Educators

Angel Silva talks shop like the journalist he is. Sitting last month in the office of El Vaquero, the student newspaper at Glendale Community College, the 20-year-old described traveling to Sacramento to cover the March in March protests, staged by college students in opposition to cuts in education funding. “Being able to work on my toes and being able to write a story on site was pretty interesting, [especially] considering that they were arresting people,” Silva said. His foray into journalism started while he was at Francis Polytechnic High School in Sun Valley.

Glendale Unified school board members are 0-2 in consecutive 43rd Assembly District races. Local businessman and Republican candidate Greg Krikorian last week resumed his seat on the dais at district headquarters after conceding to Democratic incumbent Mike Gatto. “I really want to thank everyone [who was there] along the way,” Krikorian said at a board meeting the day after the election. “I met so many new voters, new friends.” Perhaps he will find Nayiri Nahabedian an empathetic colleague.

When Glendale Teachers Assn. President Tami Carlson approaches the podium at school board meetings, she likes to describe herself as representing “the best darn teachers in the state of California.” She means it. Still, there will be fewer Glendale teachers for her to serve next year as the district looks to address a $15-million structural deficit via a series of cost-cutting measures that most likely will include layoffs. Those measures will impact the individuals who lose their jobs, the teachers who remain behind, and, of course, the students.

Students studying Italian at Franklin Elementary were paid a visit Wednesday by Paola Ebranati, the education director for the Italian consulate in San Francisco. The Milan-born Ebranati, who was raised near the Alps in northern Italy, toured the kindergarten through third-grade dual-language immersion classes at Franklin, where students spend their days meeting Italian and Californian standards. In the kindergarten class, Italian words beginning with “P” were the topic of study.

Glendale Community College makes 85 look good. The campus will play host to more than 400 alums, employees and patrons for a birthday celebration in the form of a formal outdoor dinner on Saturday night. In preparation, Lisa Brooks, executive director of the Glendale College Foundation, and others dug through the college archives, unearthing newspaper clippings and photographs entertaining enough to swallow an afternoon. “I think what has been interesting also is hearing everybody's stories,” Brooks said.

This post has been updated, see below for details. The hum of a half-dozen telephone conversations percolated through Glendale Teachers Assn. headquarters in Montrose on a recent afternoon. Union members are gathering on a near daily basis to call voters and draw attention to two major education-related state propositions that will appear on the November ballot. Proposition 32 would limit the political clout of unions in Sacramento by prohibiting the use of payroll-deducted funds for political purposes.

Finally, someone is making cents out of education. State Sen. Carol Liu, up for reelection in November in the newly configured 25th District, was at Glendale Community College on Monday to lay out the tenets of the Student Success Act of 2012. The legislation, which Liu helped write and Gov. Jerry Brown has until Sunday to sign into law, strives to make community colleges more productive by augmenting critical services and prioritizing enrollees with clear education goals and performance records.

Last Thursday I had the privilege of being a featured speaker at the New York Times' Schools for Tomorrow conference. There I was sitting in the green room next to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., publisher of the New York Times, and columnist David Brooks. For a journalism teacher, it was nirvana. I enjoy having the opportunity to speak about teaching and public education, especially to a larger audience. The public needs to see more real faces of real teachers to understand that when the word “teacher” is bandied about, there are actual human beings representing that word.

For some, returning to middle school might seem like the plot of an especially corny B-grade horror flick. Oversized backpacks and the seventh-grade sex-ed teacher serving as supporting characters, of course. Yet there I was, wedged in the trumpet section in Rod Yonkers' honors band class, which convenes 7 a.m. daily at Rosemont Middle School in La Crescenta. It was exactly where I could be found 15 years prior. The younger me sported braces and a ponytail, my former teacher reminded me before rattling off the names of a few of my contemporaries.

This story has been corrected, see below for details. At a hastily arranged town hall-style meeting Thursday, Glendale Community College officials announced plans to cut $13 million from the college's 2012-13 budget, regardless of the outcome of a state tax initiative that goes before voters in November. A major part of the cost-cutting - $9 million - will come in the form of significant pay cuts for 115 classified employees, who will see their work schedules reduced by one month if the plan is approved by the board of trustees.