Learn about the new Common Core Standards this summer. Register today for the Preschool-12 Common Core Innovision Summit. The two-day summit, on August 8 and 9, will provide you with strategies and understanding to impact student achievement.
More information: http://www.solanocoe.net/apps/events/2013/8/8/1445310/?id=0
via Learn about the new Common Core Standards this summer. Register today for the Pr….
A new report shows that fewer than half as many California school districts are in financial jeopardy now, as compared to a year ago, the state’s top educator announced Tuesday.
The state’s Second Interim Status Report for 2012-13 shows that 92 local educational agencies (LEAs) are either in negative or qualified financial status, including Dixon and Travis unified school districts, which have $27 million and $40 million annual budgets, respectively. The same report from a year ago showed a record 188 LEAs in financial jeopardy, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson noted in a press release.
via Schools improve financial outlook, although Dixon, Travis still ….
Above is the Solano County Grand Jury’s concluding comment in its 10-page report on safety at Vallejo High School. It is nothing less than a searing indictment of the status quo.
For years, safety issues have been more than anecdotal at Vallejo High School. When the Police Department reports that it receives an average of four service calls a week from the campus, we can only wonder how many calls are not made.
Police also say that nearly 1 in 10 of those calls involve students with weapons or threats against the lives of teachers or administrator. If so, are we really expected to believe that teacher complaints about school safety are merely a collective bargaining strategy for a better union contract?
via Vallejo school safety should not be on a ‘grace period’.
For the first time, HEROES of Solano County will offer two $500 college scholarships to graduating high school seniors.
Young men and women who are Solano County residents and graduating by June are invited to apply. The recipients will be chosen in July and notified the first week in August.
Shelee Loughmiller
President of the Board
Friends of Loma Vista Farm
I would like to thank Dr. Ramona Bishop and her team for their dedication and tenacity in moving the district forward. With the recent release of the Grand Jury report I sincerely hope that, rather than malign the administration’s efforts and accomplishments to turn a flailing system around, the VEA will work in a collaborative manner to support the actions that must occur to remedy what ails us all as a community. The goal of improving our student’s performance and developing strong citizens at the same time is not a feat for the weak of heart. Dr. Bishop has proven herself a leader with a vision for excellence and I wholeheartedly support the tough decisions that she and the School Board have made.
via The TEAM to LEAD.
As Vacaville Unified School District leaders on Tuesday mulled over a staff-recommended budget for the coming year, Superintendent John Niederkorn struck a cautionary note, saying ongoing labor and legislative negotiations eventually will affect the district’s final financial road map.
“What is the end game?” Niederkorn, referring to the district’s proposed $80 million budget, asked rhetorically during a special governing board meeting in the Educational Services Center.
via Vacaville Unified School District mulls budget for coming year.
Kites dotted the skies over Jesse Bethel High School on Tuesday as the community came together to remember the people it lost.
“He would have loved it,” said Mary Richardson, about her son Josh, who was killed in a 2000 car crash as he sped his way back to school after an off-campus lunch.
Since the high school’s 1998 opening, Bethel has lost at least 18 students and 14 adults to accidents, illness and violence.
via Kite festival honors Bethel High students lost since school opened.
Nine California districts resubmitted their application Tuesday for a waiver from key provisions and sanctions of the No Child Left Behind law after spending weeks revising the application in response to dozens of questions by a panel of reviewers from the U.S. Department of Education.
If approved, the application by members of the umbrella organization California Office to Reform Education, or CORE, would be a first. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has approved waivers for 37 states with eight more states under review. This would be the only waiver granted to a group of districts, albeit one serving more a million students, and the approach, based on collaboration among teachers and districts and an accountability system deemphasizing standardized test scores, would be distinct. The CORE applicants include some of the state’s largest unified districts – Los Angeles, Long Beach, Fresno, San Francisco, Sacramento City and Santa Ana – along with Clovis, Sanger and Oakland.
via Nine districts resubmit ‘stronger’ application for NCLB waiver – by John Fensterwald.
The Council of Chief State School Officers is rejecting calls for a moratorium on any high stakes tied to the Common Core State Standards, and is instead suggesting that states have almost all of the power they need to smooth the way for what could be a rocky transition.
What the chiefs do want, however, is some flexibility from the U.S. Department of Education and from U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan—from No Child Left Behind itself or the waivers already granted—during these next couple of tricky years as the common core is fully implemented and common tests come on line. In fact, about three-dozen chiefs or their representatives met with three high-level federal department officials last week in Chicago to talk about these issues. Specifically, they say they need some wiggle room in three areas, according to a document CCSSO has drafted:
via District Leaders Urge More Time to Implement Common Core Standards.
