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Last summer, we surveyed more than 400 moms and dads at www.dailybreeze.com to find out what parents want in a new Web site. This week, we launched www.SouthBayFamilyTalk.com, a Web site crafted with their wish list in mind.

Here's what's on it:
* Listings for hundreds of family-friendly events such as library story times, SAT classes, puppet shows and nature hikes.
* A database of more than 40 South Bay spots for family outings, with reviews and driving directions. It's searchable by a child's interest, including choices for nature lovers and car aficionados.
* A separate list of free and cheap activities.
* A database of dozens of restaurants that offer "Kids Eat Free" meals searchable by day of the week.
* An interactive forum for South Bay parents to ask a question or give an opinion on everything from recommending the area's best ballet teacher to how much the tooth fairy ought to shell out.
* A list of local parenting support groups.
* A spot to highlight outstanding children and teens in our community.
* A photo gallery to show off a child's birthday party and a place for parents to share information on the services they used.

This is an interactive site that will get better as more people use it to post their questions, recommendations and photos. Please use it and share the link with South Bay parents, grandparents, teachers and caregivers you know.

School lunches may be the most important meal of the day for the brain, according to researchers. The study found that improving the nutrition of school meals upped the academic performance of about 1,197 students in seven states during a two-year period.

U.S. News & World Report interviewed cardiologist Arthur Agatston, creator of the South Beach diet, about the findings.

How can parents get involved if they'd like to see their kids' cafeterias improved?

People should absolutely complain to their congressperson if they feel the school food is bad. This isn't a local cosmetic issue. Ultimately, it's our health and the future of our economy at stake. It doesn't really matter if we have a one-payer healthcare system or a market system or whatever. If we don't deal with kids today, we're going to overwhelm whatever future medical system we have. The problem is much bigger than people realize. Young adults are having more heart disease and heart attacks. It's a huge problem that goes way beyond cosmetics or a kid being teased because he's overweight. It's going to have a huge economic impact unless we act now.

I've been so overwhelmed with my own back-to-school issues that I haven't been keeping up with all the blogs I usually read and I missed this gem.

Starbucks is giving K-12 teachers free coffee when they show their ID badges every Monday in September. My tardiness has already cost you three cups. But you still have two Mondays left to take advantage of the deal. Read all the details.

I will give myself blog detention this weekend for not doing all my homework and making you all miss out on free coffee. Sorry.

Ok, so I just read this little Associated Press piece, via the San Francisco Chronicle, and simply had to share it. It's not an education story, per se, but I can justify its inclusion by calling it a cautionary tale (which it is, and how!) from which one can learn and possibly save oneself such a mishap in a similar fashion to the woman featured herein.

Capiche?

Basically the story is about how this stranded hiker used her bra to signal rescuers and it totally worked! It's so McGyver, I love it. And if I'm ever stuck in the Bavarian Alps for three days I will definitely remember this trick.

OMG.

Get this, via the Associated Pressjust a couple hours ago: "Dozens of San Diego State University students were arrested after a sweeping drug investigation found that some fraternity members openly dealt drugs and one even sent a mass text message advertising cocaine, authorities said Tuesday.

"Two kilograms of cocaine were seized, along with 350 Ecstasy pills, marijuana, psychedelic mushrooms, hash oil, methamphetamine, illicit prescription drugs, several guns and at least $60,000 in cash, authorities said."

Wow.

Apparently members of both the Theta Chi and Phi Kappa Psi fraternities were among the 96 total people arrested.

This bust, understandably, has become big news.

Remember my post of earlier this month about a Santa Ana teacher who got arrested after two kids looking for school supplies in her classroom cabinet found a gun and ammo instead?

Well just yesterday said teacher -- one Jayne DeArmond, 51, who headed (it's probably safe to say previously headed, considering) a third-grade class at Diamond Elementary School -- was charged with two felonies, according to the LA Times.

My-Thuan Tran writes in a brief that DeArmond is facing "one felony count of possession of a firearm on school grounds and one felony count of child endangerment by a caretaker. She was scheduled to be arraigned today. If convicted, she could face up to six years in prison."

Uh-oh.

A new GI Bill is in the works, updating the old version to continue encouraging homebound service people to pursue education by helping them pay for it.

U.S. Represenative Jane Harman, who hails from our area, today announced her support for the bipartisan legislation that would -- for soldiers returning from Iraq or Afghanistan with at least three years active duty -- provide "benefits to cover the costs of a four-year education up to the level of the most expensive in-state public school, along with a stipend for housing, books and other expenses," according to a press release.

