Santa Rosa City Schools is considering pursuing a bond measure or parcel tax to offset deep cuts from Sacramento in recent years. The school board on Wednesday night discussed what remains in outstanding principal from voter-supported bonds dating back to 1991 and whether local voters would support another round of either taxes or bond repayments.

Santa Rosa Junior College announced Friday plans to restore up to 500 classes eliminated by persistent budget cuts, enabling students to earn academic degrees and technical education certificates more quickly.

During my campaign for the Santa Rosa school board, I was surprised at how many people said that they don’t follow local education and don’t vote in school board races because they don’t have school-age children.

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors Tuesday authorized spending $375,000 on a trio of mentoring, career training and scholarship programs to benefit students.

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors today is to consider recommendations to allocate $375,000 for a trio of mentoring, career training and scholarship programs to benefit elementary to high school-aged youths.

Putting armed guards in schools to deter violence is not something local educators, parents and even law enforcement see as viable.

In the final tally of November election ballots, Santa Rosa attorney Jenni Klose has won a seat on the Santa Rosa School Board, beating out fellow local attorney Brian Noble by 955 votes.

Santa Rosa City Schools is examining the options of reinstating up to three classroom days to the current school year and returning the budgetary reserve to 3 percent in the wake of Proposition 30′s passage last week. Proposition 30 temporarily increases the state sales tax by a quarter-cent and income taxes on the wealthy by 1 to 3 percent, staving off what Gov. Jerry Brown said would have been $4.8 billion in cuts to K-12 education in the current school year.

Patrick Maloney, a junior at Sonoma State University, woke up Wednesday morning to a pleasant surprise.
California voters had approved Proposition 30, the statewide tax measure backed by Gov. Jerry Brown to raise about $6 billion a year for education.
For thousands of state university students, it meant money in the bank: specifically a $249 refund of a tuition fee increase they paid this fall.
For Maloney, a 20-year-old political science major from Sacramento, it also was a payoff for a successful campaign to register more than 1,000 SSU students to vote in Tuesday’s election.

Five of six school funding measures in Sonoma County were in commanding leads Tuesday night with early returns and mail-in ballots tallied.