Priority setting

Last night at the School Board meeting there was a brief section acknowledging that the DECA class/club at Encinal would be going to Orlando Florida for a conference. DECA, for those that don’t know, is some business/marketing thing. Think Model UN but for business.

Now these kids have been working hard and totally deserve to go to this conference but given all that is going on in Florida right now around education and now most recently this:

WATCH: Eastern Florida State College cancels U.S. government class after a student felt "discomfort" over a discussion on civil rights. The class was cancelled under the umbrella of Gov. DeSantis' "Stop WOKE" law. https://t.co/yDWhClnIPu

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) March 29, 2023

I wonder if it is time for our schools to take a stand on ALL THIS not being right and, you know, not throw district authorized travel for kids dollars at a state that bans Ruby Bridges documentaries and cancels whole classes on Civil Rights.

And another one

This country and its gun policies are seriously and utterly broken. When we care about banning kids from seeing a movie about Ruby Bridges to “protect” them but don’t actually want to do anything to protect their lives, we have a serious mismatch in priorities here.

It's weird how @RepTimBurchett thinks government bans work for everything except the weapons of war that are mowing down our children. https://t.co/LFsDxFJdFn pic.twitter.com/TcNjIp9VOC

— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) March 28, 2023

One schedule to rule them all

Most of you probably don’t have kids in Elementary School at AUSD any longer, I certainly don’t, nonetheless I’m fascinated by the work being done at the district level to implement a student centered master schedule for Elementary students

From the staff report:

Taking the “class” out of “classical”

Not Alameda related at all but I have not been able to get this out of my mind given everything else going on in Florida around education:

Well, it happened. Schools in Florida under Ron DeSantis are run by the type of parental mobs The Simpson's satirized more than 30 years ago.

Principal fired after parents complain about lesson on Michaelangelo's David. https://t.co/vMGyf7fuxM pic.twitter.com/G319wgNq27

— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) March 23, 2023

Now the funny thing is that this charter school is called the Tallahassee Classical School and somehow the most famous Renaissance sculpture is too risqué for 11 and 12 years olds because of the marble penis. And every time I see something like this I’m reminded of the piece during the election which tried to “both sides” the interference from the left and the right into education. I wonder what, current, issues that person now as to twist into something much more shocking in order to maintain that the left and the right are equally wrong in trying to control the education of children in the US.

It’s an emergency

Hey I just wanted to reflect post Tuesday’s bomb cyclone which saw many downed trees across Alameda that we should really be giving a huge “thanks” to AMP workers for keeping the power on for the vast majority of Alamedans during a time when I think we were all anticipating that we would all be hunkering down in the dark. The fact that we didn’t have to is really a testament to whatever it is AMP is doing in order to harden our electrical systems during the good times so that when the bad times hit we’re not without power for days on end.

Added to that an additional thanks to public works (and public safety employees) who were out in the horrible weather extracting people from dangerous situations (like trees toppling on cars) and clearing the road from hazards quickly. When I was coming home on Tuesday afternoon I saw only one downed tree on RAMP near the College, the next morning there were a whole lot more, pulled up from their roots, but clearly had been taken care taken enough from someone in the City to make sure they were no longer a public hazard.

I will note that what happened on Tuesday was one of those “emergencies” that some folks like to bring up when discussions of developments or even Housing Elements come up. Of course in this emergency we were all told to stay off the roads (and honestly if you didn’t have to go somewhere, would you have?) and stay at home if possible. Barring a tsunami which will require actually evacuation and we’d have hours and hours of notice for that, most emergency situations will require that Alamedas do the same that they did not Tuesday. Get into shelter and stay off the roads. Anyone who thinks they’ll need to mass exodus Alameda in every emergency should remember what they did on Tuesday and consider if hopping in their car and driving inland was anywhere near their mind.

Housing streamline

You know you’ve hit the Twitter big time when you get retweeted by State Senator Scott Weiner and it’s for something that is a net good:

Today SB 423 — making permanent SB 35, a major housing streamlining law I wrote — has its 1st hearing. SB 35 has been hugely successful in delivering below market rate homes, incl supportive housing for homeless people. These homes are now approved in months instead of years. https://t.co/OS0foEnqzK

— Senator Scott Wiener (@Scott_Wiener) March 21, 2023

Tenacious C

One thing you have to say about the opponent to the Wellness Center, they are nothing if not tenacious. I’ve said it before but most people like to put their efforts behind positive things like watching puppy videos or playing with cats but not this person, oh no. Apparently they get super jacked about trying to find something nefarious around the elected officials who opposed their work even though they were caught getting a lot of assistance and helpful forwards of opponent letters from staff at the State Historic Preservation Office. What’s that phrase when you assume that because you’re doing something shady that someone else must be doing something shady as well?

