#Greg Ottinger

[mrbopst]

Alter Natives. 1991. Photo by Lisa MIller.

#Alter Natives #Chris Bopst #Greg Ottinger #Jim Thomson #Lisa Miller #Phto #Photography #SST Records #Trio #Richmond #Virginia #RVA #1991 #90s

[porlockstompf]

Reading de Nacht Reading 2019

                              my favourite books of the year

my overall favourite book of the year:

martin hägglund "this life why mortality makes us free" (2019)

postcyberpunkstompf:

01 ken liu (ed) "broken stars: contemporary chinese sf in translation" (2019)

02 cory doctorow "radicalized" (2019) 03 dave hutchinson "the return of the incredible exploding man" (2019)   + dave hutchinson "nomads" (2019)   + dave hutchinson "thumbprints" (1978)   + dave hutchinson "torn air" (1980)   + dave hutchinson "the push" (2009)   + dave hutchinson "the villages" (2002)   ... damn that elusive "paradise equation" (1981) ... 04 tade thompson "rosewater" (2016)   + tade thompson "rosewater insurrection" (2019)   + tade thompson "rosewater redemption" (2019) 05 desirina boskovich (ed) "lost transmissions: the secret history of sf & f" (2019)

06 hannu rajaniemi & jacob weisman (eds) "the new voices of science fiction" (2019) 07 gardner dozois (ed) "the very best of the best: 35 years of the year's best science fiction" (2019) 08 jonathan strahan (ed) "the best science fiction & fantasy of the year, volume thirteen" (2019) 09 robert markeley "kim stanley robinson modern masters of sf" (2019) 10 allan kaster (ed) "the year's top hard sf stories 3" (2019)

11 olivier girard (ed) "bifrost 96 la revue des mondes imaginaires: william gibson" (2019) 12 mario guglielminetti "web is over. parabola ed esplosione di ubuweb, l'antiprofilo" (2019) 13 bryan thomas schmidt (ed) "infinite stars: dark frontiers" (2019) 14 baoshu "the redemption of time" [2011] (2019) 15 cixin liu "the supernova era" [2003] (2019)

16 l. x. beckett "gamechanger" (2019) 17 gareth l powell "fleet of knives" (2019) 18 chen qiufan "waste tide" [2013] (2019) 19 derek künsken "the quantum garden" (2019) 20 gregory benford "rewrite: loops in the timescape" (2019)

21 james s.a. corey "tiamat's wrath" (2019)   + james s.a. corey "auberon" (2019) 22 jim al-khalili "sunfall" (2019) 23 peter f hamilton "salvation lost"  (2019) 24 neal asher "the warship" (2019) 25 jonathan strahan (ed) "mission critical" (2019)

26 jack mcdevitt "octavia gone" (2019) 27 elizabeth bear "ancestral night" (2019) 28 ian mcdonald "moon rising" (2019) 29 carmen maria machado (ed) "the best american sf & f 2019" (2019) 30 valerie valdes "chilling effect" (2019) 31 simon morden "bright morning star" (2019)      + s. j. morden "no way" (2019) 32 neil stephenson "fall or, dodge in hell" (2019) 33 graham edwards "string city" (2019)

klassikstompf:

01 arno schmidt "bottom's dream" [1970] (2016) ... & still reading ...

02 jorge luis borgès "borgès restored (the author's preferred translations)" (2016) 03 julie orringer "the flight portfolio" (2019)   + julie orringer "the invisible bridge" (2010) 04 pola oloixarac "savage theories" (2017)   + pola oloixarac "dark constellations" (2019) 05 simon critchley "memory theatre" (2014)

06 gabriel josipovici "hotel andromeda" (2014) 07 david keenan "for the good times" (2019) 08 wg sebald "vertigo" [1990] (1999)   + wg sebald "the emmigrants" [1992] (1996)   + wg sebald "the rings of saturn" [1995] (1998)   + wg sebald "austerlitz" (2001) 09 luis chitarroni "the no variations "diary of an unfinished novel" [2007] (2013) 10 julián ríos "larva: a midsummer night's babel" [1983] (1991)

11 césar aira "birthday" [2001] (2019)   + césar aira "three novels" [1990-2000-1997] (2018) 12 tom mole "the secret life of books" (2019) 13 lucy ives "loudermilk or the real poet or the origin of the world" (2019) 14 lászló krasznahorkai "baron wenckheim's homecoming" [2016] (2019) 15 lucy ellmann "ducks, newburyport" (2019)

