School Notebook

California State University trustees today voted to increase undergraduate student fees by $276 per year as a means of combatting the much-lamented state slashing of public-education funding.

The fee hike will bring in about $110 million in revenue, according to the Office of the Chancellor. Some cash will be set aside in the form of financial aid to offset the increase for the lowest-income students.

A few grafs from the flackage:

"Although the state has not yet adopted next year's budget, the CSU is increasing fees now in order to provide students enrolled for the fall a reasonable amount of time to plan their finances," said CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed. "Students and their families need to know what the fees will be so that they can appropriately plan for next year's college costs.

"In addition, it is critical for the university to set fees in order to put together student financial aid packages, and to meet federal and state financial aid deadlines."

The CSU Trustees voted 15 to 3 in favor of the fee increase. Trustees John Garamendi, Melinda Guzman, and the student trustee, Jennifer Reimer cast the dissenting votes.

State University Fees for undergraduate, graduate, and teacher credential students increased by 10 percent.

Effective in fall 2008, fees will increase by $276 for undergraduate students, $324 for teacher credential students and $342 for graduate students."

The California Faculty Association immediately released a statement saying the price bump "could not come at a worse time for struggling California families" and asserting that the "most effective form of financial aid for California would be to fully
fund the CSU budget to help reverse the current economic downturn for all
the citizens of the state."

Posted by Shelly Leachman at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that San Francisco Unified is rescinding every single one of the 535 teacher layoff notices it issued in March, thanks to the city's Board of Supervisors pledging to give the district up to $20 million to help ease the strain of the state-induced budget issues affecting almost every school system in California.

Reporter Jill Tucker writes: "The supervisors voted 11-0 Tuesday afternoon to approve a resolution promising the money from the city's rainy day fund. The official transfer of funds can't happen until the city passes its annual budget in June."

Posted by Shelly Leachman at 2:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In an effort to stem the massive bleeding expected to be induced by a proposed state budget that would slash education funding by billions, Torrance Unified is the latest local district to launch a targeted fundraising campaign, asking parents to pony up to help save programs and jobs.

The school system has already approved some $9 million in cuts for the 2008-2009 budget that include many jobs and a host of student services.

"Save Our Schools," a campaign of the Torrance Education Foundation, is asking for $360 per child in an effort to combat the cuts. The Torrance Council of PTAs has started a related awareness and contact-your- legislator sort-of effort called "Flunk the Budget."

A letter addressing both movements is en route to all Torrance Unified families.

Anyone wishing and ready to send a check should make it payable to TEF - SOS and send it to TEF - SOS, P.O. Box 3385, Torrance, CA 90510.

I'm guessing you'll hear more about this -- a lot more -- in the days and weeks to come.

Posted by Shelly Leachman at 4:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sad as it is for schoolkids here in California, this actually makes perfect sense.

MSNBC posts a story today about school districts in other states advertising here for new teachers, attempting, apparently, to capitalize on Cali's much-publicized budget woes and win away educators who have been pink-slipped with offers of higher pay and, in some cases, signing bonuses.

Interesting, right? Have any of you seen such ads, and are you thinking about pursuing opportunities in other states? If so, let me know: shelly.leachman@dailybreeze.com.

Posted by Shelly Leachman at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is likely to set other school districts' mouths to watering with wishes their own cities would/will do the same thing someday.

Check it out: The Manhattan Beach City Council voted Tuesday to give cash-strapped Manhattan Beach Unified $500,000, stat, to help the school system recover from some of its financial woes, which have only been made worse by the governor's budget proposal to slash education funding.

City reporter Andrea Woodhouse has the story in today's Daily Breeze.

Posted by Shelly Leachman at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The state Department of Education just emailed me -- and, I'm guessing, every reporter in California that's on their contact list -- with a heads up that they've added a section on their website that hosts a compendium of pertinent information related to the budget issues that have so consumed public districts these days, what with the Governator's proposal to slash education funding in order to save the state some money.

Anyhoo, thought I'd share a little of this with you:

For starters, the actual link.

Details, according to the note I received:

*The first section has links to specific topics like teacher layoffs, and the affect of the budget crisis on teacher education programs and schools in specific California regions.

*The second section lists data from the field and news reports on school budget cuts by county, then school district.

*The third section lists State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell's news releases about the budget cuts in reverse chronological order.

There she blows. Check it.

Posted by Shelly Leachman at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You've likely already heard about this by now, but I just got a heads-up email in my in box this afternoon.

Do you know about The Petition Site? It's a website where you can find petitions to sign on any number of topics, from a proposed ban on hunting Swiss cats and exporting their skins (yuck, right?) to promoting the importance of pre-K education.

It's actually pretty interesting (and a total time suck, so be forewarned) to peruse the mind-boggling myriad of petitions that are currently being circulated.

What may be most intriguing to you school types right now though, is this one, which aims to keep Prop 98 in place and stave off the Governator's proposed cuts to education funding.

Posted by Shelly Leachman at 3:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I haven't heard of anything quite like this happening locally, but let me know if I'm wrong:

To protest the state budget cuts to education, teachers staff and students in Alameda earlier this week made their feelings clear by standing inside garbage cans on a busy street corner, giving their two cents to passers-by.

As one kid told the San Francisco Chronicle: "If they trash the schools, kids would be trashed too," said Ben Holmes, 7, explaining with a first-grader's clarity why he was standing in a gray trash bin on the corner of Park and Central earlier this week.

And as writer Nanette Asimov deftly noted, "For drama, it's hard to beat a child in a garbage can."

Indeed. Let me know, via shelly.leachman@dailybreeze.com, if you hear of any similar protests planned at South Bay school districts.

Posted by Shelly Leachman at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)