Clash near UC-Berkeley comes ahead of 'Day of Action' over budget cuts - San Jose Mercury News

Clash near UC-Berkeley comes ahead of 'Day of Action' over budget cuts - San Jose Mercury News

BERKELEY — Yet another student protest turned violent at UC-Berkeley late Thursday and into Friday morning, when more than 200 people spilled out of a dance party on campus and trashed university buildings and smashed windows along Telegraph Avenue.

Forty-five officers from several law enforcement agencies responded, including the Berkeley and Oakland police, and the California Highway Patrol, officials said. At least two people — current and former students — were arrested.

Now there is much concern that Berkeley's on-campus violence could be a harbinger of far more damage next Thursday, when demonstrations against education budget cuts will take place all over the state.

"We know there"s going to be a lot of emotion associated with this," said University of California-Berkeley police Capt. Margo Bennett. "It's going to be passionate."

Others fear the protests scheduled for next week may be overshadowed by rogue protests aimed at issues other than the prohibitive costs of higher education. But on Thursday night students attended what was to be a low-key event called the Rolling University. It was part of a series of teach-ins on state and UC budgets and other education issues, followed by a dance at Sproul Plaza. About 11 p.m. trouble started and police were called.

By the time police arrived they found someone had cut a chain on the fence surrounding Durant Hall, a former library in

the center of campus that is closed for renovations, and hung a banner reading "March 4" above the entrance to the building, a reference to Thursday's statewide "Day of Action" to protest education budget cuts.

Sarah Emmert and others: Send a message that funding quality education is essential - Santa Cruz Sentinel

Sarah Emmert and others: Send a message that funding quality education is essential - Santa Cruz Sentinel

Sarah Emmert, Bruce Fihe, Regina Langhout, Pallas Stanford


A high-quality education is only for the rich. This is the message that California is sending our students, from elementary school through higher education, thanks to the state's divestment of public education.


The signs in our county are clear: janitors have been laid off and overworked teachers have to clean as well as teach; there is no summer school for students who need it; books are being replaced less often; rats have been seen in dining halls that get cleaned less frequently; fees and tuition for higher education are increasing astronomically; class sizes are increasing; some low- and middle-income college students are leaving without degrees because they cannot afford to stay, especially AB540 students, who do not qualify for federal, state, or university financial aid.


This is no way to teach and it's no way to learn. Yet, high-quality public education is essential for public wellness and community prosperity.


We therefore urge you to join us on March 4, a day of system- and state-wide actions called by students, staff, and faculty from K-12 schools, the community colleges, the California State University system, and the University of California campuses to demand high-quality public education that is accessible and affordable to all.


You can get involved on March 4 in many ways.


In downtown Santa Cruz, join a community-wide rally for public education organized
by seven local school districts at the Town Clock from 4-5 p.m.




In Watsonville, join a community-wide rally and educational symposium organized by the Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers and Viernes Cultural from 3:30-5:30 p.m.; the rally is at La Plaza, and the symposium is at the Cabrillo College Watsonville campus from 4:30 to 5:30.

Marcos Breton: Sacramento city teachers need to share the pain - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee

Marcos Breton: Sacramento city teachers need to share the pain - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee:
 "The time is up.

Since 2002, the Sacramento City Unified School District has cut $144 million from its budget.

An additional $30 million in cutbacks loom. Like many districts around the region, Sac City is poised to blanket the area with pink slips.

For too long, the Sacramento City Teachers Association hasn't lifted a finger or sacrificed a dime as the district has been decimated.

Union leaders in the district focus on wages and benefits. And what benefits: Half the district's teachers pay a $5 co-pay for health insurance but get a $4 rebate on each expenditure.

The other half of the teachers? Their co-pay is $5.

If you're a district teacher for 10 years or more, you get health care benefits for life with no cap on costs.

That has created an unfunded health care liability of $552 million for the district.

It would have been great to ask union boss Linda Tuttle about all this, but she didn't return phone calls."

Sacramento area teachers brace for thousands of pink slips - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee

Sacramento area teachers brace for thousands of pink slips - Sacramento News - Local and Breaking Sacramento News | Sacramento Bee

Sacramento teachers and other school employees are bracing themselves for thousands of pink slips.

Unlike previous years when many layoff notices were rescinded, school officials say more of those employees will likely lose their jobs this year.

"It's heartbreaking," said Steven Ladd, Elk GroveUnified School District superintendent, whose district is expected to send out more than 1,000 pink slips.

Ladd and other administrators say layoffs this year probably can't be avoided. Years of intense budget cutting have left districts so lean that salaries are approaching 90 percent of some districts' budgets.

The rising numbers of pink slips locally are part of a statewide wave. David Sanchez, president of the California Teachers Association, said the deluge could be worse then last year, when 28,000 teachers received pink slips and 16,000 lost their jobs.