"Education benefits would be available to troops who have served at least 3 months of active duty service since September 11, 2001," it adds, "including members of the National Guard and Reserve."

...this time the advice addresses how to keep your kids in their educational rhythm even during the not-too-far off summer-vacation season.

Courtesy of another tutoring company, Club Z, I present to you the following suggestions (again from provided flackage and this time including a plug for the company's services, sorry) for staving off what they're calling the "summer brain drain":

1. Take frequent trips to the library and register your child with a library card. University of Florida's Richard Allington notes that the best predictor of summer reading loss is a lack of books at home and limited access to library books, so keep a good selection of high interest, level appropriate books around the house. Schedule a consistent "reading time" daily for your child.

2. Attend thematic programs at the library. Libraries often host a great variety of summer programs for kids that celebrate reading.

3. Talk to your child's teachers and ask them what your child will be learning next year at school. This way you can tie in family trips with next year's curriculum to create a more meaningful hands-on experience. For example, if your child will be studying a unit on the civil war, plan a visit to Gettysburg.

4. Give your child a gift card to a bookstore, or give books as gifts.

5. Check out audio books from the library for your child to listen to stories in the car.

6. Consider summer tutoring. Tutoring can help children catch up or get ahead. Take advantage of the summer months to remediate or accelerate your child in areas like reading comprehension, mathematics, writing or SAT/ACT test prep. Club Z! even offers programs in music and study skills (with an emphasis on note-taking strategies, reading comprehension skills & prioritizing deadlines) that will help your child start the school year off right.

7. Research has revealed a direct connection between learning to play a musical instrument and an increased aptitude in mathematics. Consider introducing your child to music lessons over the summer.

Remember the parental freakout that went national a while back over a Portland, Maine middle school's decision to start offering prescription contraceptives to students in an effort to combat the region's high rate of teen pregnancy?

The Associated Press is reporting today, some six months after the controversy came into the spotlight, only one girl has actually used the program. Local parents remain supportive, the story says.

Do you think that would ever fly around here?

Run by the state the last five years, since going bankrupt and taking a $100-million bailout loan, the school board of Oakland Unified this week regained a wee bit of power, and promptly, apparently, abused it. Nice!

The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting today that Oakland trustees, on Tuesday given back the authority to hire and fire, turned around Wednesday and named an interim superintendent "without public participation or discussion."

"The school board also came up with the job description behind closed doors," staffer Jill Tucker writes.

All such decisions "should have been made in public," California First Amendment Coalition executive director Peter Scheer is quoted as saying, further noting that the board may have violated the state's open-meeting law known as the Brown Act.

There's a certain middle schooler in my life, who shall remain nameless but I will tell you she's related to me, who is sweet, funny, generous, kind and bright, a standout gymnast and altogether great kid with big dreams that include college.

One problem: She's performing really poorly in school -- extremely poorly -- and no one seems to be able to adequately impress upon her the fact that solid academics now will position her to actually achieve that university fantasy down the road.

And so this New York Times story today especially intrigued me. It's about a middle school in upstate New York that is experimenting with a unique new strategy for dealing with students like my niece. Any kid whose grade in any class falls below 65 percent, or who shows a noticeable lack of effort, is being, the paper reports, "excluded from all aspects of extracurricular life, including athletic contests, academic clubs, dances and plays, unless they demonstrate improvement on weekly progress reports filled out by their teachers."

Interesting, oui? Can't wait for the follow-up story to hear how well it did, or didn't work.

As I was wheeling around the South Bay this afternoon after interviewing folks at LAX (for our story about the sudden shut-down of ATA Airlines), trying to decide where I should stop for lunch, I tuned into NPR for my afternoon news fix.

Almost as soon as I turned my radio on, a correspondent named Dan Collins launched into a report from Lima, Peru, where apparently all teachers are now required to take an annual "National Teachers Exam."

Of 180,000 educators who took the most recent test, Collins said, 95 percent failed. You heard that right. 95 percent. Failed. Ouch. Now that's gotta hurt.

The results have been characterized as "appalling." No duh.

However, as with all standardized tests everywhere, this one as well is controversial, with one camp calling it an inadequate measure of teacher competency and another saying, essentially, that it's the teachers who are inadequate, not the test.

One teacher interviewed on air by Collins decried the fact that the exam is given at all -- apparently it's a new thing in the country's effort to improve education there -- saying that Peru's powers that be aren't invested enough in educating educators and that teachers get "low pay and poor training."

Sound familiar?

A similar source went on to say: "More needs to be done to give Peruvian students the education they deserve."

Now, where have you heard that before?

