By Dan Brekke, The California Report Update, Feb. 9, 2015: As expected, the big rains that have fallen in the northern half of California have boosted storage at the state’s principal reservoirs. So now we are confronted with a glass half-full/half-empty proposition when we appraise how they are looking. Case in point: The federal Central […]
Yearly Archives: 2015
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Schools Help Families Enroll in Covered California, Medi-Cal
By Jane Meredith Adams, EdSource With huge numbers of California children still uninsured, schools are beginning to take the lead in letting families know that affordable health care coverage is available. In school libraries and courtyards from Sacramento to Los Angeles and beyond, trained enrollment counselors have been invited to set up folding tables, commandeer […]
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California DMV Fails at Voter Registration, Says ACLU
By Marisa Lagos, KQED News Fix It has been more than two decades since Congress passed the so-called Motor Voter Act requiring state DMVs to let residents register to vote at their offices — but the ACLU of California says the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles is falling asleep at the wheel, and it is […]
Posted inChoice Is Resegregating Public Schools, Education, News, Social Justice
As Courts Flip-Flopped on School Integration, Diversity Has Remained Elusive
By 2005, when a federal judge lifted the most recent desegregation orders, San Francisco Unified School District had been trying for more than three decades to make its schools more racially and socioeconomically diverse, starting in 1971 with forced busing. San Francisco schools no longer exhibit the level of racial isolation they once did, but they are now resegregating, as are many others across the country. In 2013–2014, in more than one-quarter of city schools, 60 percent of the students were of one race. That is a far cry from 1966, when more than one-third of the schools had student populations with 80 percent or more belonging to a single racial group. (In 2014, just three schools were segregated to that degree.)
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Senior Villages Weave Safety Net for Older Adults
By Jen Chien, KALW Crosscurrents California leads the nation in its population of senior citizens. The ratio of working-age adults to those over 65 is projected to plunge in the next few decades. Meanwhile, the need for financial and social support for this growing number of older adults presents new challenges for our society and […]
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Got P.E.? Settlement Says Schools Must Prove They Provide It
By Jane Meredith Adams, EdSource/The California Report As schools tout the importance of exercise in an era of childhood obesity, a California parent and his lawyer have agreed to a settlement with dozens of districts across California that will force elementary schools to prove they are providing at least the minimum amount of physical education […]
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From the Bottom Up at Mountain Lake
By Dhyana Levey, Bay Nature Jason Lisenby likens his planting process to working with cookie dough. Standing along the south shore of Mountain Lake in San Francisco’s Presidio, he reaches into a large green bucket for a handful of clay and small stones, then adds a bit of water and sand from the lake to […]
Posted inChoice Is Resegregating Public Schools, Education, News, Social Justice
San Francisco Schools’ Changing Demographics
Over five decades, San Francisco saw a demographic transformation in its public school system. In 1969, white and black students together were the majority, as in most of the rest of the United States. Since then, San Francisco public school enrollment has fallen by 39 percent, and almost all the missing faces are white or black. But the two groups have not disappeared in the same way.
Posted inChoice Is Resegregating Public Schools, Education, News, Social Justice
Isolated Schools Clustered by Test Scores, Family Income
If one looks at the San Francisco Unified School District as a whole, a clear pattern emerges: Schools with the highest level of achievement tend to have the lowest levels of family poverty. And schools that are identified as “racially isolated” are visibly clustered by both income and achievement. This plot shows the base Academic Performance Index for each school in the district for which data are available, as well as the percentage of students poor enough to qualify for free and reduced-price lunches, which are used as a proxy for measuring poverty.
Posted inChoice Is Resegregating Public Schools, Education, News, Social Justice
As Parents Get More Choice, S.F. Schools Resegregate
Each January, parents across San Francisco rank their preferences for public schools. By June, most get their children into their first choices, and almost three-quarters get one of their choices. A majority of families may be satisfied with the outcome, but the student assignment system is failing to meet its No. 1 goal, which the San Francisco Unified School District has struggled to achieve since the 1960s: classroom diversity. Since 2010, the year before the current policy went into effect, the number of San Francisco’s 115 public schools dominated by one race has climbed significantly.