Educators

This week's column comes to you via the Internet from the Kingwing Hot Spring International Hotel in Beijing, where I am with the first of three groups of educators and their families touring Bejiing, Shanghai and several other cities, including visits to elementary and high schools. This week's group includes daughters Stacy and Jodi, son-in-law Zach Drysdale and his mother Vicki, and teachers from Huntington Beach, Seal Beach, the Orange County Department of Education, New York and places in between.

Robert Kobzi’s students are learning two things simultaneously in their fifth-grade classroom at Arroyo Elementary School: parts of speech, and freedom of speech. Kobzi, who teaches mostly English-learner students at the school in Pomona, leads his class through a unit in constitutional law every year. When he gave a presentation Saturday in UCI’s educational conference on the 1st Amendment, he pinned some samples of his students’ work on the classroom wall — including a poster from three girls who wrote, “It’s important to know our purposes because if we didn’t know them the governor would take advantage of us.” “They got an A,” Kobzi told the group of fellow educators who had come to learn new tactics for working civil liberties into the classroom.

State Sen. Tom Harman criticized Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for signing a bill that prohibits lesson plans that negatively portray people based on their gender, sexual orientation or religion. Harman believes the law, which he said should already be covered in state codes, will leave educators open to discrimination lawsuits. ?Since the Education Code already specifically protects against the type of discrimination targeted in [Senate Bill 777] this legislation is unnecessary and will have many adverse consequences on the moral and religious teaching within families,?

Danette Goulet NEWPORT-MESA -- Gov. Gray Davis is on the right track in his support of education, but it just isn't enough, say local educators, parents and students. "It's good bits and pieces of what needs to be a comprehensive plan," said Linda Mook, president of the Newport-Mesa Teachers Federation. In his state of the State address Wednesday night, Davis called on students to enter the teaching profession, proposing forgivable college loans, teaching fellowships and cash bonuses as incentives for teachers working in schools that rank in the lowest 50%. "You need qualified teachers in a classroom, and it would be really great if lawmakers woke up and said, 'Lets at least bring California up to the national average and put resources into the schools where they can actually use them,"' Mook said.

Submitted by Dan Pittman Costa Mesa-based Experian was the underwriter of the Jump$tart Coalition’s first-ever National Educator Conference, which was held recently in Washington, DC. Created to help educators meet the challenges of teaching personal finance in hard economic times, the forum drew more than 250 classroom teachers from 46 states. The forum was developed in conjunction with the National Education Association (NEA), and featured several Washington dignitaries.

PUBLIC SAFETY: Scribner wants officials to place a top priority on public safety in areas that they can control, Scribner said. He wants police to focus on violent crime, property and personal crimes and corporate fraud, instead of wasting time on "pot smokers." Something is wrong with a system that punishes a marijuana offender more harshly than a murderer, Scribner said. Officials need to reprioritize to make California safer, he said. "Rapists and murderers belong in jail," Scribner said.

The eighth annual Costa Mesa-Wyndham, Australia Sister-City Education Exchange got off to a wonderful start this week with the arrival of Australian educators Jane Motley and Diana Pongrac. Motley, a primary reading and transition from pre-school to kindergarten specialist, and Pongrac, a primary art specialist and classroom teacher, will spend two weeks in Costa Mesa learning about our education system and sharing information about theirs. In the days since their arrival, Motley and Pongrac have spoken at the Harbor Council PTA and been introduced at the Costa Mesa City Council.

BACK TO SCHOOL AGAIN 1Orange Coast College will host a daylong conference on adult reentry education from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. today in the Student Center and Captain's Table. The conference is meant for community college and university reentry educators and students. There will be a workshop and seminar on relating topics. The campus is at 2701 Fairview Road. Registration is $40, $15 for students and $35 for CARE members. (714) 432-5162. A HIP HALLOWEEN HAPPENING 2The Masquerade Ball for the Arts will be held from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. Saturday at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach.

Are we raising a generation of anxious, overly stressed, sleep-deprived kids? Or are concerns about how hard we're driving our children misguided and overblown? Those questions are often on my mind, but even more so since last week, when I attended a local screening of the provocative documentary "Race to Nowhere," a film by former Wall Street lawyer and mother of three Vicki Abeles. Through interviews with students, parents, educators and mental-health professionals her film makes the case that pressures on children have grown so much that we've compromised our kids' health, happiness and ability to truly succeed in learning.