So anyway, even though this individual had already put in a PRA in August of last year:

There is a new one which narrows the number of people but expands the timeline:

For the first PRA there was nothing nefarious, no secret meetings or evil hand rubbing, it was all, well documents that we’ve mostly seen before submitted as public record.

I’m not quite sure what the additional two months is going to reveal but I guess trying to shut down a building for homeless senior citizens after we’ve had some truly awful weather is still priority number one for this Alamedan. Some folks say “be the change you want in the world” but I guess in this case “change” means leaving frail folks out on the streets.

One two three, one two three, drink

I’m really bad at addresses so when I walked past a vacant store front on Webster Street and saw a Korean name attached to a permit application and the word “grocery” I though excitedly, “omg, Webster Street’s getting one of those mini Korean grocery stores” turns out, not so much. In the old Malaya Botanical shop apparently Santos Liquor wants to move in that spot and it’s not 1000 feet away from the next liquor store. So the City Council will be taking up the possibility of amending the liquor store ordinance on Tuesday to accommodate Santos Liquor needing to move because of landlord issues. This is part of a referral from Trish Spencer.

Look, I don’t have a ton of thoughts on this particular issue, I’m not a drinker, I don’t go to liquor stores and I would much prefer that business to have been a Korean grocery store with Korean snacks so I don’t have to make the schlep to Koreana Plaza or H Mart. But, yeah, if the City Council has made the rules flexible for other alcohol serving establishments in the past and this is not technically adding a new liquor store on Webster Street I don’t really care.

I’m taking this horse by the reins

Definitely not Alameda related but instructive nonetheless for monied NIMBY groups who think that suing to stop development projects are a good thing. Consider the case of a development in Layfayette from the Chronicle:

After a 12-year battle, the California Supreme Court declined this week to hear an appeal from a neighborhood group attempting to stop the development of a 315-unit apartment building in Lafayette, clearing the project’s last hurdle and allowing it to move forward.

The project, known as the Terraces of Lafayette, became the poster child of the Bay Area housing wars as it faced two lawsuits, a ballot referendum and over 100 public hearings that delayed the project for more than a decade after its initial application was approved by the city.  

I particularly liked these quotes:

“This decision is a win for housing, but the fact that this project has taken so long is exactly why we have such a catastrophic housing shortage,” said Sonja Trauss, president and founder of pro-housing group YIMBY Law, in a statement.

Matt Regan, senior vice president of public policy for the Bay Area Council, agreed, saying he hopes that the court’s decision sends a message to housing opponents — “you can’t lawyer your way to your desired outcome.”

“It’s a game changer,” he said of the decision. “It shows that these wealthy, largely suburban communities that have not been fulfilling their housing obligations for so long are now going to be held accountable.”

…

Trauss with YIMBY Law put it more bluntly: “The people involved with Save Lafayette should be ashamed of themselves.”

Yadda yadda

Remember when the EB Times gave the responsibility of questioning the School Board candidates and analyzing the responses to someone who was bending over backward to try to “both sides are wrong” argument? It seems particularly quaint and naive now in light of the sweeping attempts of whole ass states (Florida anyone) to remove anything involving race:

How some textbook publishers are trying to get approval in Florida, via @smervosh: https://t.co/5FlVf11Ut5 pic.twitter.com/qrHnXfsBJ1

— Azi™️ (@Azi) March 16, 2023

I mean, the way the new proposed Florida textbook handled the Rosa Parks story to completely take out WHY she was asked to move from from her seat which would probably be more puzzling and bring up more questions for kids. They might as well have just “yadda yadda”ed the whole Rosa Parks story in general. As I pointed out in November:

First it’s a tell from the reporter that he believes that that prohibitions on teaching the real history of the US is some how the same as people suggesting that maybe saying that “you don’t see color” is problematic because it erases the experiences of people who can’t scrub away the their race. These are not the same things, the stretch to put them as some how equal in problematicness is problematic in itself.

Similarly talking about “Black codes” without mentioning that the “Black” in “Black codes” means Black people is a choice and ahistoric. But I suppose that some folks, like the reporter from November would look at this, look at cleaned out shelves in Florida schools and announce that the left does the same because the Dr Seuss estate said they’re going to stop reprinting certain books that show Asian people with slanty eyes.

It’s this need for balance from media types that cheapen the debate around the real threat around what is happening in schools across red states. This is no longer limited to just some books contain the “lost cause” narrative, this is stripping our history of, well, history.