Valencia Park Center for Academics, Drama and Dance theatre teacher Teri Ang will be awarded the Choice Award at the annual Bravissimo awards ceremony being held Tuesday, May 27, at the La Jolla Playhouse. Ms. Ang has been a theatre teacher for over 20 years at Valencia Park Center for Academics, Drama and Dance magnet school. She has directed more than 30 after-school productions. Principal Penny Simmons submitted the nomination. Congratulations to Ms. Ang on receiving this much-deserved recognition.

Recently, there has been some curiosity about media coverage about TB cases, particularly in our schools. According to the San Diego County Health and Human Services Agency and the district Nursing and Wellness Program, here are the statistics on the TB cases that have been identified to have a connection with the school district.

The chart shows the breakdown over several years, along with gender, age and ethnic data. According to this chart, the preliminary number of cases reported to date this year is 280.

Close to 58 percent of district students currently qualify for free and reduced-price meals and more are becoming eligible due to the current economic climate. The Food Services Department has experienced an increase in meal applications recently and would like to remind families that they can apply for this important program any time throughout the year. Applications are available in school offices or in the Food Services Department, located at Revere Center, 6735 Gifford Way, 92111. The percentage of students who qualify for free and reduced-price meals is used for Title I allocations, E-Rate programs and various grants. For information, please contact Tina Samson in Food Services at (858) 627-7328.

Physical Plant Operations Mobile Maintenance trailers -- "18 wheeler" type trailers that are brought to the school site for several days -- provide services such as carpentry, painting, plumbing and general routine maintenance repairs, as well as performing preventative maintenance on assets such as electrical, mechanical and roof components at our schools. So far this year, these Mobile Maintenance and Mobile Preventive Maintenance teams have made 379 multi-day visits to school campuses, helping to improve the learning environment by making sure our facilities are functioning properly. For further information, please contact Drew Rowlands, Director, Physical Plant Operations, at (858) 627-7121.

In keeping with the district's cooperative relationship with the Proposition MM Independent Citizen’s Oversight Committee, Physical Plant Operations presented the Major Repair and Replacement plan for fiscal year 2008/09 to the Citizen’s Oversight Implementation subcommittee. The plan was endorsed by the subcommittee and recommended for presentation to the full committee. This $25 million plan includes more than 300 maintenance and repair projects affecting three-quarters of the district's sites. Projects will repair, replace or upgrade electrical, grounds, plumbing, low voltage (bell, time, phone and computer infrastructure), mechanical and general building components throughout the year. For more information, please contact Drew Rowlands, Director, Physical Plant Operations, at (858) 627-7121.

For the sixth year in a row, the Transportation Services Department has received EPA grant funding to equip school district buses with particulate traps. These traps, which reduce emissions and particulate matter in the air, allow the buses to use “Green” ultra-low sulfur diesel and control pollution. All school buses in San Diego are now using the “Green” diesel. For further information, please contact Alex Robinson, Director, Transportation Services, at (858) 496-8710.

Congratulations to Linda Vista and Cubberley elementary schools for launching their new school websites. The new websites are part of San Diego Unified’s school website initiative that gives elementary schools the tools and knowledge to create sites at no cost. For more information, contact webmaster@sandi.net.

The San Diego Aircraft Carrier Museum, USS Midway, has established a special $40,000 fund to support bus transportation and admission fees for several thousand district students to complete field studies aboard the legendary aircraft carrier. Students complete standards-based lessons developed by the District’s History/Social Studies Department before touring the ship. More than 400 tenth and eleventh graders will be aboard ship during the annual Legacy Week commemoration after Memorial Day. For more information, visit http://www.midway.org.

Jackson, Kumeyaay, La Jolla, Ocean Beach, Torrey Pines and Penn elementary schools have been selected as 2008 California Distinguished Schools by the State Department of Education. These schools will be honored at an awards ceremony be held today, May 16, at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, California. The California School Recognition Program identifies and honors the state’s most exemplary and inspiring public schools (elementary and secondary schools are recognized during alternate years.) This year the selection criteria for the distinguished school program were more stringent than ever and the district is especially proud to have had six schools chosen. For more information about the California Distinguished School Award, visit http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/sr/cs/proginfo08.asp.

Dr. Rich Cansdale has been selected by the San Diego Chapter of Phi Delta Kappa as the Educator of the Year. He will be honored at the Kappan Night Initiation & Awards Ceremony on Thursday, May 22, at the Handlery Hotel and Resort. For information, please contact Dr. Jeannie Steeg, Executive Director, Administrators Association San Diego City Schools at (619) 295-2118.

PD 360, a web product of the School Improvement Network, has been hosting a series of excellent, interactive, free, one-hour webinars on Closing the Achievement Gap. Each session examines a different aspect of the achievement gap and discusses ways real schools are working on closing it. Go to www.schoolimprovement.com/pd360 to register for 30 days of free access. On Thursday, May 22, the fifth webinar will focus on School Culture. Once registered, you will receive log-on information and a phone number to call so you can hear the voice of the presenter, Curtis Linton, as you are viewing the webinar. To register for this webinar, go to www.gotomeeting.com/register/342554212 . E-mail Ashley.Alexander@schoolimprovement.com with questions. PD 360 is a comprehensive online professional development tool. Teachers and administrators can use PD 360 to access 46 digitized Video Journal of Education programs, broken into hundreds of fully indexed and searchable segments. Downloadable facilitator's guides are offered for each video segment. For more information, please contact Melissa Whipple at (619) 293-3181.

