Comments by jlundell
October 10, 2004
Charles, We have split classes because the administration is trying to stay within class size limites (20 in K-3, 34 in 4-5) while minimizing the number of teachers. There are four or five empty classrooms at Hatch this year. At least one or two are being used for other (worthwhile) purposes, but they were classrooms last year. That shouldn't come as a surprise. For budget reasons, the administration is trying to minimize the number of teachers, which of course means minimizing the number of classrooms.…
October 05, 2004
Charles, you say that we're "in desperate need to ... provide additional elementary classrooms." Our budget shortfalls have forced us to reduce the number of teachers and increase class sizes, not because we don't have enough classrroms (we have several empty classrooms this year), but because we can't afford more teachers. On top of that, our K-5 enrollment has declined by 300 students in the last ten years, something that many Bay Area districts have experienced and that the state Department of…
October 14, 2004
The NCLB problem is going to get worse, since the percent-proficient threshold rises from 14% to 23% (approximately) this year. I'd like to see the district using these tests to measure the progress of individual students, and then reporting the results, rather than reporting school-wide averages. Teachers don't teach schools; they teach individual classes individual students. It's hard for the teachers to take a school-wide score and know how that score should affect their day-to-day classroom activities.…
October 11, 2004
We'd build a new middle school at Cunha, incorporating portions of the old structure. And why does Measure K list building a new middle school as one of many uses of the bond proceeds? "...to relieve existing overcrowded conditions and provide adequate classrooms for students already enrolled in district elementary schools...". But "existing overcrowded conditions" at Cunha have already been relieved; enrollment is down from nearly 1,000 to about 800, and the administration expects it to decline…
October 10, 2004
Charlie, Funds from where? We have $27-28 million left from Measure K and state matching funds. The Wavecrest Mello-Roos funds will add another $3M, more or less, so let's say $30M. The proposed Wavecrest middle school, as designed, will cost in the neighborhood of $22-24M, based on recent estimates. We can reasonably expect a Wavecrest elementary school to cost closer to $10-12M, leaving $18-20M for rebuilding Cunha and upgrading elementary sites. With respect to buffer zones, I'd prefer to build…
October 10, 2004
Charlie, Building a new elementary school and restoring Cunha will be less expensive than building the planned Wavecrest middle school and restoring Cunha as an elementary school. That should leave funds for upgrading the other elementary sites, and perhaps for building the performing arts center. Second, the frog/snake habitat identified by the FWS is centered on the drainage ditch, which forms the southern boundary of the planned residential development. We don't know what the required habitat…
October 07, 2004
Barry asks if I'll support lockers at Cunha and the new middle school. Yes. There's plenty more research. Here's an article about a paper published in The Lancet in 1999. The size and heft of some of our textbooks are dismaying. We won't get rid of backpacks altogether, what with heavy texts and homework assignments. But lockers would mean that backpacks don't get carried around all day, and should lighten the home-to-school load a bit as well. By the way, do our textbooks really have to be so heavy?…
October 06, 2004
Replying to "coastside": We don't know for sure why our enrollment has been declining. Certainly the district loses some students to private schools, but I don't know of any particular reason to believe that this trend has changed much in recent years. Mr Gardner singled out HMB's Sea Crest School for particular blame in our loss of middle school students, but that's not very plausible. Sea Crest has about 80 students in grades 6-8, while CUSD middle school enrollment is 400 short of district projections.…
October 05, 2004
Barry asks: What experience do you have managing a budget? I've had budget experience from two sides. As a line manager (VP Engineering, CTO) I've created and then implemented departmental operating budgets. Over more years than I care to count, I've managed budgets in boom times and tight times, in both rapidly growing and shrinking organizations. On the other side, I've served as a board member, occasionally as chairman, of several technology corporations. A board member's role in budgeting is…
October 05, 2004
John, you're "for building a new middle school NOW!" But all our current school board members said essentially the same thing when they were running, all the way back to 1998. Kids who were in kindergarten when Measure K was passed to fund construction are now in high shool. How long is long enough? Measure K said that the new middle school was to be built "for students already enrolled in district elementary schools." It's too late for that. I've proposed a plan that would make the approval of Wavecrest…
October 01, 2004
The CUSD school board routinely reconvenes its closed sessions without explicitly agendizing the continuation. I've been a critic of the board's misuse of closed sessions, but neither I nor the Review has complained about this practice. What generally happens is that the closed session runs past the nominal 7pm open-session start time, and rather than delay the open session, the board continues the closed session after the open session is completed. The board seldom if ever identifies a specific…
September 22, 2004
Sorry, I mean that Ms Patridge spoke in opposition and Ms Fraser voted against.
September 22, 2004
I understand that Naomi Patridge and councilmember Marina Fraser voted against. Any idea why?
September 07, 2004
...board member Dwight Wilson told me that they discussed the contract, instructed their attorney to look into the matter and took no action. Now that's curious. I'm looking at the agenda for that closed session, and there's no mention at all of discussing the Wavecrest contract (perhaps reflecting the fact that such a discussion would contravene the Brown Act). It does say that they were going to provide price and terms of payment instructions to their real property negotiators. Dwight didn't happen…
August 17, 2004
I think this raises the bigger question of whether we're going to be able to improve test scores at all without significantly changing education in California, and whether any district can realistically be expected to do any more than hold its own. What would you change? Reduce class sizes, maybe, but we're already down to 20 in K-3, and it hasn't had much, if any, effect. The district likes to point a finger at English learners, and that's certainly an area where we need to do better. But you'll…
August 13, 2004
Missing from the Times article is any context for the $180M figure. What share of county-wide business revenue does it represent? How has that share changed over time? Was agriculture ever a significant part of the county's economy?
(Oracle, for example, has anuual revenue of about $10B: one company with 55 times the revenue of all agriculture in the county.)
June 28, 2004
Ironically, people interested in a seat on the CUSD board will have to choose between this meeting and the budget-adoption meeting of the CUSD board.
The July meeting ends up on 6/30, since that's the deadline for passing the next-year budget.
June 14, 2004
I like the map link, by the way.
I think there's room for coverage of locally signficant events that are ephemeral news stories. What were all those sirens about? What was the cause of the power outage? Midcoast-L is sometimes useful in that regard, but a reported story is better.
The two recent fatalities illustrate the fact that not all of HMB's traffic problems are on Hwy 1 and solvable by adding more traffic lights.
June 14, 2004
Not quite on topic, but the local-headlines link <https://coastsider.com/localheadlines.php> is 404.
May 28, 2004
Hey, Barry, I didn't realize you were from southern California. Whereabouts?
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