Education

Education

For months, the school board has been debating whether to put the parcel tax, which will expire in 2027, back on the ballot this June to extend it. Palo Alto Unified has benefited from the parcel tax since 2001. The current tax is set at $904.92 per parcel, generating approximately $16.5 million per year and is typically used by the district for staffing, compensation and other student-focused programs. The district's total budget for the 2025-26 year was $354 million, according to documents.

A new Bronx charter school is opening with a 50-week calendar and 7 am-7 pm hours, designed to better align with working parents' schedules. School: Strive Charter School (public charter), Bronx - grades K-4 Address: 604 E. 139th St. Hours: 7 am-7 pm Weekday schedule: Drop-off 7-9 a.m. + pick-up 4:30-7 p.m. (both flexible) Extras: Optional weekend programming + planned 50-week calendar Meals: Free breakfast, lunch, and dinner on open days

Now, Gary, repeat after me: Quiero una margarita, por favor, my Spanish tutor instructs. I cringe at the butchered Spanglish my estuary accent produces. Like Del Boy Trotter ordering a cocktail: Key yeah row oon margari'a, pour far four. It's 2023, I'm 41, living in Argentina and battling the frustration and disempowerment of learning a new language at this age, longing for my elastic 11-year-old brain over this husked-out mush.

"We don't have a platform for this." "We don't have an LMS." "We just need something simple." "We don't really have the budget for eLearning." And suddenly, every Instructional Designer and Learning Experience Designer in the room feels a tiny wave of professional panic. Because let's be honest: most of us were trained, socialized, and rewarded in environments where "good learning" was synonymous with technology. Authoring tools. Learning platforms. Interactive modules. Video. Simulations. Analytics dashboards. AI-powered everything.

Some are engaging and transformative, while others are incredibly boring. What exactly sets apart the ones where participants say, "Wow, we need to have these more often!" from those where participants are scrolling through their email, feeling pulled away from "real work?" While well-intended, there are subtle yet significant differences between mediocre retreats and those that truly deliver. Over the last decade-plus, I've designed and facilitated hundreds of retreats and training programs.

Work changes fast. New tools arrive, roles grow, and processes shift. Often, the training just doesn't keep up. That gap is learning debt. It builds up quietly and shows up in small ways. Like a normal week turning into a scramble because one key person is on vacation. Let's look at what this looks like in daily work, why we ignore it, and how to start paying it down.

The government has said it will spend 5bn to pay off 90% of the debts English councils have built up through supporting children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) to the end of the financial year. The LGA, which represents councils in England, welcomed the plans, saying it "removes the immediate threat of insolvency for many councils". The government is expected to lay out their full plans for SEND reform in the Schools White Paper in the coming weeks.

"It's just like a neverending game of musical chairs," Jensen says. Just when a teacher thinks they've perfected their seating chart, two neighboring students will have a fight, others won't stop talking or parents will email with their own seating preferences. "There's just so many things that you don't know on the surface that come to light really quickly once you put a kid next to another one," she says.

The campaign points employers to our Industry Support Hub, a central conduit that helps businesses hire students, build internship programs, collaborate with faculty and utilize our campus facilities. This work complements and supports CUNY Beyond, our university-wide initiative to foster career readiness. Launched in the fall, CUNY Beyond is all about preparing students for what comes next. Power Your Business with CUNY brings employers into that journey, connecting classroom learning to workplace opportunity.

Continuous​‍​‌‍​‍‌​‍​‌‍​‍‌ learning has become a strategic priority, and employee training programs are a major lever in enabling workforce capability, productivity, and long-term business success as companies navigate the era of rapid technological change, job role evolution, and competition intensification. Effective corporate training programs present a means for L&D professionals to inspire performance, facilitate transformation, and link employee development with organizational objectives, apart from just delivering courses.

The UC Berkeley Chancellor's Fund, the college's attempt at venture capital, has raised more than $250,000 from a single investor. Chancellor Rich Lyons has said he wants to blur the edge between the university and the region's startup ecosystem. (SF Business Times) A man in his 60s was taken to Highland Hospital on Saturday night after a driver struck him in a crosswalk at San Pablo and Ashby avenues. (Berkeley Scanner)

The Solomon Schechter Day School in Newton has placed a teacher on leave after a young child who tested positive for a sexually transmitted infection reported being touched inappropriately by the instructor, school officials said. The teacher was placed on leave Oct. 31, the same day the student's family shared additional information with the school, including a report of inappropriate touching, according to a statement the school released Wednesday.

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

On Monday, the district presented a 2% raise for teachers next year, when the Palo Alto Educators' Association said they had requested 13%. But in a statement to the Daily Post, Austin said the 13% actually equates to an 28% increase, as the district factors in other benefits and compensations. Austin said the district's counter of 2% came from its analysis of what would be an appropriate cost of living increase.

A German lesson is starting in a public-school classroom in the Philippines, and it opens with a greeting: "Guten Morgen," the teacher says. Students respond carefully, shaping unfamiliar sounds before moving on to short dialogues about directions, food, family, and eventually, culture. German has a reputation of being a difficult language to learn, but this also makes it a valuable assetImage: Stanley Gajete/DW In a Philippine public school, that routine still feels unusual.

The K-8 MetroWest Jewish Day School in Framingham will close at the end of the school year, with school leaders saying their personalized, faith-based model has become too costly to sustain. Founded by Steven and Renée Finn in 2003, the school has served more than 300 students from over 30 towns across the region. In response to the school's closure, the Finn family has committed to providing tuition support for current students who continue their Jewish day school education through eighth grade.

"softening,"

Speaking to a crowd of 400 higher ed leaders at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board's leadership conference in 2023, Abbott praised attendees for putting the state "on a trajectory of excellence in higher education." A high-quality higher education has many components, he said, but one of the most important elements "is having top-notch research universities to educate the next generation of innovative leaders needed by employers in the state."

But as schoolage audiences of Matilda the Musical or the Harry Potter films can testify, UK classrooms usually have more children in them than fictional ones. What these young people probably do not know is that their classrooms are also fuller than many real ones abroad. A report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development found that the UK has some of the largest primary groups in the industrialised world.