If the mayor would focus on his job, instead of trying to be an education czar or basket ball palace czar, perhaps the city would be safe enough to go into at night. Three stabbings last night, fire houses closing. He has missed more council meetings than Mayor Fargo after criticizing her for her being absent. The reason he wants to talk about education is because it takes attention away from his failure to do the job he is supposed to be doing.

I have a design concept, stolen from Mud Island in Memphis. Mud Island has a scale replication of the Mississippi River with a stream of running water, and walk way bridges. I think we could have a three dimensional representation of California built to scale within the center park. Plaques describing areas and cities contributions, history and culture would provide a nice educational edge to a park. Shade trees in forest areas, and a play area in the central valley would create a nice place to visit. Having said that, I do beleive the winning design will give a number of people a sheltered place to camp out after they are evicted from their apartments because the Mayor is more interested in a basketball palace than saving housing.

A physical might be in order, especially if this behavior change was sudden.

There is a worldwide financial problem that affects us all. No individual member should be held responsible for its fault, but each is responsible for producing a solution. If crime increases and services continue to erode as a result of poor funding decisions, our housing values will continue to fall, and the downward spiral will continue. We need to reconsider our priorities to better direct our resources. The city needs police and other services more than they need a new arena. Californians need to untie the hands of local government and let local government raise tax revenues to cover the cost of doing business. We don't need to give millionaires tax breaks on housing or commercial property (with exceptions for agriculture or other land dependant enterprises.) while pretending we can't afford services for the rest of the citizenry. Amend prop 13 so it is limited to principal residences under a certain value or is triggered by a ratio of home value to income and age. This will allow seniors to stay in their homes, Finally, we need to elect officials who share our vision, listen to our voices, and work for solutions that will benefit all of us.

I am a teacher and a proud member of the teachers union, and I clearly use my name so people will know who I am. If my request that people listen to the testimony and make up their own minds is too radical for you, I don't know if I can tone it down. By the way, does anyone know where this writer got her information....she just seems to have some super source, could it be a relative? Frankly I am disappointed by the Press pretending that since they didn't pay for the article, they aren't responsible for a modicum of professional ethics. A better approach would have been to ask one of the 30 + speakers who clearly described the destructive environment at Hiram Johnson. The students were eloquent and persuasive in their argument to change the administration at Hiram Johnson. Furthermore, I certainly think the Press could have at least identified if the writer had a personal involvement in this situation. I felt bad for the students when one teacher, in a crude attempt to defend the Principal expressed her disbelief that students could write intelligent comments, using adult vocabulary. She was certainly proven wrong as student speaker after student speaker presented ideas and concerns passionately and in an intelligent manner..

Well it doesn't take a genus to see this is a spin piece, full of bias and lacking in facts. Some people just seem to get a kick out of attacking teachers. For example, PocketGopher seems to think that just because the voters agreed with the teachers union regarding who were the best candidates for school board that there was some quid pro quo established. If that were true would hundreds of teachers have been given pink slips while private consultants were given checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars? Instead of my opinion or that of this attack piece, listen to what the parents, teachers, students and administrators say about Hiram Johnson and make up your own minds. I think tonights meeting should be edifying for all who care enough to listen.

Superintendent. Rhee and Mayor Johnson appear quite confident that Superintendent Raymond is on their side when it comes to the push for charters. I don't think the school board understands this, and I suspect Superintendent Raymond holds the promise of reopenning Sacramento High School as a full serviced area high school like a carrot, guiding board members to support him. They will not see that promise fullfilled unless they make the steps to get control over the school district, something they appear to be ready to give up. Now that they have agreed not to publically criticize the Superintendent, he can use Mayor Johnson to press the board members even more by threatening to raise money to buy opponents in each of their elections.