16 lars iyer "nietzsche & the burbs" (2019) 17 d harlan wilson "the psychotic dr. schreber" (2019) 18 andrew gallix (ed) "we'll never have paris" (2019) 19 chris kelso (ed) "i transgress" (2019) 20 john crowley "the solitudes" [1987] (2007)   + john crowley "love & sleep" (1994)   + john crowley "daemonomania" (2000)   + john crowley "endless things" (2007) ... (the aegypt cycle)

polarstompf:

01 carlos ruiz zafón "the labyrinth of the spirits" [2017] (2018)

02 volker kutscher "the fatherland files" [2012] (2019) 03 andrea camilleri "the overnight kidnapper" [2015] (2019)   + andrea camilleri "the other end of the line" [2016] (2019) 04 mick herron "joe country" (2019)   + mick herron "this is what happened" (2018)   + mick herron "nobody walks" (2015) 05 john le carré "agent running the field" (2019)

06 guillaume musso "la vie secrète des écrivains" (2019) 07 luke mccallin "the man from berlin" (2013)   + luke mccallin "the pale house" (2014)   + luke mccallin "the divided city" (2016) 09 henry porter "brandenburg" [2005] (2019)   + henry porter "firefly" (2018)   + henry porter "white hot silence" (2019) 10 mitch silver "the bookworm" (2018)   + mitch silver "in secret service" (2007)

11 alan judd "the accidental agent" (2019) 12 philip kerr "metropolis" (2019) 13 ian rankin "westwind" (2019) 14 jo nesbø "the knife" (2019) 15 david hewson "devil's fjord" (2019)

16 barry forshaw "crime fiction: a reader's guide" (2019) 17 a.a. dhand "one way out" (2019) 18 martin holmén "clinch: the stockholm trilogy 01" (2016)   + martin holmén "down for te count: the stockholm trilogy 02" (2017)   + martin holmén "slugger: the stockholm trilogy 03" (2019) 19 michael kestemont "de zwarte koning" (2019) 20 soren sveistrup "the chestnut man" [2018] (2019)

21 tim mason "the darwin affair" (2019) 22 patrick conrad "good night, charlie" (2019) 23 chris pavone "the paris diversion" (2019) 24 dov aflon "a long night in paris" (2019) 25 arne dahl "hunted" [2017] (2019)

                                  RIP ANDREA CAMILLERI !

gedächtnisstompf:

01 martin hägglund "this life: why mortality makes us free" (2019) /                            "this life: secular faith & spiritual freedom" (2019)

02 derrida "la vie la mort: séminaire (1975-1976)" (2019) 03 jean-luc nancy "derrida, suppléments”  (2019) 04 jean-françois bouthors et jean-luc nancy "démocratie! hic et nunc" (2019) 05 hannah arendt "de vrijheid om vrij te zijn" (2019)      + hannah arendt "nous autres réfugiés" (2019)

06 mckenzie wark "capital is dead": is this something worse?" (2019) 07 johan schokker & tim schokker      "extimiteit: jacques lacan's terugkeer naar freud" (2000) 08 gerhard richter & ann schmock (eds) "give the word:      responses to werner hamacher's 95 theses on philology"    (2019) 09 ranja n gosh "philosophy & poetry: continental perspectives" (2019) 10 shoshana zuboff "the age of surveillance capitalism" (2019)

11 kate zambrano "screen tests: stories & other writing" (2019) 12 daniele carluccio "roland barthes lecteur" (2019) 13 jean-clet martin "la philosophie de gilles deleuze" (2019) 14 mitchell dean & daniel zamora  "le dernier homme et la fin de la révolution:          foucault après mai 68" (2019) 15 arnon grunberg "vriend & vijand: decadentie, ondergang & verlossing" (2019)

16 kwami anthony appiah      "de leugens die ons verbinden: een nieuwe kijk op identiteit" [2018] (2019) 17 quentin meillassoux "science fiction & extro-science fiction" (2015) 18 roberto calasso "het onbenoembare verleden" [2017] (2019) 19 lydia davis "essays" (2019) 20 denise riley "time lived, without its flow" (2019)

poesisstompf:

zoë skoulding "footnotes to water" (2019)

platterstompf:

01 rick moody "on celestial music, and other adventures in listening" (2012)

02 yann courtiau "frictions:   ce que la littérature a fait à la musique et ce que la musique a en a fait" (2019) 03 vivien goldman "revenge of the she-punks:      a feminist music history from poly styrene to pussy riot" (2019) 04 garrígos, triana & guerra "god save the queens: pioneras del punk" (2019) 05 jon savage "this searing light, the sun & everything else:      joy division the oral history" (2019)

