Category: Main

  • San Diego’s D9 City Council Candidates – All of Them – Want to Bring Back City Pensions

    Four years after voters closed the city’s public employee pension system, every candidate for City Council District 9 says the city should give pensions to at least some new city employees. One of them even offered a path to reinstating them that he was later forced to retract. Proposition B, the 2012 ballot measure, froze…

  • New School Discipline Program Has Fans and Results, But Few Participating Schools

    A few years ago, San Diego Unified launched pilot program aimed at incorporating a new approach to school discipline, called restorative justice, to the district. Restorative justice brings someone who has done something wrong together with their victims — to listen, understand, empathize and heal. When student offenders participate in restorative justice exercises, they may…

  • A Mother’s Plea for Safety Improvements On 54th Street

    Video Credit: Brian Myers, Media Arts Center San Diego By Brian Myers Last October, Veronica Cortez’s son Jonathan was killed on 54th Street near Lea Street. He was skateboarding to his father’s house when he was struck by multiple drivers. None of the drivers stopped. “I hate this street,” Cortez said while visiting the intersection…

  • Diversity Still Lags Among SDSU Graduates Planning to Be Teachers

    By Megan Burks Some 200 soon-to-be teachers will graduate from San Diego State University Sunday. While they’re prepared to tackle problems in the classroom, they won’t make the pool of teachers more diverse for local school districts. In 2014, San Diego Unified School District convened a task force to recruit more teachers — in particular,…

  • How Fewer Classes Can Mean More Progress for English-Learners

    By Mario Koran and Rachel Evans In 2014, when San Diego Unified released data that showed how many students were on track to meet more rigorous graduation requirements, the numbers felt like a punch to the gut. Districtwide, only 59 percent of students were on track to graduate. The numbers were far worse for students…