The Burlingame Voice

Panthers invade Oracle Park

I wish I had known about this game ahead of time, but thanks to John Horgan I get to regret not being there.  Horgan writes:

Tyler Jamieson got a dream job last weekend at Oracle Park in San Francisco, at least for a few hours. He was the lead public address announcer for a high school baseball game between San Bruno’s Capuchino and Burlingame. Jamieson is the longtime P.A. voice of the latter prep program at Washington Park in Burlingame. The Mustangs and Panthers played against each other last Saturday at the Major League Baseball venue as part of a Giants’ promotion. Capuchino won, 1-0. Jamieson, as always, was in fine form.

"Stats" Jamieson is an institution at Washington Park for BHS baseball games doing the introductions, playing the music, and keeping the scorebook.  He must have had a blast at Oracle!

Free Lunch: CSM pushes "free college"

It was three and a half years ago that the community college Board of Trustees set aside $6.75 million to make college "free".  Of course, very little in life is "free" and unless we are talking about a scenic view or a walk on the beach, being "free" can often diminish the self-perceived value of something as well as one's commitment to apply oneself.  And then there are the perceptions of "fairness".  "You don't have to pay the $50 per credit?"  Here is a look back to 2021 for the origin of "free college".

One also wonders how much advertising is needed for something that is "free"?  Just in the last week, my X feed is absolutely overwhelmed by "CSM is free" ads.  There must be at least a dozen different ones, and they just keep coming.  I'm sure they are not expensive to produce, and the X cost is probably not huge to run them.  The same cannot be said for the glossy mailer that arrived in mailboxes yesterday.  I wonder how much taxpayer money went to print it and mail it?  In the really fine print one reads "Enrollment fee waiver for qualifying San Mateo County residents pursuing a degree certification."  One wonders if the advertising costs exceed the waiver costs?

Measure GG: Some clarifications

The second school parcel tax, GG, that is on this ballot is a) a little confusing and b) a tough decision in the current economic climate.  Having said that, some clarification is in order.  On another post, a commenter asked, "I just read in John Horgan’s column that the school tax GG “can be increased or decreased, depending on fiscal circumstances.”  Can this be true!?

I made an inquiry to one of the measure's supporters who provided the exact language in question:

The Board will determine, on an annual basis, the amount of the levy for the following fiscal year, up to the maximum allowable rate shown above. If, in any given year, the Board elects to levy an amount less than the maximum allowable rate, it may, in subsequent years, levy the maximum allowable rate.

I take that to mean if the Board decided on a lower levy in one year, the levy the following year could go back up, but still not exceed the maximum allowable rate.  The essential part of that rate is:

The tax, at the uniform rate of $0.14 per square foot of building improvements per year, capped at $2,500 per parcel per year for 8 years.

The other confusing wrinkle is this 8-year tax overlaps the last parcel tax (Measure L that you see on the property tax bill you just got in the mail) for the next three years--i.e. two taxes for three years, then just the GG version for five more.  The reason for that is the district has to budget out three years and the state funding is erratic and mostly erratic not in our favor.

Voting for Measure GG may be a tough call for some property owners who are struggling with insurance increases, energy cost increases, building material cost increases, labor cost increases, the SALT tax cap, the three state bond measures also on the ballot and who knows what else.  As usual, I consider that all of the GG revenue stays in town and has to go straight into classroom resources.  That's your decision framework.

"Master energy healer" in Mt. View Schools

Perhaps I shouldn't speak too soon, but I'm relieved that we seem to have more sense here in B'game than some of our neighboring towns.  Exhibit A this weekend was in the Daily Post.  Headline "Parents step in after healer".  It's an odd fragment of a headline, but reading on we learn:

Superintendent Ayinde Rudolph is forming a committee with parents and teachers to advise him on the budget after he caught flack for hiring an "energy healer" who gave teachers guided meditations.  The (Mountain View Whisman School District) gave $121,150 to "master energy healer" Alycia Diggs-Chavis to do sessions with 159 employees, district spokeswoman Shelly Hausman said.

Yikes.  It had better be a very good energy healing meditation for $761.95 per session.  One wonders what the teachers' union had to say about this.  Or is the "master energy healer" a union member?

As we ponder Measure GG here in B'game let's hope our teachers are self-energized.  That is the kind of nonsense that turns people off that might otherwise $upport the $chools. I will have more to follow on GG, but you can peruse John Horgan's survey of the tax landscape here.  He starts:

It’s a gamble. Dedicated advocates of adding money for the operation of Burlingame’s public elementary schools believe it’s a risk, a leap of fiscal faith if you will, that must be taken.  In essence, a proposed new property levy, if approved by the electorate (a total of 19,799 voters at last count), would be a new parcel tax on top of an existing parcel tax, a monetary double play.

Community College: More free sh.....stuff

In San Mateo County there apparently is something called a "free lunch".  In fact, there are a bunch of them, but this one from the Community College District Board costs $6.4 million.  If the lesson we want to be teaching is how to sponge off Other People's Money, then mission accomplished.  From the DJ

District officials have spent the past few years working to reduce financial barriers to higher education in part by doing away with some fees and lobbying for Senate Bill 893. The bill took effect last year and allowed the district to waive and use unrestricted funds to cover a state-mandatory $46 per unit enrollment fee for county residents.

