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Arkansas High School Arming Teachers With Guns

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Editor’s Note:  AR State Attorney General shot this down.  No teachers with guns in the school.

TPM:  Arkansas Attorney General Won’t Let School Arm Teachers

By Alex Kane / Alternet

Twenty teachers, administrators and staff are using an Arkansas law to arm themselves while working at Clarksville High School.

A high school in Arkansas has decided that the best way to confront gun violence is to arm teachers and administrators with guns. The Associated Press reports that 20 teachers, administrators and staff are using an Arkansas law in order to arm themselves while working at Clarksville High School–the first time a school district in the state has armed teachers.

The law in Arkansas allows licensed, armed guards in schools. After going through over 50 hours of training, teachers and administrators will be considered guards.   [Read more…]

Cashing in on Kids: 139 Legislative Bills Have Been Introduced in 2013 that Promote ALEC’s Private, For-Profit Education Models

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By Brendan Fischer / PR Watch

Despite widespread public opposition to the education privatization agenda, at least 139 bills or state budget provisions reflecting American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) education bills have been introduced in 43 states and the District of Columbia in just the first six months of 2013, according to an analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy, publishers of ALECexposed.org. Thirty-one have become law.

ALEC Vouchers Transfer Taxpayer Money to Private and Religious Schools

News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch has called public education a “a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed.”

But this “transformation” of public education — from an institution that serves the public into one that serves private for-profit interests — has been in progress for decades, thanks in large part to ALEC.

ALEC boasts on the “history” section of its website that it first started promoting “such ‘radical’ ideas as a [educational] voucher system” in 1983 — the same year as the Reagan administration’s “Nation At Risk” report — taking up ideas first articulated decades earlier by ALEC supporter Milton Friedman.   [Read more…]

If the Story Was “Mayor Walks on Water”, the UT-San Diego Headline Would be “Filner Can’t Swim”

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The Watchdog Yips at the New Public Library

By Doug Porter

It really is true that no stone can be left unturned in UT-San Diego’s quest to denigrate Mayor Bob Filner. This week’s “Watchdog” example involves a reporter with a questionable background, a moving company and an abysmal level of ignorance on the subject of libraries.

For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with such things, the main branch of San Diego’s Public Library is moving into a new building. Not only are collections and reference materials long-buried in the bowels of the old building being cleaned up and rediscovered, additional genealogy collections from archives throughout the region are being merged into the new facility.

Moving the contents of the old location into the new digs is a huge task, and it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that a company specializing in such tasks was retained to handle the job.  After all, you wouldn’t want two guys and a moving van moving a collection that includes thousands of rare resource materials, many of them unique to the region.   [Read more…]

When is the Gospel Not the Truth? More on the La Jolla ‘Christmas’ Parade

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By Judi Curry

Several months ago I wrote an article about the possibility of changing the name of the “La Jolla Christmas Parade” to something that did not connote a religious theme. I pointed out that almost every parade during the month of December had changed their title from a “Christmas theme” to a more generic one, thus entailing more enjoyment and enthusiasm for the total population rather than a select few.

One of the references I used was a three paragraph summary of the anti semitism that had existed in La Jolla for many years. I found that reference in the “La Jolla” section of Wikipedia .

I was very surprised when one of the readers of my original article called to inform me that those references no longer existed; and, in fact, there was only a small paragraph where the three used to be and it practically negated the original paragraphs.   [Read more…]

Sen. Warren’s Bill Gets Cold Shoulder as Student Loan Rates Spike Monday

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Lauren McCauley / Common Dreams

Despite the groundswell of support behind Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) popular student loan proposal, Senate leaders have dismissed the legislation opting instead to let student interest rates double Monday as they pack their bags for a Fourth of July holiday recess.

Because of Congressional inaction, students will be left in the lurch as federal Stafford loans spike to 6.8 percent.

The Warren bill proposes to tie student loan interest rates to the same “discounted rates” given to big banks from the Federal Reserve, lowering student loan rates to 0.75 percent and saving students thousands of dollars.   [Read more…]

Readers Write: Education

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By Tom Hunter

I’m an old hippy, who would have been a member of UCSD’s class of 69 if I’d stayed around for another year.  I had two great teachers in four years – Herbert Marcuse and David Fate Norton. I had three brilliant roommates and I was at the first march on La Jolla when that bastion of liberality first realized they had been traduced.

La Jolla has never recovered.  Even the birds do little but shit on the place.

I was a C student, although I was in four different departments in four different years.  Physics, Biology,  Philosophy and finally Art.  I was very young for my age and I worked 20 plus hours a week at the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (my office building is currently trying to do a header off the cliff above Scripps).