The Downtown Kiwanis Club of San Diego, the longest-standing community partner of the Counseling and Guidance Department, presented a $6,000 check to the department at the May 13 board meeting. This partnership has endured for 29 years, during which time the club has donated well over $150,000 to support the Elementary School Counseling Program. The service organization believes that early identification of and intervention with students experiencing school adjustment issues is paramount in keeping students engaged in education to ensure their ability to graduate and realize their personal dreams. Funding has supported the building of an extensive lending library as well as curricula to be used for classroom guidance lessons. In addition to the materials in the lending library, monies have provided scholarships for counselors to attend professional development conferences and competitive mini-grants for counselors to implement programs.

The San Diego Unified Council of PTAs is sponsoring a Rally for Education to send a message to Sacramento that our children's education is a priority. The rally will be held on Wednesday, May 21, from 7 to 8 p.m. (gates open at 6 PM) at Qualcomm Stadium parking lot. The event includes guest and student speakers. Participating district schools currently include Benchley-Weinberger Elementary; Marston and Marshall Middle; Clairemont, Hoover and Kearny High schools and Mt. Everest Academy. For more information, please contact Ruth Johnson at (619) 276-2209.

• NCLB restructuring mandates don't necessarily spark radical change
  Of the U.S. public schools that are restructuring under NCLB, roughly 40% of them have taken none of the corrective actions mandated by the federal education reform law, per a study by the Government Accountability Office last year. The law doesn't require that states give detailed accounts of what discrete schools are doing once they enter the restructuring category, this article says.
  
  
• Teach for America Sees Surge in Popularity
  The New York Times, May 14 NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Teach for America, the program that recruits top college graduates to teach for two years in public schools that are difficult to staff, has experienced a year of prodigious growth and will place 3,700 new teachers this fall, up from 2,900 last year, a 28 percent increase. That growth was outpaced, however, by a surge in applications from college seniors. About 24,700 applied this spring to be teachers, up from 18,000 last year, a 37 percent increase, according to figures released by the organization on Wednesday. The nonprofit program sent its first 500 recruits into American public school classrooms in 1990. Read more.
  
  
• United Way to make high-school graduation a priority
  Contributions collected by the United Way of America in the next decade will go in part to the organization's new goal of halving the country's high-school dropout rates. "The country is at a crossroads right now," said United Way President-CEO Brian A. Gallagher. "I've never felt a time in my career where there's this combination of enough pain, feeling of a lack of progress, feeling like we've stalled, combined with a next generation of leadership demanding change." The Washington Post
  
  
• United Way to Target Health, Education and Income
  The Washington Post, May 15
  WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The United Way of America, alarmed at the nation's fraying safety net, will announce today that it will direct its giving toward ambitious 10-year goals that would cut in half the high school dropout rate and the number of working families struggling financially. The nonprofit organization also wants to increase by one-third the number of youths and adults considered healthy. The announcement comes as it releases a report detailing a precipitous decline in key education, personal finance and health indicators. Read more.
  
  
• Educators need tools to serve gifted children
  Gifted children have unique needs, but few classroom teachers are ever trained to address them, writes gifted-education specialist Tamara Fisher. Just 77 U.S. colleges offer whole courses in gifted education while most schools simply discuss gifted students during one lecture in a class on exceptional children, she says. Teacher Magazine
  
  
• Teach for America Expands by 28 Percent in 2008-2009
  Teach for America, the nonprofit organization that places college graduates for two years in challenging public schools, will place 3,700 new teachers this September, a 28 percent increase from the 2,900 it placed last fall. In 1990, the program's first, Teach for America placed 500 teachers. Sam Dillon in the New York Times reports that the group saw a huge surge in applications from college seniors this year - 24,700 for 2008, compared to 18,000 in 2007, accounting for a 37 percent increase. Dillon went on to write that Teach for America was the number one employer this year at Duke University, Emory University, George Washington University, Georgetown University, New York University, and Spelman College.
  
  
• New Ways to Battle Truants in the Big "D"
  In an effort to find new ways to alleviate chronic high school truancy, the Dallas Public Schools has instituted a pilot program at Bryan Adams High School that uses global positioning system mechanisms to track students, Gretchen Kovach writes in the New York Times. Students strap on the device as they enter school, and take it off at the end of the day. "With location verification, [students] can't sneak through it, they can't game it like they can game their parents and game their teachers and game their friends," says Paul Pottinger, chief executive of the Center for Criminal Justice Solutions, which is marketing the truancy monitoring system. The six-week, $29,000 pilot program is financed by a grant from an equity investor who supports the program's goals. Of the more than 300 students sent to truancy court this year, nine are enrolled in the test. Kyle Ross, administrator of Bryan Adams' in-school suspension program, says that although he was initially skeptical, he was willing to give the system a try. To his surprise, the program seems to work. Students have said that despite the temptation to "yank off" the monitoring ankle bracelet, it has kept them on track.
  
  
• Thousands of free books to be made available to disadvantaged children
  The U.S. Department of Education will aid in providing 850,000 free books to schools and programs serving disadvantaged children as part of a 2008 Summer Reading Initiative. "Summer reading ensures reading skills are fresh when students start a new school year," Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said. "We know ... that the more time students spend reading, the better they perform." Education Week (premium article access compliments of Edweek.org)
  
  
• Mentors help high-school girls explore their college options
  A new Arizona mentorship program is helping girls in high school find promising careers by matching them with members of a local chapter of the American Association of University Women who assist the students in exploring their options and applying to college. The Arizona Republic (Phoenix)
  
  
• Improve science teacher pay to attract qualified candidates
  Data indicates that students with science degrees can earn thousands of dollars more annually by opting to go into fields other than teaching, writes Gerald F. Wheeler, the executive director of the National Science Teachers Association. Perhaps that's why nearly half of high school biology students and roughly two-thirds of chemistry and physics students are taught by teachers without majors or certification in the relevant field, he writes. Education Week (premium article access compliments of Edweek.org)