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Jaye & Adam

Aurora Ponce, senior class president with a nearly perfect A-average, recently participated in a student sit-in to protest increased class sizes and the elimination of college prep classes.  But now “according to the 18-year-old and her supporters, officials at the Accelerated School, a collection of South Los Angeles charter schools, have barred Ponce from making her valedictory speech at Saturday’s graduation as punishment. They have also taken away a summer tutoring job and other honors, she said.”

Seriously?!

Click here to read the full article in The Los Angeles Times.

Here’s a summary of how the governor would cut $5.5 billion through June 2010:

– $750 million from the University of California and California State University systems, bringing the total reduction over two fiscal years to nearly $2 billion.

– $10.3 million – Eliminate all state general fund spending for UC Hastings College of Law.

– $173 million – Eliminate new Cal Grants.

– $70 million – Eliminate general fund support for state parks, potentially closing 80 percent of them.

– $247.8 million – Eliminate the Healthy Families program, which provides health care to nearly 1 million poor children.

– $1.3 billion – Eliminate the CalWorks program, which primarily helps unemployed single mothers find jobs.

– $809 million – Release nonviolent, non-serious, non-sex offenders one year early, and reduce the Corrections Department’s contract work, rehabilitation and education programs.

Yikes!

In 2006 the average counselor’s caseload in California public schools was reduced from 846 to 685 students. This already ranks pretty close to last in the nation in terms of counselor to student ratios, so the latest cuts are not a good sign for a state floundering to address the issue of high school drop-outs and a deficit of college graduates in the workforce.

Oh, California, however will we dig ourselves out of this educational quagmire?

It is a controversial issue, for sure.  On the one hand, I think everyone should have the opportunity to go to college, and I do support allowing undocumented students to enroll in college in the U.S. But it gets a little dicey for me when we talk about giving those students in-state tuition discounts since we already have a HUGE problem of enrolling academically qualified low-income U.S. citizens in college. I get nervous that giving undocumented students in-state tuition rates will add enormous pressure to our already inadequate financial aid system and end up making college admission to state schools, like the UC’s even more competitive than they already are. Just last year, the UC system made the decision to enroll more out-of-state students because they needed to increase their revenue.

I haven’t researched this adequately enough to come to a definite conclusion, but those are just my initial thoughts.  I’d love to hear what you think about the Dream Act.  Should illegal immigrants be allowed to enroll in college and pay in-state tuition rates?  Do you agree with the College Board’s decision to support the Dream Act?

I have a hard time believing that since currently 90% of college students hail from middle and upper class families. And those same families spend upwards of $2 billion/year (on top of 4-years of college tuition) keeping a college test and admissions prep industry afloat to ensure their children do, in fact, go to college.

True, college is not for everyone, and a person can certainly make a great living without a college degree. But, in my opinion, the greater issue is that those students who have the potential to go to college and would greatly benefit from the experience are not earning their four-year degrees. And it’s just not the students that are being left behind, but our state and national economy suffer from this achievement gap.

The Los Angeles Times recently reported that California will face a shortage of college grads by 2025. “35% of the state’s working-age adults will hold a four-year degree, while a college education will be required for at least 41% of job-holders.”

That’s a pretty sobering thought. So if the social justice aspect that every student should have the opportunity to go to college isn’t convincing enough, then perhaps the economic reality will move us to action.

The bleary-eyed 5am crew.

Our adventure started at 4:30am on Saturday at the LAX airport where we discovered that it cost an additional $30 per bag for checked luggage. Yikes! It didn’t help that we were hauling a camera, tripod, sound gear, two hard drives, a boom mic, our personal luggage, and my laptop. We crammed as much stuff as we could into our carry-ons and prayed that security wouldn’t hassle us too much for all our film gear.

Thankfully, we didn’t get stopped at LAX, and we were finally on our way. The weekend was a whirlwind of filming every day, so we didn’t have much time for sightseeing. However, we did manage to get our fill of tasty Memphis BBQ at Corky’s on Poplar Avenue. We highly recommend it to anyone passing through! Afterward we checked out the famed Beale Street pulsating with live music and a lot of interesting characters.

The rest of the weekend was spent filming, filming, and more filming. Adam was a champ operating both camera and sound, and I had the relatively easy job of interviewing, driving while Adam got b-roll, and then holding the boom mic when we were filming reality. We almost didn’t make our flight home on Sunday because we got caught up filming on the Tennessee highway, and then got held up by the Memphis TSA who made us unpack every single item of equipment and then had a pow wow to determine our fate. We were finally allowed to pass through and made it back to LAX in one piece.

Overall, it was a great weekend of filming even though it was pretty stressful having just the two of us there. But it made us super thankful for our LA-based crew, and we’re so excited our student is moving back to California in a few weeks.