How far should we go to save public education? So far as to name a school gym after a corporate sponsor? Let business interests influence textbook content? Put cigarette and junk food ads on the sides of school buses? If you think these ideas sound far-fetched, think again. As school budgets continue to be squeezed, districts are increasingly tempted to allow an insidious march of corporate marketers onto campus. Bearing gifts of needed school supplies, enrichment programs and outright cash, these businesses come in do-gooder guise, but that pretense does little to camouflage their aims of manipulating the buying decisions of kids and their parents.

A Newport-Mesa Unified School District classified employee will be honored by the county Board of Education. Support Services and Security employee Connie Bassler is a finalist in the fifth annual Classified School Employees of the Year. She will be recognized at the board's meeting Thursday morning. Bassler is a finalist along with Karen Hulbert and David McGovern of the Westminster School District; Robert Redondo of the La Habra City School District; Dionne Gibson of the Los Alamitos Unified School District; and Long Le of the Laguna Beach Unified School District.

Administrators at some Newport-Mesa schools that fail to meet federal standards have come up with some compelling ideas to try to turn things around. There's just one problem: They all cost money. Last week, the school board voted to allocate $1.1 million to one such program, which calls for additional instructional time to help the 11 schools in the so-called Program Improvement category boost student test scores. The move requires some financial acrobatics, since the money must come out of the district's existing budget — what Deputy Supt.

An Orange County extended-learning nonprofit added five new members to its board, including Laguna Beach resident Donnie Crevier. Santa Ana-based THINK Together brought together professionals in dental, technology and retail food to its leadership board. Crevier is the name behind Santa Ana-based Crevier BMW, the largest volume BMW center in the nation and was honored by Time Magazine for being a quality dealer and for its community service. "We need to continue to evolve the board of directors so that it can govern, guide and help to adequately resource the organization as it scales up, while at the same time remaining connected to the communities that we serve," THINK board Chairman Fran Inman said in a prepared statement.

With a fishing pole in hand and the remains of a "compost cupcake" on her face, 5-year-old Avalon Freyder dipped her line into the pseudo pool of mini rubber ducks and trivia questions for a game intended to teach children about the environment. For the kindergartner, she said taking care of the planet is important "because you don't want to get the Earth dirty. " Protecting the environment was the subject of Davis Magnet School's first Eco-Education Night on Thursday meant to "bring our community together and raise awareness of the eco-education that is going on at Davis," said Lisa Manfredi, the Parent Teacher Assn.'s Green Team and Learning Garden chairwoman.

For ideas on how to live green, residents need look no farther than Davis Magnet School. The Costa Mesa K-6 campus is hosting its first Eco-Education Night from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday in the multipurpose room, 1050 Arlington Drive. The event will feature a talk by Evan Marks, founder and director of The Ecology Center in San Juan Capistrano; a reading by author Derek Sabori of his book "Lu and the Earth Bug Crew"; and presentations by the schools' EcoScholars and Green Team.

As community college budgets continue to decline and the statewide conversation of changing the colleges' purpose continues, Andrew C. Jones doesn't see the situation for education getting better for several more years. Still, the 62-year-old Coast Community College District chancellor took the top spot despite everything and believes the district can be successful and thrive in this environment. "The thing about it is, it's exciting - it's full of opportunity," he said.

COSTA MESA - Instead of budget cuts and more bad news from Sacramento, the Newport-Mesa Schools Foundation celebrated the community's top teachers Thursday night and awarded $147,000 in grants to support classroom innovation. The Schools Foundation hosted its annual "Grants to Teachers" Awards Dinner in the grand ballroom at Turnip Rose in Costa Mesa. "This was a great opportunity for our teachers to be recognized, not only for in the classroom, but for innovative grants they wrote," said Nicholas Dix, the executive director of the Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers.

American colleges have responded to harsh criticism that tuition rose four times as fast as the cost of living over the last 25 years — resulting in their graduates leaving school as debt slaves with an average of $25,250 in student loans — by trumpeting that the average starting salaries for college students with bachelor's degrees are still a healthy $48,288. The only problem with this clever statistic is that the average student graduates from college with a liberal arts degree that pays only $35,508.

Local businesses, agencies and nonprofits are coming to together for one night to show Newport-Mesa residents all the resources they have at their fingertips. Newport-Mesa Unified's Community Advisory Committee for Special Education is hosting a free Family Resource Fair from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Jan. 25 at Estancia High School, 2323 Placentia Ave., Costa Mesa. The annual fair is meant to empower families — both typical and special education — through resources they might not be aware of, said Ann Huntington, the district's executive director of special education.