Any layoffs would ripple in the local economy. "The wave of layoffs is hurting the community," said General Davie, interim superintendent of the Natomas Unified School District. "A lot of our teachers live in the community, and it's terrible that we're laying these people off and taking away their health insurance."

Area districts are facing massive deficits – some are $30 million to $60 million in the red. School officials said they've cut so many programs in the last two years, there's not much left to cut except salaries.

"All of the easy solutions have been exhausted," said Jonathan Raymond, superintendent of theSacramento City Unified School District. "It's critical that we do something to reduce our costs, largely driven by salaries and health benefits."

Sacramento City Unified officials expect to spend more than 89 percent of the 2010-11 budget on salaries, while the Folsom Cordova Unified School District will spend roughly 87 percent and Natomas Unified about 80.5 percent.

To avoid massive layoffs, school officials say, 

Who's Winning the Race to the Top? by Thomas W. Carroll, City Journal 26 February 2010

Who's Winning the Race to the Top? by Thomas W. Carroll, City Journal 26 February 2010

THOMAS W. CARROLL

Who’s Winning the Race to the Top?

An assessment

26 February 2010

Which states are the leading contenders to get a slice of the Obama administration’s $4 billion Race to the Top initiative, which will reward states with federal dollars if they embrace certain education reforms? Forty states and the District of Columbia have submitted applications; finalists will be announced as early as next week, and the winners in April, after detailed analysis by 58 reviewers. They will rank the applications according to 19 criteria, including the states’ charter-school laws, their track records in implementing education reforms, their use of student data to evaluate teachers, their efforts to raise the quality of teachers and other school officials, and their plans to turn around failing schools. States not selected in the initial round of grants can submit applications by June 1 for a second round.

After reviewing all the available state applications, totaling thousands of pages, I’ve grouped the 40 applying states (and D.C.) into three categories: very competitive (three states); competitive (four states); and likely losers (33 states, including four last-minute flameouts). With luck, both the winners and the losers in Race to the Top will prompt further education reform across the nation.

Three states submitted applications that strike me as very 

Sacramento Press / Ariana Huffington celebrates the age of citizen journalists

Sacramento Press / Ariana Huffington celebrates the age of citizen journalists

Huffington Post founder Ariana Huffington spoke last night at the Mondavi Center at UC Davis, as part of its Distinguished Speakers Series.  Her lecture was a free-flowing, spontaneous take on a variety of topics that fit loosely under the evening’s theme, “The brave new world of the new media: how technology is changing the way we think, learn, play, work, and vote.”

As founder and editor of one of the most highly trafficked news aggregating/blog sites on the internet, Huffington has developed strong opinions about the direction journalism will take in the future.  Citing ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, she told the audience that because things are always in a state of flux, “you can’t step into the same river twice,” meaning that journalists would be wrong to try to recreate news on the web as a slightly tweaked version of news on paper.

Instead, she lobbied for a hybrid journalism emphasizing the “fairness, accuracy and fact-checking” of print and the “transparency, immediacy and openness” of the web.  She called this “the age of Citizen Journalists” (Sacramento Press, anyone?) who can report news more accurately, immediately and locally than traditional news organizations, citing the fact that CNN operations were shut down in Iran’s recent uprisings, while independent citizens freely delivered news from that region through Twitter and Facebook posts too diffused for the government to control.

Huffington argued that because traditional news media enjoy far greater access to newsmakers, traditional reporters often fail to accomplish 

Support Disaster Relief in Chile

Support Disaster Relief in Chile

Support Disaster Relief in Chile

On February 27, an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck Chile. Join recovery efforts mobilizing around the world to assist earthquake victims. Your donation will help disaster victims rebuild their lives and their communities.

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News and Updates

• Resource updates: Google News | YouTube | Real Time updates on Google Search
• US State Department: Americans seeking information can call 1-888-407-4747

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Marching on Sacramento | San Francisco Bay Guardian

Marching on Sacramento | San Francisco Bay Guardian

Marching on Sacramento

Angry parents, hundreds of them, met in Marina Middle School to demand an end to cuts in education.

Angry Muni riders, hundreds of them, jammed City Hall to oppose Muni fare hikes and service cuts.

Angry students from the University of California -- thousands of them -- will hold a huge event March 4th to push for better education funding and lower fees.

There’s something going on here -- because in every case, grassroots activists in huge numbers (numbers that dwarf the so-called Tea Party events) want to force the state of California to change its budget priorities. And they are starting to talk seriously about taxes.

The Republicans are pretty intransigent up in Sacramento. But if these groups -- the public school parents, the UC students, the transit users and the wide range of other middle-class folks who are sick to death of California’s budget mess and how it’s screwing them -- could start working together, we could see a powerful coalition emerging.

And what that coalition needs to do, among other things, is push for Assemblyman Tom Ammiano’s legislation to change Prop. 13 and Sen. Mark Leno’s efforts to allow a local vehicle license fee, and a Constitutional amendment to get rid of the two-thirds majority for budget approval and tax hikes.

