Half Moon Bay Review

On Monday Pescadero elementary and middle school was listed among 188 Tier I schools in California that must take one of several draconian steps to improve chronically poor performance on standardized tests. Those steps may include firing the principal, re-organizing as a charter school or closing entirely.

The California Department of Education issued a release of the schools on Monday that were found to be in the lowest 5 percent of persistently under achieving schools.

The list and its release are part of the state’s efforts to grab some of the federal government’s Race to the Top funding that will draw on American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and School Improvement Grant monies.

The La Honda-Pescadero Unified School District school is the only school in San Mateo County on the list.

CNN

The driver of a Toyota Prius said he was taken on a wild ride Monday when the car’s accelerator became stuck. The Prius reached speeds of over 90 mph on Interstate 8 outside of San Diego, until the CHP was able to bring the car safely to a stop.

At a news conference outside a CHP office, driver Jim Sikes said, “I pushed the gas pedal to pass a car, and it just did something kind of funny. It just stuck there. As I was going, I was trying the brakes … and it just kept speeding up.”

Toyota recently issued widespread recalls due to problems related to the accelerator pedal in several of its auto models. One theory behind the sticky accelerators is the vehicles’ floor mats.
But Sikes said, “My mat was perfect. There was nothing wrong with my mat.”

A CHP officer was able to catch up to the Prius and use the patrol car’s public address system to instruct Sikes to apply the brakes and the emergency brake at the same time, which worked.

SFGate.com

In yet another attempt to lower San Francisco Muni’s $768 million annual operating budget, a proposed November initiative would take aim at Muni drivers’ salaries.

Already facing fare increases and a 10% decrease in Muni service on May 1st, the initiative would eliminate a trust fund for Muni drivers that has resulted in yearly payouts of up to $3,000 for full-time operators.

Supervisor Sean Elsbernd’s plan attempts to change a controversial salary formula that for more than four decades has guaranteed Muni drivers are the second highest-paid transit operators in the nation. Currently, the salary for Muni’s approximately 2,000 drivers amounts to a base wage of $29.19 an hour.

“In order to protect riders against unfair fare increases and unnecessary service cuts, passage of this charter amendment is critical,” Elsbernd said.

AP

President Obama’s new health care bill includes a change in federal abortion policy, but it does not go as far as some abortion opponents had feared.

The biggest concern among anti-abortion groups was that the policy would allow taxpayer dollars to go toward the funding of abortion. Current law prohibits federal funding for abortion except under special circumstances, such as to save the life of the mother.

Abortion rights groups such as Planned Parenthood say the new versions of the health care bill before the House and Senate represent the biggest expansion of abortion restrictions in years, but they’re not trying to defeat the measures. Instead, a bitter dispute among abortion opponents over which version is stricter could derail Obama’s makeover of the health insurance system.

At a rally in Pennsylvania yesterday, Obama made an emotional pitch for public support as he tries to push the legislation through a final series of votes in Congress in the next few weeks.

State Sen. Roy Ashburn, the Bakersfield Republican who was arrested in Sacramento last week on suspicion of drunk driving, came out as gay in a radio interview this morning.

The announcement follows days of intense scrutiny of Ashburn’s personal life after he was arrested just after 2 a.m. on March 3. A Sacramento television station reported that Ashburn was at a popular gay dance club that night and several people have said they have seen the senator at gay bars in the city.

His sexual orientation is at issue because Ashburn has one of the staunchest records of voting against bills that would expand rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Californians.

Pescadero elementary and middle school Monday made a dubious list of 188 schools in California that must take one of several draconian steps to improve chronically poor performance on standardized tests. Those steps may include firing the principal, re-organizing as a charter school or closing entirely.

The school was listed as a “Tier 1” school in a release issued by the California Department of Education. To make the list, schools were found to be in the lowest 5 percent of persistently poor-achieving schools.

The list and its release are part of the state’s efforts to grab some of the federal government’s Race to the Top funding that will draw on American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and School Improvement Grant monies.

Schools identified on the list are required to implement one of four strategies, according to a release from the Department of Education.

Boston.com

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A proposal to overhaul the way children are assigned to public schools in San Francisco has gained support from parents as it heads to the Board of Education for a critical vote Tuesday.

The proposed system would replace a complex, oft-criticized lottery that considers a variety of socio-economic factors when assigning students to schools with a simplified method that largely emphasizes proximity to home and uses test scores to achieve academic diversity citywide, according to the San Francisco Unified School District.

The current lottery was put in place in 2001 and was the latest in a line of systems that all took a crack at diversifying The City’s long-segregated schools. The system ultimately has failed in that effort and has done more to agitate parents.

The new proposal has been in the works for several years and amended within the past few weeks.

Under the proposed system, parents would still be able to request any school in The City. However, when schools have more requests than seats, student placement would be based upon a new list of criteria that would vary at the elementary, middle and high school levels.

Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Parents-back-new-school-lotto-86787602.html#ixzz0hbBgEW5u