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April 2009
 | Natomas Unified School District board member Lisa Kaplan, holding sign, demonstrates her support for employees and against draconian budget cuts forced on public education throughout California by the state budget. The “Pink Friday” rally on the steps of the state Capitol was one of many throughout the state last month. |
Web Only Articles
14 April 2009 - Forty Californians, including board members, superintendents and teachers from 17 school districts and county offices of education, participated in the annual Celebrating Educational Opportunities for Students of All Cultures conference, a collaboration of state school boards associations in the four southwestern states. This year’s conference took place March 27-29 in Austin, Texas.
14 April 2009 - U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan discussed schools’ use of economic stimulus finds and laid out an ambitious agenda in a wide-ranging address to the annual conference of the National School Boards Association in San Diego April 4.
In California School News
Billions in federal stimulus dollars are set to start flowing to local educational agencies this month in an historic attempt to stave off mass layoffs and programmatic cuts stemming from the national recession and state budget cuts.
In a quirk of the calendar this long, difficult budget year, CSBA’s annual Legislative Action Conference presented in collaboration with the California County Boards of Education in Sacramento May 17-18, will be wrapping up just hours before the polls open for California’s 14th statewide election in 10 years, one with crucial implications for the May Revision of the state budget expected later in the month.
The magnitude of the cuts to education has put school governance practices throughout the state in the spotlight. Never before have the stakes been so high or the results so public.
In another victory for CSBA’s Education Legal Alliance, an appeals court has ruled that the state Legislature lacks the authority under the constitutional separation of powers doctrine to direct the Commission on State Mandates to overturn or reconsider its final decisions.
With California schools working to withstand the harsh fiscal conditions afflicting them, CSBA is taking a number of steps to tighten its fiscal belt while at the same time continuing to deliver excellent programs and services to its members.
CSBA’s Legislative Committee, an advisory group that reviews and takes positions consistent with the CSBA Policy Platform on bills in the Legislature, deliberated on pending legislation in January and again in March. The following are some of the newly introduced bills that the Legislative Committee considered;
Charter advocate Raneene “Rae” Belisle and charter school principal Jorge Lopez join high school senior Sophia Angelis as the newest members of the California State Board of Education.
Fourteen continuation high schools that are particularly effective at helping students in danger of dropping out have earned recognition as 2009 Model Continuation High Schools.
The California Department of Education’s plan for implementing the No Child Left Behind Act’s Title II requirements regarding the recruitment, assignment and retention of highly qualified teachers drew a capacity audience to a Webinar co-sponsored by CSBA, the Association of California School Administrators and the CDE last month.
More than 10,000 school administrators assessed the teaching skills of first-year teachers under their supervision in an eight-year study begun by California State University in 2001. The average 3 to 4 percentage points that novice teachers gained in six of seven areas studied is called “statistically significant."