Nothing is more important to Sacramento and its future than the education of our children. If Sacramento City Unified School District is in crisis, our city is in crisis.
We cannot attract or retain high-paying jobs and growing businesses if our schools are in shambles. And if we fail to prepare our young people to compete in a competitive world, we consign them to substandard lives and eclipsed prospects.
The State Hornet, Sacramento State’s student-run news organization, celebrates its 70th anniversary this spring with a series of community events and alumni gatherings to honor The Hornet’s influence and impact.
The newspaper, which published a four-page inaugural issue in January 1949, has produced evocative and memorable news coverage, careers and experiences.
From the university’s cornerstone-laying ceremony in 1952, to Martin Luther King Jr.’s visit to Sac State in 1967, to coverage of protests, 9/11 and sports successes, State Hornet student journalists reported, photographed, wrote and edited stories that would propel them to bright futures.
Hoping to strengthen ties between the city of Sacramento and UC Davis, university leaders announced a year ago they would build a mixed-use development called Aggie Square on the UC Davis Health Campus in Oak Park.
“Aggie Square will have all the features you’d expect in a live, learn, work, play ecosystem,” UCD Chancellor Gary S. May says. “There will be new housing, new offices, smart classrooms, state-of-the-art research and lab facilities. It will truly be a place where university, industry and community come together.”
If Joan Cochrane could travel back in time, she would want to meet her grandparents and see where they grew up—without them knowing it was her.
Because time travel has yet to be achieved (as far as we know), Cochrane gladly settles for traveling back to the early days of California as a costumed volunteer at Sutter’s Fort.
“I love Sutter’s Fort because it’s not a static museum,” says Cochrane, who works at the fort two days a week and most weekends. “It shows students what it was like to live and work during that time period from the perspective of early settlers—ordinary people of their time who were part of the foundation of California.”
How nice it would be to write that Ron Burkle is the ultimate thumb on the scale, the billionaire whose name, reputation and bank account guarantee Sacramento a golden admission ticket into Major League Soccer. Unfortunately, putting the words “Burkle” and “guarantee” in the same sentence turns the story backward. Burkle doesn’t give guarantees. He takes them.
If Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to see a best-practice example of early childhood education, he doesn’t have to travel far. A trip to David Lubin Elementary School at 35th and M streets, about 23 blocks from the state Capitol, will reveal wonders.Lubin is one of seven schools in the Sacramento City Unified School District to offer a program called Parent Participation Preschool. The formula is not new—Sac City borrowed the idea from Oakland and Berkeley schools in the late 1940s. Twenty years ago, I enrolled with my two kids. The experience still pays dividends.