As we turn the page on the election, Sam Liccardo and Dave Cortese each have an enormous responsibility to heal the wounds created by the race. Doing so could go a long way toward accomplishing city and county goals, such as eliminating the achievement gap in our schools.

It’s a shame this isn’t a re-election endorsement, because Magdalena Carrasco deserved to win San Jose's District 5 City Council seat four years ago.

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.

Last November, a few hundred people donned their best suits and gowns and converged on San Jose’s historic Hayes Mansion to toast some of the East Side’s most accomplished alumni. The stars that night, honored in the East Side Union High School District Education Foundation’s Hall of Fame fundraiser, consisted of a 10-person class led by Khaled Hosseini, a 1984 graduate of Independence High School and author of The Kite Runner. But on Nov. 15, 2011, the IRS revoked the foundation’s nonprofit status. And yet almost no one outside of its board—including donors—knew about its lost certification when it threw a fundraiser a year later.

Craig Mann vacated his county school board seat in August and filling it should be no big deal. But the appointment has set off a flurry of activity that will reverberate in other races, because that’s the way things work around here with ambitious rising politicians and established ones who want to keep their privileges in the era of term limits.

Educational policy at times ticks like a metronome, however today the stakes are so vitally high for the efficacy of our country and its people that the pendulum can never swing back. We must be on a collective mission to increase rigor and relevance into the curriculum for each and every child, irrespective of the color of their skin.

In the classic Network, released 34 years ago, Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) is at his anchor desk as the cameras go live and he eloquently unleashes his famous neurotic break with reality: “I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot. I don’t want you to write to your congressman… All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad…I want you to get up right now and go to your window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, ‘I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!!’

Today I feel the same as Beale, not related to his abject disgust with the trajectory of the nation, crime in the streets, depression, dirty air, banks, guns and unemployment, although those complaints still exist today. No; for me it is about the state of affairs with public education

Eddie Garcia, president of the East Side Union High School District board, has announced that he will not seek re-election to the Board of Trustees this fall.

“After thoughtful consideration with my family, I have decided not to seek another term on the Board of Trustees for the 2010 election for the East Side Union High School District,” Garcia posted on his Facebook profile last friday. 

Garcia, 46, suffered a major heart attack last June, and is currently on medical leave from his job as Chief of Staff for Supervisor George Shirakawa.

Though he’s yet to decide whom he’s endorsing in the District 5 runoff, J. Manuel Herrera will indeed be running to retain his long-held East Side Union High School District Board Trustee seat next fall.

When Herrera hoofed it to the County of Santa Clara Registrar of Voters Office to pull his papers earlier this month, however, whom did he discover in line ahead of him? None other than former East Side Superintendent Bob Nuñez.

Dr. Charles Weis, the county’s superintendent of schools, is shortening the leash on the East Side Union High School District following a damning report that was released last month. Weis attended the board’s meeting last night and grilled the members, demanding that they hire an internal auditor immediately—before he pulls their power over their own $200-million-plus budget.

Embattled former superintendent Bob Nuñez made a surprise appearance in front of the East Side Union High School District’s Board of Trustees last night, publicly announcing that he thinks the district needs to address issues of fraud and intimidation within their own board and administration

I hope that the various viewpoints expressed on my blog the last few weeks have been instructive to readers and leaders. It is obvious we have a schism of opinion relative to race and the elimination of the achievement gap. The polarity of responses mirrors the divide we have on many issues in this great country.

I trust it is not too presumptuous of me to postulate that we who reside in San Jose want all children, irrespective of gender, race, ethnicity or religion to have pathways to a successful life. Can we all agree on this outcome?

Before I get to the point of this column let me congratulate, Elinor Ostrom, who yesterday became the first woman ever to win a Nobel Prize in economics. Ms. Ostrom, a political scientist at Indiana University, was honored along with Oliver Williamson, an economist at UC Berkeley. This gets me to the topic of this week’s post. The economy and education are inextricably linked.