06 richard beck "trains, jesus, and murder: the gospel according to johnny cash" 07 mark lanegan "sleevenotes" (2019) 08 jason williamson "jason williamson's house party: sleaford mods 2014-2019" (2019) 09 gallix, hill, & rose (eds) "love bites: fiction inspired by pete shelley" (2019) 10 greg laurie "johnny cash the redemption of an american icon" (2019)

11 marc vos & toon loenders "siglo xx:     opdat de dood ons levend vindt & het leven ons niet doodt" (2019) 12 david sandilands & david keenan "go ahead & drop the bomb      (memorial device pamflet)" (2019) 13 guillaume belhomme "pop fin de siècle" (2019) 14 chris bohn (ed) "the wire" (magazine) (2019) 15 sylvain sylvain "there's no bones in ice cream:      sylvain sylvain's story of the new york dolls" (2018)

16 debbie harry "face it" (2019) 17 jaime gonzalo "poder freak: una crónica de la contracultura vol III" (2014) 18 matthew bower & samantha davies "talisman angelical" (2017) 19 darryl w bullock "the world's worst records: an arcade of audio atrocity vol I" (2013)   + darryl w bullock "the world's worst records: another arcade of audio atrocity vol II" (2015) 20 steve zisson (ed) "a punk rock future" (2019) /      ivar muñoz-rojas "underground babilonia" (2019)

bilderstompf:

01 didier ottinger "bacon en toutes lettres" (2019)

02 antoni tàpies "cap braços cames cos" (2012)   + antoni tàpies "mahlerei und graphik" (2011) 03 laura oldfield ford "savage messiah" (2019) 04 fred vermorel "dead fashion girl: a situationist detective story" (2019) 05 françois schuiten & jaco van dormael "le dernier pharaon" (2019)

06 ken krimstein "the three escapes of hannah arendt: the tyranny of truth" (2018) 07 erik bindervoet & saskia pfaeltzer "aldus sprach nietzsche's zuster" (2019) 08 anthony n fragola & roch c smith "the erotic dream machine: interviews with alain robbe-grillet on his films" (2006)

cyclostompf:

01 bernard chambaz "petite philosophie du vélo" (2019)

02 filip osselaer "de man die doodging (vervolgens mosselen bestelde,      de rekening vroeg en verdween): el tarangu, josé manuel fuente" (2019) 03 peter schmink "de cultus van het lijden: een vrije oefening" (2006) 04 laurent willame "les lieux sacrés du cyclisme:     15 pélérinages à faire avant de crever" (2019) 05 jonas heyerick (ed) "bahamontes: uit liefde voor de stiel" [magazine] (2019)

06 johnny vansevenant "1969, het jaar van eddy merckx" (2019) 07 edwin winkels "la vuelta: heroïsche verhalen uit de ronde van spanje" (2019) 08 frederik baeckelandt "fausto coppi (les héros 04)" (2019) 09 harry pearson "the beast, the emperor & the milkman:      a bone-shaking tour through cycling’s flemish heartlands" (2019) 10 peter cossins "the yellow jersey / le maillot jaune" (2019)

11 thijs zonneveld "het panini album" (2019) 12 thijs zonneveld "de fiets, de fiets & nog veel meer sportverhalen" (2019) 13 willy vangenechten "hoe word je een wielerfan (en blijf je er een)?" (2019)

some wissenschaftstompf & autres divertissements ...:

01 robert macfarlane "underland: a deep time journey" (2019)

02 george van hal & ans hekkenberg "het kosmisch rariteitenkabinet" (2019) 03 josey waley-cohen "only connect: the difficult second quiz book" (2019)

… tsundoku !

may your home be safe from tigers, leroy, x HNY!

... the annual out of control TBR pile ...

postcyberpunkstompf

ada hoffmann "the outside" (2019) adrian tchaikovsky "children of ruin" (2019) alastair reynolds "shadow captain" (2019) + alastair reynolds "permafrost" (2019) annalee newitz "the future of another timeline" (2019) charlie jane anders "the city in the middle of the night" (2019) farah mendlesohn "the pleasant profession of robert a heinlein" (2019)gareth l powell "ragged alice" (2019) greg egan "perihelion summer" (2019) ian creasey "the shapes of strangers" (2019) jo walton "lent" (2019)