I may be somewhat tainted in my memories, but I’m fairly sure I got a well rounded education – for nearly fucking free.  Cut to UCSD of today.   [Read more…]

The Stench in Mission Valley: UT-San Diego’s Open Warfare on Mayor Filner

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By Doug Porter

What started out as sour grapes over their preferred candidate losing last fall’s mayoral contest has now become an all-out jihad.  Frequent insolent editorials and a newsroom motivated by the need to prove their worth to a management team driven by desire to impose their agenda upon San Diego will no longer suffice.

Now it’s open warfare. Any pretense of the fairness hoped for by traditionalists in the public for the daily newspaper are gone. Now it’s yellow journalism– stinking, piss yellow– invective rolling off the presses at UT-San Diego.

Three examples will suffice for today, although there’s plenty more to be had lurking in the recent archives of the paper.   [Read more…]

My Father: An American Success Story

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By Carlos Batara

He never went home.

He left his native county at the age of 20 to find work.  Born in an impoverished area of a poor country, he left home to earn money which he could send back to his mother and eight siblings.

He ventured through, and stayed briefly at, a few countries, eventually reaching the United States.

For the next 25 years, he crisscrossed California, Arizona, and Utah, moving from crop to crop before settling in San Diego where he worked as a dishwasher at one of the city’s  most prestigious restaurants.

He worked Monday through Sunday at minimum wage, and was given only two days off per year, Thanksgiving and Christmas.   [Read more…]

Peace Breaks Out at City Hall as Filner, Employees Announce Contract Proposal

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By Doug Porter

More than a decade of demonizing public employees in San Diego appeared to be coming to close yesterday, with the announcement of a tentative deal between the City and six labor unions.

Previous administrations have exploited concerns over pension indebtedness and budgetary shortfalls caused by the great recession, using city employees as a public whipping boy for political gain.

One need look no further that former Mayor Jerry Sanders’ refusal to negotiate with the Police Officer’s Association during the Proposition B campaign to understand just how egregious these political games have been for everybody except a small group of politicians.

The proposed labor pacts will save taxpayers $60 million in pension plan payments in the first three years, according to Mayor Filner. You know it was a big deal because the press release coming from the Mayor’s office had three, count ‘em, three, exclamation points in the headline.

INSIDE: UT-San Diego Circles the Drain, WalMart’s Up to the Usual Crap   [Read more…]

Testing…testing…does this thing work?

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What’s better than sending Tommy Test Taker to class with school-sanctioned Ziploc bag of Lucky Charms?

By Aaryn Belfer /thematically fickle

No, I’m not talking about my neglected website. I’m talking about the grueling season that is right now bearing down on many of California’s kids. It’s testing season, folks, the time of year when No. 2 pencils and prison-like lockdowns on school campuses reign.

It’s the season that helps make Pearson one of the wealthiest companies in the world (read that thing with tissues in hand because you will weep); the season that causes Michelle Rhee, Ben Austin, Rahm Emmanuel, and other like-minded education “reformers” to gleefully piddle in their pants at the idea of closing more “failing” schools. Score one for privatization.   [Read more…]

High School Drop-Out Earns $250 Million

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This guy didn’t get the memo about dropouts having no future

By John Lawrence

High school drop-out David Karp just sold Tumblr to Yahoo for $1.1 billion. His share of the take was a cool $250 million. I guess nobody ever told him that high school drop-outs are doomed to high unemployment and low wages.

Defying every societal stereotype, none of this propaganda from the education-industrial complex deterred him from going ahead and doing what he wanted which was being a software developer.

Karp is 26 years old. Having not wasted a bunch of time in high school and college, (Karp dropped out of high school at age 15) he instead got on with life, which only goes to show that, if you really know what you want to do in life, high school and college are mainly a waste of time. You can become an expert in any field without having a degree or a diploma.
  [Read more…]

The Starting Line – Community Activists Take Aim at San Diego’s Budget Priorities

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As Citizens Clamor for a Better Life, Downtown Types Scheme to Take it Away

 By Doug Porter

After years of suffering through cutbacks and slights of hand, residents from some of San Diego’s poorest neighborhoods packed a City Council public budget hearing last night. An event that in the past might have been focused on saving city services from further budget cuts was instead about creating positive visions and improving people’s lives.

More than 300 hundred people submitted requests to speak to Council members on topics relevant to the needs of their communities in Mayor Bob Filner’s proposed budget for FY 2014.  Speakers addressed the hearing in four languages, advocating for free bus passes for needy students, a better bike infrastructure, more library hours and improvements in the way city’s taxicabs are regulated.

Although only 100 of those who signed up actually got to speak for their allotted minute, the size and determination of the groups in attendance made a clear impression on the Council.   [Read more…]

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