Ed roundup: BCSD continues after-school program
| Wednesday, Jul 28 2010 06:30 PM
Last Updated Wednesday, Jul 28 2010 06:45 PM
Bakersfield City School District trustees on Tuesday renewed the district's contract for the after-school program with the Boys & Girls Club in the amount of $2.3 million.
The money, coming from an after-school education and safety grant, will fund nearly 200 club staff members and services at about 30 campuses next school year. The program serves more than 3,400 students daily.
In other school board business:
* It approved $132,000 in services for the district Learning Village, a online system that holds digitized textbooks and allows educators to create lesson plans online, from anywhere, and share them with others. The system also allows teachers to connect their lesson plans to interactive technology in classrooms. The district initially purchased the program for $500,000 for three years, and is the first of its kind implemented districtwide in California.
* School board President Lillian Tafoya asked district staff to implement more data-driven decision-making by requiring all student programs to track data. She also asked the district to highlight all BCSD schools at least once on its website throughout the year.
* Superintendent Michael Lingo said the district spoke with Rafer Johnson about an alternative school that closed down this year due to budget cuts. It was named after Johnson, an Olympic gold medal winner in the decathlon, and served dozens of middle-schoolers with behavior problems. The building, which will now house the district's health services department, will still bear his name, Lingo said.
* The district passed a resolution backing a lawsuit to force the governor and Legislature to develop a better system for funding struggling public schools. BCSD is showing its support, but not joining in on the suit that says the state doesn't provide enough to cover educational mandates and programs.
The Kern County Board of Education approved a similar resolution earlier this month. It was the first to do so here, but 100 other districts across the state have backed it.
* The school board adjourned its meeting in memory of Linda Haworth, who worked in the food services department.
California has been named a finalist for a share of $3.4 billion in a federal education reform grant that has been supported by only two school districts in Kern County.
Seventeen other states were also named as finalists Tuesday in the competitive and controversial Race to the Top.
Earlier this year, California failed to qualify for the first batch of award money for $700 million rewarding states and districts for innovative, reforming education. Delaware and Tennessee ended up winning the grants.
Most local educators here refused to support the Race, citing too many strings attached.
Those strings included changing academic standards and using test data to evaluate teachers and allowing students to transfer out of low-performing schools.
Two districts here support the Race: Delano Union Elementary and McFarland Unified school districts, according to state data. Three hundred other districts in the state are also supporting it.
Winners of this round, phase two, will be announced in about a month. Meanwhile, California continues to pass measures for school reforms, including creating a list of under-performing schools parents can transfer their kids out of.
A Golden Valley High School math teacher has been selected to attend the 2010 Siemens STEM Institute summer seminar starting next week.
German Robledo is one of two educators in California, and one of 50 in the nation out of more than 600 applicants, selected to spend a week at the Discover Communications headquarters in Washington, D.C., where he will be immersed in hands-on math and science professional development.
He will spend the week with top scientists and innovators, learning STEM subject material and finding opportunities for networking and collaborating with peers from across the nation, according to Siemens.
Robledo started and organized the Kern High School District Rubik's Cube competition. He earned his master's degree from Cal State Bakersfield.
-- Jorge Barrientos, staff writer
For more education news, go to The Californian's education blog, The Grade, at www.bakersfield.com/blogs, or follow The Grade's Twitter at twitter.com/TBCTheGrade.
