In his outstretched palm, Atul Lall holds a molar, a wisdom tooth and four fragments of teeth that broke free when a tequila bottle encountered his jaw. Three days before last Thanksgiving, the 32-year-old San Jose native was driving away from the Lucky’s grocery store on South White Road in east San Jose. As he pulled his car out of the lot, Lall says that three men, without apparent reason, ripped him from the driver’s seat and beat him while dousing him with liquor. They called him a terrorist. Almost three months since the incident, the second-to-last of San Jose’s 32 hate crimes reported last year has sparked two separate police investigations. The first continues to search for the three men suspected of beating Lall.  The other, sources confirmed, is being conducted by Internal Affairs, the police department’s watchdog, which is looking into claims that investigators bungled the case and blamed the city’s budget problems for their inability to find the culprits.

The bi-weekly meeting of the Santa Clara County Office of Education (SCCOE) board convenes Wednesday evening this week at Anne Darling School, 1550 Marburg Way. At the meeting, the county board of education will be presented with an oral report on special education services the office provides to approximately 2,150 special needs students from ages 3 to 22. The services—albeit very costly due to the enormous physical, emotional, and educational needs of the students—are a moral imperative.

On day one at The National Alliance to End Homelessness conference on youth and family homelessness, my enthusiasm started to wane after eight hours of meetings. One thing is clear, though: Nobody really knows how many homeless youth there are in the country, but we can’t wait around for the research before doing something about the problem.

Last Friday, Joint Venture Silicon Valley (JVSV) hosted its annual State of the Valley. I was one of the 1,000 people in attendance at the convention center. JVSV started in 1993, during a recession, to promote economic growth through public-private partnerships. Several interesting demographic statistics were pointed out during the presentation.

Today I am headed to Los Angeles to attend a national conference focused on ending youth and family homelessness by 2020. The National Alliance to End Homelessness has worked hard to draw attention to not only ending chronic homelessness, but addressing the different approaches in working with youth and families.

I hope we can agree to stipulate that American jobs will require more cognitive ability today and in the ensuing decades than ever before in American history. Therefore, the push for higher academic standards for all public schools logically follows. Yet when I try to connect the dots among the issues on the American agenda for education, to increase cognitive skills for its system of public schools, I get these Whiskey, Tango and Foxtrot (WTF) moments. 

Don’t expect to see San Jose’s Chuck Reed join the growing list of mayors who have pledged their support to the Freedom to Marry campaign. In an interview with San Jose Inside last week, the mayor said he supports civil unions and domestic partnerships, but he draws the line at marriage. San Jose is the largest city in the country not to have its mayor supporting Freedom to Marry.

The quixotic Occupy movement needs some real leadership now.  While most of us share the concerns of the movement and have marveled at their ability to highlight issues that have really caused our economic pain, the immature and needless violence against people and property is hurting their cause and is ineffective in creating the change they seek.

Today marks my 150th column for San Jose Inside. It has been a bittersweet experience to write these posts for these last three years. I wish to thank Dan Pulcrano for the opportunity he has given me, an elected member of the Santa Clara County Office of Education Board of Trustees, to be heard on a variety of public education issues. One of the most important issues currently at hand is who will become the next county superintendent.

One of Governor Brown’s budget trigger cuts for California is the $72 million spent on the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ, formerly the California Youth Authority). The governor is proposing to shut down the state juvenile justice detention system and send the youth back to the counties for rehabilitation. On the surface, this seems like a good move—DJJ has a horrible reputation for punishing wards and providing little rehabilitative services.

Mayor Chuck Reed put out a memo Friday calling on the city to quit working on a compromise to its medical marijuana ordinance in light of recent developments. According to the memo, Reed recommends rescinding the city’s ordinance for a year as the California Supreme Court reviews four cases that deal with the interpretation of state law relating to medical marijuana collectives. Reed told San Jose Inside that the court’s decision as well as a potential ballot initiative that could go before voters in November made it clear that he and city officials should devote the next 10 months to other issues.

It is fundamentally wrong in a representative democracy to allow a minority to game the system and stop progress because they don’t like the result. The tea party is an example on the national level and the efforts of the ironically named Santa Clara Plays Fair is another.

It’s officially election season—two San Jose city councilmembers sparred via email this week following a Vietnamese New Year flag raising ceremony held Monday at City Hall. Kansen Chu sent the first email to Madison Nguyen, accusing the vice mayor of sponsoring an event that featured “campaign activity” by his challenger, Tam Truong, in this June’s election. Nguyen disputed this in her own email and concluded that Chu is grandstanding.

Next Tuesday, Jan. 31, is the deadline to apply to be hired as Santa Clara County Superintendent of Schools. This new leader must have courage to identify and publicize real solutions to our county’s ethnic and socioeconomic gaps in math and English student proficiency and to support those solutions with verifiable data.

This week, District Attorney Jeff Rosen answered 10 questions selected by SJI staff out of dozens submitted by San Jose Inside commenters. The topics range from how he handled the DeAnza sex case, his hiring of a Mercury News reporter and the timeline for several high-profile cases.—Editor

A day before the two-year anniversary of the Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission Supreme Court ruling, more than 200 protesters gathered Friday at St. James Park in San Jose. The rally was held in support of the Move to Amend demonstration, a proposed constitutional amendment that would reverse Citizen’s United, which paved the way for corporations and unions to spend an unlimited amount of money on political campaigns.