The BP Gulf Coast oil disaster continues unabated. The gushing oil and gas are poisoning the gulf waters and polluting Louisiana’s coastal beaches in the most horrendous environmental catastrophe of the 21st century. This appears to be America’s Chernobyl. However, this incredible fouling of our nation’s waters and beaches pales in comparison to the degradation of our nation through the declining American educational system.

As you may know, I created a budget web survey which I shared with you on May 10. The survey was open to everyone and closed yesterday afternoon. More than 1,000 people participated with more than 400 written comments. Thank you for participating

Yes on Measure J: Bring the Super Bowl, etc., to Santa Clara. Yes on all the school bond measures, with one caveat. Yes on Measure K: A safe and sane sin tax.

Yes on Prop 13: a common-sense tax break for homeowners’ earthquake retrofits. No on Prop 14: a half-baked reform that does away with party primaries. Yes on Prop 15: a step toward publicly funded elections; No on Prop 16: constitutionally mandated monopoly for PG&E. No on Prop 17: a good deal for insurance companies, but not for many Californians.

Welcome to the City of Santa Clara where “Yes” means No, and “No” means yes.  That is, when it comes to the Measure J Campaign, the drive to build a football stadium for the 49ers. A posting on the website, Save Santa Clara.com, indicated that supporters of Measure J had gone to the trouble of registering several different domain names that might have been useful to the opposition.  Apparently, it’s true.

Dear President Obama,

I have read that you will be in San Francisco today to stump for Senator Barbara Boxer’s re-election at an evening reception at the Fairmont. In addition, on Wednesday you are touring Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturing facility in Fremont. I hope while you are here you somehow see this letter. As a 34 year public school educator and a member of the Santa Clara County Board of Education (elected on Nov. 4, 2008, like you), I am writing to you about the importace of including art and music education in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The Good News: The City has a counter offer from seven out of 11 unions to take a temporary reduction in compensation (by paying more of their pension contribution temporarily on a pre-tax basis). The Not So Good News: The offer is equivalent to $14.6 million of the $118 million deficit, thus layoffs and service cuts are inevitable.

The “Not So Good News” reminds me of what Bob Brownstein said at the meeting I attended about the budget deficit hosted by the labor unions last month: “Layoffs are unavoidable since the deficit is so large.”

The Mercury News editorial board recently offered its opinion on the difficulties surrounding the San Jose Airport.  The city is about to cut the ribbon on a slick new facility, but there’s not enough money to run the place.  “Airport Needs To Study All Options To Cut Costs,” read the headline.  No kidding.

The Pomp and Circumstance March is echoing from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Universities across the nation have been issuing tens of thousands of parchment diplomas this month while final plans are being made for high school commencements and grad nights. With each newly issued high school and university diploma comes a time for each graduate to ponder the next stage of life.

With the unemployment rate at over 10 percent in California and Silicon Valley, too many newly minted college graduates will not have an easy time in securing a job in the area of their undergraduate course of study. At the same time, high school graduates are having an increasingly difficult time securing student slots at community colleges and public universities due to the state’s economic crisis

In 1993, city staff began looking at selling the Municipal Water system, which the City of San Jose currently owns. Municipal Water covers approximately 10 percent of the city serving portions of Council districts 2, 4 and 8. The main service provider, San Jose Water Company, a private company, provides approximately 80 percent of San Jose residents with water. The remaining 10 percent of water is provided to residents in District 2 by another private company, Great Oaks Water.

Two events prompted Teresa Alvarado to run for a seat on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. One was the retirement of her mother, Blanca Alvarado, the first Latina elected to serve as a San Jose City Council member and later as a county supervisor. The other was Barack Obama’s candidacy. Looking back, Alvarado says she saw a new, more pragmatic political model emerging. “I felt like it was time for our generation to step up,” she says.

I kept wondering why it’s taking so long for Major League Baseball to make a decision on whether or not to let the A’s move to San Jose.  It’s a big and expensive decision, but one that could have been made months ago.  I assumed that the source of the delay was rounding up the money to compensate the SF Giants ownership for the territorial rights to Santa Clara County.  Unfortunately for San Jose, there may be another reason for the delay.

Unlike the San Jose Mercury News, which championed Dolores Carr’s opponent four years ago and has been unrelenting in its criticism of her ever since, Metro endorsed Carr in the 2006 general election. We believed an outsider would be healthy for an office with a succession process as ingrown and medieval as the Vatican’s papal conclave

Sadly, her troubled tenure has been plagued by rookie mistakes, judgment lapses and a tin ear for the appearance of conflicts of interest. And despite the edge she now holds in managing a county department, we’ve concluded that the less experienced Jeff Rosen will grow into the job faster than it will take Carr to repair the county’s damaged prosecutorial apparatus and restore its reputation.

UPDATE—Friday 6pm: Mayor Chuck Reed endorses Carrasco.

I served as a principal of public schools for nearly 20 years, so it is with tremendous empathy toward the administrators at Morgan Hill’s Live Oak High School that I write this week’s post. I also have empathy for the students on both sides of the political maelstrom.

This year, the San Jose City Council is forced to make drastic cuts. Unfortunately, the city of San Jose has had a deficit for the last decade even before the Great Recession. In fact, even without the recession, San Jose’s financial obligations are significantly higher then revenues coming into the city.

As a result current elected officials are left with trade offs often having to pit necessary services against each other. This year the deficit is $118 million. This is more then the entire library, transportation, planning, code enforcement, information technology, city attorney and public works departments combined.