By Catherine Ho | LA Times
February 21, 2009 -- As her colleagues attended a budget-signing ceremony in Sacramento, state Assembly Speaker Karen Bass was a world away as she visited her alma mater in West Los Angeles on Friday morning to address a younger but no less demanding group.
GET LIT PLAYERS BRING POETRY’S EMOTIONS TO OTHER LA TEENAGERS : Troupe performs original works, compares Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with hip-hop artist Talib Kweli, and recites lively versions of Ezra Pound, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks and Edgar Allan Poe.
By Scott Gold | LA Times
February 20, 2009 -- For as long as he can remember, Dario Serrano's life was all screeching tires and echoing gunshots, babies' cries and barking dogs, a symphony, as he puts it, of "hood rats and gangsters," of "vatos vatos and payasos" -- dudes and numskulls, loosely translated.
By high school, he'd pretty much given up on himself. He bounced around between three schools. He started selling pot, though he always seemed to smoke more than he sold. His GPA fell to 0.67, which is about as bad as you can get and still be showing up.
Literature, it is fair to say, was not resonating. "I mean, 'The Great Gatsby'?" he says incredulously, and when he puts it like that, Lincoln Heights does feel pretty far from Long Island.
NO DAY 107, BUT COUNTING DOWN TO THE NEXT ELECTION
SacBee CapitolAlert: Shane Goldmacher | Capitol Alert Coordinator
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today will sign the budget package that the Legislature passed early Thursday morning.
Then comes the list of line-item vetoes.
[smf: The gov signs at 1PM, the list of line item vetoes should be available after that. California government is only transparent after the fact]
Of course, as Jim Sanders reports in today's Bee, more money woes could be in the state's future as the economy continues to falter.
Day 106 | 6:17 AM: SENATE APPROVES BUDGET PLAN!
The state Senate voted early Thursday to approve a massive budget package of tax increases, spending cuts and borrowing to close a $40 billion deficit after granting major concessions to one holdout Republican senator.
Sacramento Bee cartoonist Rex Babin: "Nobody move or the State gets it!"
STIMULUS BILL PROMOTES STABLE, ADEQUATE FUNDING
SCHOOL FUNDING UPDATE from National Access Network, Teachers College, Columbia University
smf: ‘Adequate’ is never enough and ‘promotes’ is not ‘provides’. However…
17 February, 2009 - The $789 billion federal stimulus bill, which was passed by Congress last weekend, allocates roughly $100 billion for educational purposes. This figure is almost double the U.S. Department of Education’s $59.2 billion discretionary budget---and gives promise to education advocates that the Obama administration will live up to its commitment to reform and improve education in the United States. Shortly after the compromise was announced, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s office issued a statement emphasizing the importance of “strategic investments in education,” stating that education is “one of the best ways to help America become more productive and competitive.”
More Budget Stuff at: 4LAKids-A state without a budget, A government without a clue.
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