Thursday, March 18, 2010

Impact Teen Drivers | Reckless and Distracted Driving Education

Welcome

Since 2008, Impact Teen Drivers has been working to share with teens the dangers of reckless and distracted driving through their effective campaigns online and in schools.

Our message to young people is simple, yet vital: Focus on the road ahead and get to where you are going safely.

We have reached over 1,000,000 high school students all across America, and we continue to lead the effort in educating teens about the dangers of reckless and distracted driving.

Our efforts are aided by volunteers, donors, corporations and concerned citizens all across the United States.

News

02.26.10 All entries must be submitted for theCreate Real Impact Contest!!

03.01.10 Voting begins for the Create Real Impact Contest

03.22.10 California Teen Safe Driving Week

03.22.10 Sacramento Press Conference

03.22.10 Los Angeles/Burbank Press Conference

03.23.10 Fresno Press Conference

03.24.10 Get Real Behind The Wheel with Bill McAnally

16th Annual - "College: Making It Happen!" CSUS

CSUS

The 16^th Annual - "College: Making It Happen!" event is intended primarily for 6^th through 9^th grade students and their families, and provides practical and easy-to-understand information on how to prepare academically and financially for college.

The Saturday, March 20, 2010 program, being held at California State University, Sacramento is a collaborative effort with Los Rios Community College District, UC Davis Academic Preparation Programs, Sacramento Cal-SOAP Consortium, Breakthrough Sacramento, MESA, ScholarShare and other community and educational organizations. This is one of many programs to be held throughout California as part of the California Legislature's College Awareness initiative. These programs are intended to help reaffirm the message that college preparation begins many years before the final year in high school, and that college planning is a family affair.

Space is limited. You must register online if you plan to attend! The registration will close on March 18 or until the event is full.

If you are a counselor or teacher and plan on bringing a large group of students, please complete the Counselor/Teacher registration form or email Doris Tormes at cmih@csus.edu.

On the day of the event, check-in will be from 7:30 a.m. - 8:30 a.m. The program will conclude at 12 p.m.

For further information, please contact Doris Tormes at:

Ms. Doris Tormes
Phone: (916) 278 - 5610
Email at: cmih@csus.edu

Additional information and a registration confirmation, including parking information, will be e-mailed to you.

Cuts loom for Peninsula schools - The Daily Breeze

Cuts loom for Peninsula schools

By Melissa Pamer Staff Writer

Posted: 03/18/2010 07:05:52 AM PDT

Despite a multimillion-dollar fundraising campaign, a parcel tax approved last summer and three straight years of budget cuts, Palos Verdes Peninsula schools are now faced with another major financial shortfall.

The Hill's 12,000-student school district - one of the state's highest-achieving - needs to cut $4 million in 2010-11 and $3 million the year after that.

Last week, layoff notices went out to 90 teachers, and the school board is still weighing how many nonteaching positions to eliminate.

The layoffs come a year after 40 teachers were eliminated, as were about 40 jobs such as teaching aides, support staff and other positions, many of them part time.

"We've used whatever tricks we could, pulled whatever rabbits out of our hat that we could," said Superintendent Walker Williams at a board meeting last week. "We're looking at everything."

Tonight, school officials will explain potential cuts to the district's $90 million budget at a town hall meeting, which is designed to elicit suggestions from residents regarding which programs should be preserved and where to find new revenue sources.

Like other school districts across the state, Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified is facing serious cuts because it relies overwhelmingly on state funding, which has been slashed for several years.

Some districts have been able to soften the blow of reductions - partly with the help of federal

SCUSD Observer: SCTA is the problem

SCTA is the problem

by Sac City Schools Observer

Editor's Note: In the continued interest of fairness and facilitating communication, we print this letter in support of Teach For America, brought to you by a concerned SCUSD parent.

(sent to SCUSD Board Trustees March 18, 2010)

I am a parent of two children in SCUSD and urge you to support Teach for America. SCUSD must support the development of new teachers, regardless of their place of origin. The current system of education is stagnant and our children must have the benefit of new ideas and new people, especially people from outside the region, who can bring different perspectives that will enrich their education.