Those waivers cost about $6.4 million, according to the policy that was adopted in April 2023. To support continuing the free college program, Chancellor Melissa Moreno was tasked with securing a permanent financial source to support the continued effort to lower barriers to higher education.

No word on how she will go about THAT.  Bake sales won't get there.  Expect another vaguely written Measure on the ballot soon.  People don't value things as much when they are "free" as when they have some skin in the game.

Non-Election 2024: School Boards

One of the side effects of "district" elections appears to be a lot fewer contested elections.  For B'game city council, we have races for two out of three seats this time, but at the school board level--Burlingame and SMUSHD--not so much.  The DJ gives the run down

In the Burlingame School District, all trustee races are unopposed. Chaitanya Bhuskuyte is running for Area 2 seat, Katie Jay is running for Area 3, and Nicole Mustafa is running for Area 5.

The San Mateo Union High School District will likely see the same board as it has the past two years, with incumbents Greg Land and Ligia Andrade Zúñiga running again in their respective trustee areas unopposed.

If you are still trying to figure out how two candidates in a town of 31,400 people that live maybe a mile apart differ in skills and abilities because of their addresses, join the club.  Would the races be more crowded without the arbitrary address limits?  There's no way to be sure, but as far as school boards go, you couldn't have less choice.

Graduation Requirement: Let's have the Legislature go first

Sometimes you have to laugh at the Sacramento hubris otherwise you will just cry.  Such was the state of affairs last week when the wise folks in Sac added "personal finance" to the required high school curriculum.  From the Merc:

Last week, California became the 26th state to require high school students to take a stand-alone, one-semester financial literacy course when Gov. Gavin Newsom approved Democratic Assemblymember Kevin McCarty’s bill, AB 2927.  The personal finance course will teach students a range of topics, including banking, budgeting, loans, insurance, investing and credit.

Schools will be required to offer the course by the 2027-28 school year, and the course will be a graduation requirement for the class of 2030-31.

“We need to help Californians prepare for their financial futures as early as possible,” Newsom said in a recent statement. “Saving for the future, making investments and spending wisely are lifelong skills that young adults need to learn before they start their careers, not after.”

I will add they especially need these skills if they want to start a career in politics.  Let's go back to February when two people who understand finance reiterated concerns about the mess called the state budget.  Studying "budgeting" and "credit"?  Let's let the Legislature take the course before the high school kids, please.

History: Two new Washington Park plaques

I'm a bit behind with this post as the unveiling of two new historical plaques in Washington Park was a couple weeks ago.  The plaques were made possible by donations from two BHS Class of '62 members, Bill Walsh and Fred Hawley, and the services of the B'game Historical Society for the content and Park & Rec staff for the installation.  One at the entrance to the high school driveway covers the history of the school.  The other is deep in the park near the rose garden and covers the history of the Gunst mansion that stood on the site.

Mr. Walsh is on the left and Mr. Hawley is in the middle flanked by three Historical Society board members--from the left, Joanne Garrison, Jennifer Pfaff and my lovely wife Cathy.  Check out these new historical additions to our town when you are in the park.  Hopefully there are more to come.

UC Berkeley: "Cluster hires". What could go wrong?

Let's do one more education-related post to keep the streak running.  The Sunday SF Comicle section titled "Insight" provided a rare sliver of insight this week.  I enjoy watching new words being created and this piece brought wider notice to the term "Pretendianism" to describe the act of faking your ethnic background to take advantage of ethnicity-driven hiring programs.  The piece titled "Pretendianism too common in academia" asks the question: How do so many people with no Native ties get away with using a false heritage to infiltrate some of the most rarefied academic spaces in America?

I'll skip over the details of one Associate professor Elizabeth Hoover's gaming of the system because the article leaked an even more egregious practice at UC Berkeley that probably exists elsewhere in publicly funded academia.  It's hardly news and it's quite profitable as the Other Elizabeth has been proving for more than a decade.

But deep in the article, this tidbit is revealed

Contrary to some reports, Hoover was not a “cluster hire,” the faculty member said, which is when several new faculty members identified as members of a minority or historically disadvantaged groups are brought aboard simultaneously — a method has been championed at UC Berkeley to make “an immediate and substantial impact far greater than a few isolated hires.” 

Yikes!  Is this a "cheaper by the dozen" approach?  Let's not spend time and effort examining individuals' skill sets.  We'll just hire a handful all at once that look the right way.  One wonders if that tactic would survive the "shoe on the other foot" test?  Is it any wonder that campuses are a mess?  California taxpayers are not getting their money's worth, and the faculty lounge is the first place where the shades should be lifted and sunlight should shine.  "Rarefied spaces" indeed.

BHS Baseball cracks the Top 15

Let's keep the school post rally going by highlighting today's SF Comicle Top 15 high school baseball rankings.  BHS made the #15 slot--the only team not ranked preseason!  There are not a lot of public schools on the list--Los Gatos being one that has a rich baseball history--as does B'game.  Keep it up, team.

Update May 18:  Things did not go well for the Panthers today against Mitty at Washington Park.  It was a beautiful day for baseball, until it wasn't.  I arrived mid-game when BHS was down 6-1 and it went downhill from there.  I think it was 12-1 at the end due to strong hitting by Mitty and some very sloppy defense by the home team.  That's the way the ball bounces.  Making the CCS D-I playoffs is quite an accomplishment, and my guess is that is what the coaches are telling the players here after the game.