My kid goes to government school where they demanded he pay $40 per year to park in “their” parking lot. I was able to encourage the district to drop parking fees at not only his high school, but all of the area schools. I want to tell you how I did it and embolden others to campaign for change where they feel it makes sense.

Since bus service in many places has been halted, students have to be driven to school by their parents or drive themselves to K-12 school. It’s not uncommon for San Diego area high schools to charge parking fees of $10 to $40 per year. My kid’s school charged $40. This led many kids to seek out nearby off-street parking while the school parking lot was never full.

When pressed about this fee, school officials claim that charging for parking is permissible and may even point to language on their web site. … Just because a school claims they have a right doesn’t mean they actually have the authority. The California constitution guarantees every child a free K-12 education and charging for parking would violate that precept. How they spend it is not relevant to the question if they have the legal authority to charge for a parking lot that was built and maintained by property taxes and school bonds.

The first step to a challenge is to collect public information to insure your position is factual. A simple email should be sent to the district superintendent asking for documents related to the issue. They are required to provide existing relevant documents … .

Sample of how to get the ball rolling

———- email message ———-

From: Michael Robertson <mr@michaelrobertson.com

Date: Tue, Jan 14, 2014 at 4:41 PM

Subject: CPRA Request

To: District-Superintendent

I am requesting all documents related to billing, collection

and expenditures of parking permit fees at district high schools from

2012-2013.

Thanks.

——————————————-

These documents revealed that the San Dieguito district collected around $77,000 last year in parking fees. Also it showed that they only charged students and not teachers or administrators. I forwarded these documents onto a local education activist Sally Smith as well as a local reporter Marsha Sutton. Sally penned a Uniform Complaint and sent it to the district. Don’t be intimidated by the official sounding title. It’s simply a document outlining the objection to a specific issue.

Marsha wrote a revealing article garnering more public light than a posting on my blog would have done. Sally’s complaint made a strong case about why the district did not have the authority to charge fees for several activities (parking, athletics and photography). And to the parking fees specifically, she pointed out that government operations cannot charge fees to some citizens and not to others which they do because they charge students but not others who use the same parking lot.

Unsurprisingly, the district responded affirming their right to charge parking fees just as UC and Cal State colleges do. The obvious difference there is that the California constitution doesn’t guarantee a free college education as it does for K-12. More emails were traded with both sides outlining their position.

District analysis leads it to reverse course

Over the summer I asked for a meeting with the Superintendent Rick Schmidtt to discuss the parking fees and other issues. … I expressed how the parking fees was a significant amount of money for many students. I emphasized how this was an issue I planned to continue to pursue until it was overturned. … We parted ways with him saying the district was analyzing the situation.

A week before the new school year, I learned that parking would be free for the entire district. Later that month the board OK’d an official policy change. The Superintendent was clearly instrumental in the change. …

This is a tiny victory for community activism thanks in large part to a group effort. I hope it can be a blueprint for involvement on an issue that may be important to you where government intersects your life.

Way to fight the power, Michael!

He’s a smart follow on Twitter, too — @mp3michael.

Driving money grabs: Teacher union power

Michael’s story is a perfect example at the micro level of my Grand Unifying Theory of California Politics (GUTCP):

“Everything about California politics is much easier to understand once you realize that by far the top priority of by far the state’s most powerful group is protecting the interests of veteran teachers.”

San Dieguito was looking to protect general fund dollars for teacher compensation by any means possible — legal or not.

More on my GUTCP here.

But this surveillance-state enabling is also true with relatively primitive, low-tech approaches as well. Using 1990s technology, license-plate scanners of the sort initially developed to catch cheats on toll roads are now in wide use on regular roads for no other reason but to provide law enforcement with a massive Stassi-style trove on who goes where.

And at the California trial-court level, at least, this is considered no big deal. This is from the L.A. Times:

A San Diego Superior Court judge has tentatively turned down a request by the founder of the MP3 Internet music site for information about his license plates gathered through high-tech scanning.

Judge Katherine Bacal tentatively ruled this week that the records, retained by the San Diego Assn. of Governments on behalf of local law enforcement agencies, are exempt from the state’s Public Records Act. A final ruling is expected next week.

Michael Robertson had sued for access to his records on the grounds that keeping such information is an example of governmental over-reach and that disclosure is necessary to safeguard individual rights.

“If I’m not being investigated for a crime, there shouldn’t be a secret police file on me,” Robertson told the Associated Press.

The 1998 thriller “Enemies of the State” postulated a world in which rogue NSA agents organize assassinations and manipulate events to win passage of a new law allowing vast new government surveillance.

This plot line seems downright idealistic at this point — the bad guys were fighting to get a law passed? Really? Nowadays, we just see the federal government assume it has sweeping rights to spy on individuals, and the courts barely push back at all. And in California, we have mass license-plate scanning that only seems constitutionally acceptable if the government truly believes everyone is a de facto criminal suspect.