There are people who believe Teach for America will displace local graduates and/or displace current teachers. This is a misguided belief. Teach for America is not the problem. The current system maintained by the Sacramento City Teachers Association is the problem. SCTA has been unwilling to make any concessions that would protect newer teachers from annual layoffs nor are they willing to protect our children from larger class sizes (which affect younger students now, but also have an impact on learning through high school) and ridiculous hiring practices that can mean newer teachers are displaced several weeks or months into a new school year by teachers with more seniority. This happened to my kindergartner at Theodore Judah in the 2007-08 school year. If we really care about learning, why would it ever be acceptable to change a child’s kindergarten teacher 6 weeks into her very first school year? This flies in the face of common sense and shows flagrant

Insiders Versus Charters at LAUSD - Page 2 - News - Los Angeles - LA Weekly

Insiders Versus Charters at LAUSD

Strings were pulled, and Ramon Cortines was stopped by his own Board of Education

Comments (7)By Beth Barrett Thursday, Mar 11 2010

...continued from page 1

He says Villaraigosa and his staff also contacted him about their desire to take over Griffith-Joyner Elementary, and Zimmer decided that the Partnership should get the school so it could act as a "feeder," by sending its graduating grade-school students into nearbyMarkham Middle School, which the Partnership already controls.

"The unions were not happy with that, either," Zimmer adds.

PHOTO BY CHRIS MARTINEZ

Yolie Flores is turning out to be a surprise reformer on the School Board.

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Flores says that Villaraigosa, in a general conversation a few weeks ago, asked her to read his Partnership's proposal and to give it a shot. But she says she couldn't vote to transfer the Griffith-Joyner school to the mayor's nonprofit Partnership because she was backing Cortines down the line.

Describing the board's abandonment of Cortines, Flores says that adult political allegiances took precedent over charter-driven reforms aimed at helping children who are not getting the education they deserve.

"Folks on the board committed to a reform effort — and then lost sight of that," she says. "I was disappointed, I thought we lost credibility. I thought we took two steps back."

Galatzan describes what happened as inevitable: "I saw it more as the politics that goes on at the School Board, both the big-picture UTLA versus charters, and individual personalities and particular schools. That's elective politics."

But the criticism is not likely to die down, now that LAUSD has gained a reputation as one of the nation's biggest districts that still resists small steps toward reform. President Obama's education team decided on March 4 not to give any of its $4.35 billion in "Race to the Top" funds to California, where LAUSD educates one in every 10 children. Critics say California is seen in Washington, D.C., as too unwilling to change.

Steve Barr, founder and chairman emeritus of Green Dot Public Schools, called the board's decisions to shut out his group and other experienced charters "pathetic" and a "pure, adult power play."

Says Barr: "I don't know who gives 40,000 [students] to A.J. Duffy" — the UTLA chief.

Thompson: A Turnaround Strategy for Secretary Duncan This Week In Education

This Week In Education

Pop Culture: The Angelina Jolie School For Girls

From Oh No They Didn't: Jolie puts her $$$ where her mouth is

Thompson: A Turnaround Strategy for Secretary Duncan
Six recommendations for a kinder, smarter, better turnaround strategy:
1. Repudiate collective punishment of educators, with written guarantees that also meet the legitmate needs of turnaround specialists and others to improve teacher quality.
2. Stop the scapegoating. Reducing the percentage of stigmatized schools from 1/3rd to 5% gives no relief to urban systems where failing schools are disproportionately located.
3. Remember that you can’t just shoot urban teachers and principals, as suburban schools get relief. Otherwise, how can "reformers" stop rhe outmigration of educators to less challenging systems that would inevitable under his ESEA?
Continue reading "Thompson: A Turnaround Strategy for Secretary Duncan" »
Sattler: Now Show Me a REAL Blueprint
My father is an engineer, and I know from blueprints. Blueprints have details, specifics.
The document published to launch the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization is not a blueprint.
So, in the absence of any real details, here's my analysis of what's in and what's out in the new proposal.
Continue reading "Sattler: Now Show Me a REAL Blueprint" »

Students benefit from longer school days - CNN.com

Students benefit from longer school days

By Mike Feinberg, Special to CNN

March 17, 2010 2:16 p.m. EDT

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Mike Feinberg: Schools that cut out a day to save money are making a crucial mistake
Author co-founded KIPP schools; they have longer days and are outperforming others
Feinberg says more time means more learning for children, programs don't have to be cut
Americans will be competing with Chinese, where kids get much more schooling

RELATED TOPICS

Editor's note: Mike Feinberg is co-founder of the Knowledge Is Power Program, KIPP, and is the superintendent of KIPP Houston. KIPP is a network of 82 high-performing public charter schools serving 21,000 children in 19 states. In 2004, Mike was named an Ashoka Fellow, awarded to leading social entrepreneurs, and in 2008, he received the Presidential Citizens Medal.

Houston, Texas (CNN) -- School districts nationwide are trimming funds, for custodians to school supplies, to address widening budget gaps. Even public schools in affluent communities such as Mill Valley, California, and Scarsdale, New York, are scrambling to make ends meet.

In a final act of desperation, more than 100 school districts in 17 states have done the unthinkable --they've eliminated an entire school day each week. This decision is particularly wrongheaded as results from the Massachusetts Extended Learning Time Initiative last year showed that schools with expanded schedules improved at double the state rate in English and math.