SACRAMENTO—A new report shows that less than half as many California school districts are in financial jeopardy now as a year ago, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson announced today.
The state’s Second Interim Status Report for 2012-13 shows that 92 local educational agencies (LEAs) are either in negative or qualified financial status. The same report from a year ago showed a record 188 LEAs in financial jeopardy.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to change how K-12 schools are financed – giving more money to districts with large numbers of poor and/or English-learner students – faces criticism on several points.
One of them, often voiced by those in suburban districts, is that the current formula shouldn’t be changed until schools reach some overall measure of financial adequacy.
via Dan Walters: Does spending more boost education outcomes?.
The Vallejo teachers union on Friday called for a closer working relationship with the district to address issues raised in a recent critical grand jury report about safety at Vallejo High School.
The union said in a statement that local educators share many concerns spelled out in the report, and that members have reported ongoing safety concerns — not only on the Vallejo High campus but at other schools — to district officials and the school board for the past two years.
via Vallejo teachers call for greater voice in addressing safety concerns.
Thousands of Vallejo eighth graders got a taste Friday of what they could be when they become adults.
The students attended the second annual Career and Life Expo by the Vallejo Active 20-30 Club and the Vallejo City Unified School District.
“We want to show kids that they have options in life,” club president Clint Manalili said.
via Vallejo eighth graders learn careers, life skills at expo.
The Vallejo school board will hold a special meeting Wednesday to address safety concern at the city’s namesake high school.
At issue is a Solano Grand Jury report released earlier this month that strongly criticized how the school board and how Vallejo High School’s administration handles safety concerns on campus.
Among the complaints levied against the high school is that established rules are not being followed by campus administration, few teachers have two-way radios to directly summon campus supervisors, and the administration was not notifying teachers of students who have had prior criminal or behavioral issues.
via Vallejo board to hold special meeting on Vallejo High’s safety.
A visitor to Jose Gallo’s computer workshop might ask rhetorically, “So this is where all the action is?” and be wrong.
“The action is mostly in the classroom,” said Gallo, 29, a Vacaville Unified computer technician who works in the Educational Services Center on Nut Tree Road. The main idea, he added, is “to make the teachers and the students happy.”
When hired, Solano Community College Interim Police Chief Scott Paulin had marching orders to fill numerous vacancies on the campus police force.
But those plans are now on what some might call permanent hold.
Solano College is negotiating with the Solano County Sheriff’s Department on a plan that could lead to replacing the current campus police services with deputies and security officers.
via Solano College negotiating with Solano Sheriff’s to replace campus ….
Personnel and job changes, colloquially called “the churn” in the business world, are under way in Vacaville Unified School District.
VUSD Superintendent John Niederkorn announced several changes at a May 16 board meeting, and Randy Henry, the district’s chief of human resources, on Friday provided an update on even more district turnovers, including a top administrator’s retirement.
Longtime Associate Superintendent Shereene Wilkerson will retire on June 30, after 37 years of service to public schools.
via Vacaville Unified School District staff undergoing ‘the churn’.
Academic performance in Vallejo schools largely remained flat last year, according to new data released Friday by the state Department of Education.
Largely using standardized test results, the Academic Performance Index assigns schools a score between 200 and 1000 to schools with a state goal of having schools score at least 800.
Four Vallejo City Unified School District sites have reached that benchmark, all of them at the elementary level: Pennycook, Highland, Wardlaw and Vallejo Charter.
The Assembly has produced its own version of Gov. Jerry Brown’s Local Control Funding Formula, further complicating the governor’s goal of passing school finance reform as part of the new state budget by July 1.
Taking the form of a one-page set of principles that the Assembly Budget Committee’s subcommittee on education finance approved on Thursday, with one Republican not voting (Brian Nestande, R-Palm Desert), it endorses the basics of Brown’s LCFF while suggesting complex variations to key aspects of it. The full Budget Committee is expected to adopt it Tuesday, sending it to conference committee where it must be melded with the Senate’s alternative to LCFF and negotiated with Brown.
via Assembly adds its version of school finance reform to the mix – by John Fensterwald.
Brianna Boyd
Editor
Fourteen Dixon High teens experienced what it was like to “walk on water” Wednesday.
Others just made a big splash in the pool.
The Pat Granucci Aquatics Center was the home of Dixon High School’s 11th annual Walk on Water Wednesday. The grand finale of Kim McGreevey’s physics class, the juniors and seniors look forward to Walk on Water all year long. It is truly a “sink or swim” experience for the students, as they use the knowledge and skills they have learned in class over the last year to construct homemade contraptions such as boats, shoes or wheels that they attempt to move from one end of the pool to the other – with a student on board – without it falling apart.