Wow!

Now this is interesting, so I only apologize for not finding and bringing it to you sooner. My thanks to Scholastic's "This Week In Education" blog for helping me find it today, by pointing me toward the New York Times "Freakonomics" blog, which referred to the item about which I'm about to write.

Here it is: A Connecticut eighth-grader was recently suspended for three days, nixed from a dinner for honors students and removed from his vice-presidential post for buying a bag of Skittles from a fellow student, which apparently violates a school policy that prohibits any and all on-campus candy sales.

Again: wow!

The whole story is online at the web home of the New Haven Register.

Are our local schools equally strict? Talk to me, people.

A current first-person feature on Teacher Magazine's website contends that maintaining good relationships with parents is essential to successful teaching.

Writes Danielle Mbadu of Kaplan Higher Education:
"I firmly believe that the types of relationships and encounters that are in place between teachers and parents can have a profound effect on student learning and growth. In my experiences, the parents that I am in contact with the most frequently, whether through e-mail, open houses, or face-to-face communication, have the children who do the best in my class. One reason for this is that those students know that their mom or dad and I are in touch with each other. In those instances when parents and teachers are working together, the students know there is support. That means a lot to students, even if they do not freely admit it."

Makes sense to me!

Can you imagine?

Apparently Hollywood producer Brian Grazer, partner to Ron Howard (yes, that Ron Howard, he of Opie and Richie Cunningham and oh yeah, Forrest Gump, Splash et al) in Imagine Entertainment, for years has employed a "cultural attache," someone he pays to read for him, introduce him to interesting people from all walks of life and explain to him absolutely everything he doesn't quite understand but wants to.

What's more, Grazer supposedly pays this person some $150K and -- the topper -- his best attache so far was formerly a tutor because the Hollywood big-wig always seeks someone who has that "teacherlike quality." With all the potential teacher layoffs rippling across California, he could soon have an abundance of candidates.

The New Yorker website has a piece about the Grazer gig. Check it.

The New York Times has one of those "I bet this happens here, too" kind-of pieces online right now. It's a look at the social stigma around receiving free- and reduced-price lunches in school. Apparently it's uncool and many kids choose to skip eating rather than be seen in the free line. Awful, right?

From Carol Pogash's story:

"Lunchtime 'is the best time to impress your peers,' said Lewis Geist, a senior at Balboa (High School, in San Francisco) and its student body president. Being seen with a subsidized meal, he said, 'lowers your status.'

San Francisco school officials are looking at ways to encourage more poor students to accept government-financed meals, including the possibility of introducing cashless cafeterias where all students are offered the same food choices and use debit cards or punch in codes on a keypad so that all students check out at the cashier in the same manner."

Read it all. Interesting stuff.

Our sports guys and Web gal compiled a list of which high school football players have signed with colleges on National Signing Day. Updates will be coming all day.

Check the chart.

Naush Boghossian's story about the LAUSD coffee cake recipe has gotten quite a lot of feedback. Who knew a baked good would cause such a commotion? If you want more food to help you relive your childhood, we found a Web site where dozens of old cafeteria recipes have been collected. They are not all local, but you'll find peanut butter cookies, school pizza and sloppy joes, among others.

If you want the coffee cake recipe, it's in a nice, neat printable format over at school blog.

If you have specific recipes in mind that you would like us to try to find, drop us a line. Paul will try his best. Right, Paul?

A just-released report by researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia and Pennsylvania State University in University Park ranks the United States 42nd, of 46 countries studied, in ability to provide equity in the distribution of high-quality math teachers to low- and upper-income 8th graders.

Ghana ranked No. 1.

Interesting!

Read the whole report here.

A couple of years ago there was a story circulating about a school district in Kalamazoo, Michigan where a private donor had guaranteed that any child who graduated from the district was guaranteed tuition money to attend a state college. The city suddenly saw signs of economic development, higher student enrollment and fewer dropouts. Apparently, the trend is catching on across the country, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Tuition guarantees are gaining momentum across the nation, with more than 20 cities either establishing such programs or planting the idea in hopes that private donors or taxpayers will pony up the money to help offset staggering increases in college costs. At the same time, these programs also aim to attract new businesses and spur home ownership. It is too early to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of these fledgling programs, scattered around the country in places like El Dorado, Ark., and Hammond, Ind. While the Kalamazoo Promise has generated tremendous interest, economists point out that many communities do not have the private wealth that Kalamazoo has. And school officials caution that the programs, by themselves, guarantee only that a student will be able to go to college.

Read the entire story.

How tuition guarantees work.