San Jose Inside

This Thanksgiving we have so very much to be proud and thankful for relative to the education of underserved children living in the poorest areas of Santa Clara County. And last week’s decision to approve three new charter schools will prove to be one of the most important weeks in local school governance in decades.

The City has been grappling with proposed changes to Title 16 for over two years. Title 16 covers the regulations of card rooms. The 125-page document reads like a novel. Although the State of California oversees gambling facilities, San Jose has it’s own regulations for two gambling facilities, which are Bay 101 and Garden City. Some say this is duplicitous since another level of government regulates this type of legal business. Others say the state does not regulate closely enough.

UPDATE: Police Chief Chris Moore sent San Jose Inside his answers to the 10 questions Sunday evening. We will be posting them soon. Thanks for your patience.

A number of readers have asked what happened to the weekly Q&A series San Jose Inside rolled out in September. Well, not a whole lot. We waited for our third participant in the series, San Jose Police Chief Chris Moore, to respond to some of your questions. And then we waited a little longer. And then a little longer.

Every major project has Citizens Against Virtually Everything (CAVE) people fighting against it. They hold up every good project, they hurt our economy, our progress and cost us money. But how many times can these people be wrong before they simply go away?

In response to the ongoing Occupy San Jose protest at City Hall, the city is once again changing its stance on where protesters are allowed to camp and asking the public to stop donating food to occupiers. A memo sent Thursday by the city manager’s office to Mayor Chuck Reed and the San Jose City Council says the city has stepped up its effort to remove Occupy San Jose, which is now nearing its 50th day.

A report released Monday by the High-Speed Rail Authority reiterates the authority’s consistent argument: A tunnel and underground station will not work in San Jose. Business and neighborhood groups worry that the proposed elevated structure will be a huge and unsightly addition to the cityscape. What the report does not say — yet it is being discussed internally by HSRA officials — is that the city’s advocacy of a tunnel option could push the $98 billion high-speed rail line to take an alternative path.

David Ginsborg, right-hand man to county tax assessor Larry Stone, is running for a seat on the Santa Clara Valley Water District board come next November. We’re not sure why anyone would want to spend waking hours noodling on water policy, but then again it can’t be any less exciting than tax assessments. Ginsborg isn’t the only one running against incumbent Joe Judge, though.

I wonder if the growing presence of high quality charter schools in Santa Clara County will serve as the revolution for eliminating the achievement gap. Will innovative means of learning be the norm? Is the timing right for a revolution in our public school system in Santa Clara County? Will the status quo prevail? Or, can change be the only constant now? We will know answers to some of these questions after the Santa Clara County Office of Education (SCCOE) board meeting this week.

Ensuring that cars travel slowly near schools should be a priority for San Jose. Local governments should embrace tools that make streets safer for pedestrians, especially when those pedestrians are overwhelming children walking and biking to and from school.

On Tuesday, the City Council is expected to receive an update on labor negotiations from City Manager Debra Figone, decide the fate of Family Camp and consider a 15-mph pilot program around three school zones.

Within of receiving 17 boxes of signed petitions, the San Jose City Clerk’s office determined that enough signatures were collected to temporarily suspend a new medical marijuana ordinance. Citizens Coalition for Patient Care (CCPC) ran the petition drive, and the County Registrar of Voters (ROV) now has between 30 and 60 business days to perform a random signature-verification check.

I have been working most of my adult life to reduce the number of kids locked up in jails. It has been an uphill battle in most communities, especially in the last decade when we have passed legislation allowing juveniles to be tried as adults. A new report is out by the reputable Annie E. Casey Foundation that supports my belief that juvenile hall is not rehabilitative and is ineffective in preventing future criminal behavior.

Steve Kline—a lawyer, former political consultant and current city activist—recently sent a letter to the San Jose City Council asking for a full hearing on the land option agreement with Lew Wolff that gives the A’s owner a sweet deal for a future ballpark. It was a shot over the bow, not a lethal attempt to kill the stadium.

A political comic strip/hit-piece lampooning Cupertino Mayor Gilbert Wong was sent to 7,200 Cupertino voters over the weekend, just two days before the city’s election on Tuesday. Titled “The Adventures of Gilbert Wrong, Mayor of Cupertino,” the comic strip sets out four different scenarios in which Wong is contacted by a secretary with someone waiting to bend the mayor’s ear. Nonetheless, Wong was able to be re-elected as mayor.

Due to the recent sexual harassment stories surfacing about Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, it was interesting to note that a new study surfaced Monday about school-age sexual harassment. The American Association of University Women released a major national study on 7-12th grade sexual harassment. Over nearly 2000 boys and girls from public and private schools were surveyed online in May and June 2011 on whether they had experienced sexual harassment. The AAUW findings indicate that during the 2010-11 school year 48 percent of students in grades 7-12 experienced some form of sexual harassment in person, electronically via texting (some refer to it as sexting), email and/or social media.