• Valle Vista Magnet School - K-5
• Mount Pleasant Elementary School - K-5
• Robert Sanders Elementary School - K-5
• Ida Jew (formerly Foothill) - K-5
• August Boeger - 6-7

This was a heated debate on a number of levels, particularly as the Teacher's Union is in the midst of negotiating their contract.  The funding for the restructuring will not come from the General Fund, but from a Facilities Fund, so education funding itself will not be impacted.

The attendance boundaries will be changed to reflect Ida Jew's transition from intermediate to an elementary school.  If I can find a reference to the boundaries, I'll either post or link to the source.

This change is good from a number of perspectives, outside of the immediate cost savings of bussing.  This signals a return to neighborhood schools.  Additionally, for the purposes of various intervention programs that the district has in place, this means children will have the benefit of 6 years to address these issues through continued and more importantly, continguous intervention and counciling.  The previous configuration, where elementary schools were K-3 then students were sent to another school for 4-5 mean that there was a disruption after the 4th year of instruction.  At grade 4-5 these children were forced to assimilate into a new school where they would be re-evaluated by new staff.  The new configuration allows close monitoring and instruction adjustment for the full 6 years.  This is really is a boost for these children who need it.

From a psychological point of view, children attending the new K-5 program will be grouped together to build and foster relationships through 6 years of continuous education.

I'll post more when I learn more.

Quote

U.S. general: No evidence Iran is arming Iraqis - Conflict in Iraq - MSNBC.com 

Asked Monday directly if the White House was confident that the weaponry is coming on the approval of the Iranian government, spokesman Tony Snow said, “Yes.”

Like they were sure that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

Steve Jobs on DRM-free music distribution. Talk about WOW! It's kind of like is daring, no double daring the record industry to move to DRM-free music. His argument makes sense -- it really is good for consumers, not sure what impact there would be to the iTunes music store. No more iTunes vs URGE... just music. Apples in a good position to do this considering the large music library they currently command, particularly if the big four Steve mentions allows DRM-free distribution.

As Steve bluntly put it, they're forced to do DRM as well as SLAs for DRM breaches or face losing the record company's catalog. He even broke down estimates on how much music iTunes sells and what percentage of that music ends up on iPods -- roughly 3% of music on iPods are purchased from iTunes, the others were ripped or acquired, presumably DRM-free to begin with. Read it for yourself...

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/