The Founding Fathers believed in a default view of government power in which if specific powers were not specifically established by law, they didn’t exist. Now we have a default view of government power in which whether its extent is specifically established doesn’t seem to matter.

By Chris Reed

The reports earlier this month that the state will no longer require eighth-graders to take Algebra 1 and allow them instead to take a somewhat less rigorous course covering algebra touched off a minor flap between those who saw this as dumbing-down standards and those who noted that the less rigorous course was better preparation for new state standardized tests.

But what’s needed is a far broader debate on the wisdom of having high-school graduation requirements that largely reflect the thinking of the mid-20th century.

This is the official California Department of Education list of the 13 year-long courses that students must complete to graduate:

* Three courses in English;

          * Two courses in mathematics, including one year of Algebra I (EC Section 51224.5);

* Two courses in science, including biological and physical sciences;

* Three courses in social studies, including United States history and geography; world history, culture, and geography; a one-semester course in American government and civics, and a one-semester course in economics;

* One course in visual or performing arts, foreign language, or commencing with the 2012-13 school year, career technical education. For the purpose of satisfying the minimum course requirement, a course in American Sign Language shall be deemed a course in foreign language;

* Two courses in physical education, unless the pupil has been exempted pursuant to the provisions of EC Section 51241

Suppose this year we saw a California commission start from scratch in assembling a list of mandatory courses for high school graduation. It would have faced near-universal incredulity from any bright person of any age and everyone under 30 if the list didn’t include a year of computer science.

‘Veneration’ for past or devotion to teacher status quo?

Computers are so central to work, society, our personal lives and more that it is hard to fathom that computer science isn’t a mandatory emphasis of K-12 public education. In an April 2011 joint interview with retiring San Diego State University President Stephen Weber, I asked him about the insanity of not requiring computer science and whether he shared my view that graduation standards were badly outdated.

“Absolutely. One of the frustrations of my life is that it’s so hard to move embedded systems. I can’t imagine anybody if you sat down with a blank piece of paper that would invent the high school curriculum that we have now,” said Weber, who won high marks for turning SDSU into the star of the CSU system and a place with a stronger freshman class than several UC campuses.

Weber credited the inertia to what he called the “strange human veneration for what was done in the past.” Yet there is another reason why California high school graduation rules reflect the values of the Golden State of the Eisenhower and Kennedy years: Changing graduation requirements threatens to put not just a few thousand but tens of thousands of teachers out on the streets.

This is not far-fetched. This is how teachers unions think. Even after the evidence grew overwhelming that bilingual education was a failure that handicapped many students, teachers unions in the Northeast fought bitterly for the retention of the programs. What was best for students wasn’t their priority.

If California high school students were required to take one yearlong computer science program to graduate, that’s a lot of displaced teachers. If state high schoolers were required to take two — which is the strong recommendation of highly successful Del Mar high-tech entrepreneur and school activist Michael Robertson — the displacement would be immense.

But whether the mandate is for one year or two years of computer science, it would be good for kids, good for California, good for America. Everybody seems to agree about the need to promote STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — education. Yet few seem to connect this desire for a highly capable STEM workforce with the option of using high-school graduation mandates to promote such a workforce.

When I interviewed Weber in 2011, I asked the San Diego State president about the game-changing “A Nation at Risk” report issued by a federal commission in 1983 that kicked off the education reform movement with this instantly famous description of the U.S. school system: “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”

Weber said he was deeply frustrated that resulting reforms failed to live up to the vision outlined in the report.

‘Nation at Risk’ report touted computer science requirement — in 1983

And what did “A Nation at Risk” grasp was critical in 1983 that still eludes California educators and leaders 30 years later? The importance of computer science and a technologically literate workforce.

The report called for a half-year of computer science to be a high school graduation requirement. The 1983 status quo of limited emphasis on science, technology and math was unacceptable, the authors warned:

“These deficiencies come at a time when the demand for highly skilled workers in new fields is accelerating. … Computers and computer-controlled equipment are penetrating every aspect of our lives . … Technology is radiaclly transforming a host of … occupations. They include health care, medical science, energy production, food processing, construction, and the building, repair and maintenance of sophisticated scientific, educational, military, and industrial equipment.”

If all this was obvious in 1983, it is 1 million times more obvious in 2013. And yet instead of making computer science a high school graduation requirement, here’s what the state that gave the world Silicon Valley, the iPhone and so much more frets about: what sort of algebra class to make students take.

In so doing, California joins Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and West Virginia on the list of the 41 states that do not allow computer science to count toward completing high school math or science graduation requirements. Supply your own punch line — at least if you’re not too depressed about the latest confirmation of the horrible stewardship of our leaders.