The Republicans have all signed this no-new-taxes pledge and it’s going to be hard to move them. Any attempt to change Prop. 13 will be met with huge opposition from 

New York: Teachers, Parents and Students Organize Against Education Privatization

New York: Teachers, Parents and Students Organize Against Education Privatization

New York: Teachers, Parents and Students Organize Against Education Privatization
For the U.S. corporate elite, “education reform” – which means privatizing as much as possible of the school system and attacking the collective power of teachers – is a strategic task. To these people, New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg and his henchman, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, are heroes. For eight years, NYC officials have relentlessly sought to tie school performance rankings as well as teacher evaluation and pay to dubious high stakes test data. They have closed 91 schools, overwhelmingly in Black and Hispanic working-class neighborhoods, and opened 100 privately-run charter schools, almost entirely in the same areas. They have allowed the charter operators to take space in public school buildings and to push out public schools, some of them very popular and successful. They did this in the name of helping kids succeed and had some public support for their policies, especially with many parents in poor neighborhoods desperate to give their children a decent future. But public opinion is beginning to shift against privatization, and resistance from parents, teachers, and students is starting to grow as people see through the hype. When Klein announced in December that he wanted to close 19 public schools, this provoked protests of hundreds outside individual schools and crowds of up to 900 at public hearings, overwhelmingly opposed to these destructive proposals. On January 26, thousands gathered to protest at Brooklyn Technical High School where the Panel for Educational Policy (PEP), a rubber-stamp body with eight of thirteen members appointed by Bloomberg, was to decide the fate of the nineteen schools. What followed was nine hours of testimony full of raw working-class anger from parents, students, and teachers. People pointed again and again to the way a two-tier system is being established.

Noose Found Hanging in UCSD Library; Student Suspended - San Diego 6

Noose Found Hanging in UCSD Library; Student Suspended - San Diego 6
SAN DIEGO - The discovery of a noose found hanging in the UC San Diego library prompted police Friday to open a hate-crime investigation and outraged students to storm the chancellor's office.

Authorities received reports about 10:30 p.m. Thursday about the rope noose suspended from a light fixture on the seventh floor of the Geisel Library, according to a bulletin released by the UCSD Police Department.

No one reported seeing the noose being placed in the area, which is next to an aisle and west-facing windows, officials said. This morning, however, a student came forward and admitted that she had put the knotted rope in the library, campus spokesman Rex Graham said.

There was no immediate word on whether she had been arrested, though the incident was being investigated as a hate crime and an act committed "with intent to terrorize," Graham said.

At an afternoon news conference, UCSD Chancellor Marye Anne Fox said the student has been suspended.

"We will not tolerate hate on our campus, and all criminal acts will be punished," 

Besides taxes, few solutions at town hall on education | SF Public Press

Besides taxes, few solutions at town hall on education | SF Public Press

Besides taxes, few solutions at town hall on education

By Kristine Magnuson and Tabitha Harmon

 The organizers of what was billed as a town hall-style meeting on education funding in the Marina Thursday said their intention was to have a conversation with the community about solutions to money woes for the coming school year.

But the evening’s talk, moderated by Michael Krasny, host of KQED-FM’s “Forum,” fell short of those expectations for some parents, educators and others in attendance — as evidenced by booing and hissing that punctuated the meeting.

Everyone knew the outlines of the problem: The San Francisco Unified School District is facing cuts of $113 million over the next two years, resulting from lower state subsidies and higher personnel costs.

The panelists, mostly local and state politicians hailing from San Francisco, focused on solutions involving new taxes, rather than cutting programs, jobs or the length of the school year.

• The long list of prominent Democratic figures — including Mayor Gavin Newsom and state legislators Mark Leno, Leland Yee, Tom Ammiano and Fiona Ma — presented a range of new taxes schemes:

California CIO Issues Use Policy for Facebook, YouTube, Other Social Media

California CIO Issues Use Policy for Facebook, YouTube, Other Social Media

California doesn't want to force its agencies into using social media to better communicate and interact with the public -- it wants to encourage them. And that it's doing with the adoption of a social media policy that outlines the do's and don'ts of online communication tools.

The state officially adopted the use of social media tools Friday, Feb. 26, to promote communication and transparency if agencies choose to use Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other sites. The policy, which participating agencies must comply with by July 1, 2010, requires that only authorized users who have been trained regarding their roles, responsibilities and security risks, have access to social media sites while at work as a state employee.

"It requires that due diligence is performed when departments move ahead in their social networking sites," Office of the State Chief Information Officer (OCIO) spokesman Bill Maile said. "This is yet one more way we can use technology to allow better communication and transparency for the many Californians who do business with the state."

In its IT policy letter, the OCIO provides guidelines to managers, such as preventing unnecessary functions like instant messaging or file exchange within social media. Accompanying the policy is a Social Media Standard to help state agencies consider the various risk factors associated with using social media sites.