The Santa Clara County Office of Education hosted a special meeting Saturday for a charter school study workshop. Approximately, 50 community leaders, elected school board members and parents participated in a discussion on the role of charters and traditional public schools in meeting student academic needs. Even though all those who spoke appeared to have the right intentions, eliminating the achievement gap is a divisive issue.

Competition between schools, whether charter or traditional public, should never use students as pawns. Unfortunately, eight students who attended Communitas Charter High School last year have greatly suffered by the continuing “war” between competing public entities.

Rocketship Education, a private charter school chain, stands to lose a legal fight to open another campus on 3.5 acres by the Tamien light-rail station. A Santa Clara County last week issued a tentative ruling that nullifies a Santa Clara County Office of Education decision to grant a zoning exemption to build a third campus in the eight-block community around Washington Elementary School.

After Russia imposed a number of draconian anti-gay laws over the summer, LGBT advocacy groups asked U.S. leaders to sever sister-city ties with any Russian towns. San Jose fielded some of those requests, but councilmembers Xavier Campos, Ash Kalra and Pete Constant say the city’s in a better position to use that international relationship with Ekaterinburg to open up a meaningful dialogue instead. The trio said as much in a memo to the Rules and Open Government Committee, which will meet Wednesday.

After failed past attempts to regulate medical marijuana collectives in San Jose, the city should take up the issue again, says Councilman Don Rocha—just as a voter initiative to legalize the stuff cleared for signature gathering. Other items on the agenda for Wednesday’s Rules and Open Government Committee meeting include Councilman Xavier Campos asking for the city to sponsor a gun buyback event, Voice Mayor Madison Nguyen wanting some pension reform clarification and David Wall doing his best David Wall impersonation.

On Wednesday, the county Board of Education will make a decision on the charter petition for Alpha: Blanca Alvarado Middle School 2. The vote will be difficult for me.

Last week, Alpha: Blanca Alvarado Middle School, a charter authorized by Alum Rock Union School District, presented its rationale for opening a second middle school at a public hearing for the county Board of Education. The school’s founder, John Glover, filed a petition with the Santa Clara County Office of Education to begin instruction in the 2014-15 school year. The Alum Rock board denied the original charter school petition July 2 by a 4-1 vote, but the county is considering overruling that decision.

A little more than a week ago my wife and I attended Outside Lands, the three-day concert at Golden Gate Park headlined by Sir Paul McCartney. Even though we were at the upper age bracket of those assembled, we felt no discrimination. The 65,000 attendees each day were exceedingly respectful and well-behaved. Like Outside Lands does for music, I thought, Silicon Valley’s diverse voices come together on common goals relating to education.

In order to move on from partisan gridlock on education reform, we must deal with the facts of what works to increase performance for all students. Looking at two new bills coming out of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, that isn’t happening right now.

Last month I asked: How many more years will Silicon Valley put up with broken promises made to our children, before it is too late for us to recover from the lack of political will? The clock is ticking on a very real domestic threat.

How many more years will the country and Silicon Valley put up with broken promises made to our children, before it is too late for us to recover from the lack of political will? This year we commemorate the 30-year anniversary of a national report that provided a clarion call to improve our public education system.

Recalcitrant school boards and some teacher unions are at the core of a new education battle. A report in the Mercury News last week found that the Evergreen School District’s teachers have been “working to rule”—which means only doing what’s required according to contract, and nothing more—for several months. This type of posturing only hurts students. It also damages the perception of teachers, and will only encourage the continued growth of non-union charter schools. Courageous leaders on both sides have the power to prevent this type of action, or a threatened strike vote by teachers. In order to restore the trust, board members need to take action to form a settlement.

The school “choice” movement was originally embraced by the right side of the political aisle; today, for the most part, it is bipartisan. The public and California’s teachers unions should carefully pay attention to what is transpiring in Alabama and other states. With one watershed election, all things and calculations can be thrown on their proverbial head.

The fierce battle for our nation’s schoolchildren is entering a new stage of conflict, and the National School Board Association (NSBA) is reforming itself to take up the fight. Diane Ravitich, a nationally renowned author and keynote speaker at the NSBA’s recent conference in San Diego, delivered a blistering attack against federal education policies and “entrepreneurs” that hurt public education.

School suspensions go beyond just quick-fix discipline to get an unruly student out of the way. Statistics show that suspensions can lead to to a number of dangerous paths in life. The Santa Clara County Board of Education will hear a report about suspensions at its meeting Wednesday night, as well as an ongoing fight involving Bullis Charter School.

There are several critical “gaps” in the education of our children. One is the gap of how our high school students compare to high school students in cities like Helsinki and Shanghai on PISA (Program for International Student Assessment). Let’s call this gap the “Global Achievement Gap.” It is related to how students perform on comparable international assessments to real world problems in reading, math and science.