kameron hurley "the light brigade" (2019) karl schroeder "stealing words" (2019) megan o'keefe "velocity weapon" (2019) neil clarke (ed) "the eagle has landed: 50 years of lunar sf" (2019) nina allan "the silverwind" (2019) paul di filippo "aeota" (2019) peter swirski "stanislaw lem: philosopher of the future" (2019) + peter swirski & waclaw m osadnik (eds) "lemography: stanislaw lem in the eyes of the world" (2019) richard kadrey "the grand dark" (2019) rudy rucker "million mile road trip" (2019) simon ings "the smoke" (2019)

klassikstompf

alex landragin "crossings" (2019) enrique vila-matas "mac's problem" [2017] (2019) joseph scapellato "the made-up man" (2019) kevin breatnach "tunnelvision" (2019) michel houellebecq "serotonin" (2019) nell zink "doxology" (2019) roberto bolaño "the spirit of science fiction: a novel" (2019) samanta schweblin "mouthful of birds" (2019) sergio pitol "mephisto's waltz: selected short stories" (2019) will eaves "murmur" (2019)

polarstompf

johan op de beek "het complot van laken" (2019) jon steinhagen "the hanging artist" (2019) juli zeh "empty hearts" (2019) max hertzberg "operation oskar" (2019) + max hertzberg "berlin centre" (2019) peter robinson "many rivers to cross" (2019) tony belloto "bellini & the sphinx" [1995] (2019)

.

.

.

#2019 #rewind #reading #lecture #librarything

[weirdletter]

Romanticism and Speculative Realism, edited by Chris Washington and Anne C. McCarthy, Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. Info: bloomsbury.com.

Romanticism and Speculative Realism features a range of scholars working at the intersection of literary poetics and philosophy. It considers how the writing of the Romantic era reconceptualizes the human imagination, the natural world, and the language that correlates them in radical ways that can advance current speculative debates concerning new ontologies and new materialisms. In their wide-ranging examinations of canonical and non-canonical romantic writers, the scholars gathered here rethink the connections between the human and non-human world to envision speculative modes of social being and ecological politics. Spanning historical and national frameworks-from historical romanticism to contemporary post-romantic ecology, and from British and German romanticism to global modernity-these essays examine life in all its varied forms in, and beyond, the Anthropocene.

Contents: List of Figures Introduction: Literature and Philosophy in The World Without Us — Chris Washington and Anne C. McCarthy 1. Of Meillassoux’s Contingencies and Scott’s Plots: Rethinking Probability in a World of Unreason — Evan Gottlieb 2. Affect and Air: The Speculative Spirit of the Age — Michele Speitz 3. Feeling as Hyperobject in Wordsworth’s The Prelude — Joel Faflak 4. Blank Oblivion, Condemned Life: John Clare’s “Obscurity” — David Collings 5. Speculative Enthusiasm: William Blake’s Jerusalem and Quentin Meillassoux’s Divine Ethics — Allison Dushane 6. Surfing the Crimson Wave: Romantic New Materialisms and Speculative Feminisms — Kate Singer 7. Post-Apocalyptic Romantic Politics: Reveries of Rousseau, Derrida, and Meillassoux — Chris Washington 8. Astral Guts: No-Self in Byron and Brassier — Aaron Ottinger 9. A Perilous Change of Correspondence: Romanticism after [Nature] — Mary Jacobus 10. Plasticity, Poetry, and the End of Art: Malabou, Hegel, Keats — Greg Ellermann 11. Poe’s Black Cat — Graham Harman 12. Objects Taken for Wonders in Equiano’s Interesting Narrative — Alexander Dick 13. An Object-Oriented Media Studies: The Case of Romantic Cookery Books — Brian Rejack Notes on Contributors Index

#book #weird essay #essay #speculative realism #romanticism

[epacer]

Education

San Diego Unified pursues slew of anti-racist reforms

The San Diego Unified School Board voted to ban future “willful defiance” suspensions for all middle school students and to implement a host of other reforms at an online school board workshop on racial equity on Tuesday.

California currently prohibits willful defiance suspensions for elementary and middle grades, but there is a five-year sunset on the ban for middle grades. The district will discuss banning such suspensions for high school students in the future.

Among other promised school reforms announced by district officials Tuesday were commitments to:

●    Write a new de-escalation policy and require de-escalation training for school police by the end of next month

●    Require all use-of-force incidents by school police be formally reviewed, including by the school police chief

●    Train all educators on anti-bias and cultural responsiveness starting next month

●    Train panelists who hire staff for schools and district departments in mitigating bias

●    Increase the number of diverse candidates chosen for positions

●    Change grading policies to give students chances to correct their work or improve their grades

●    Increase enrollment in ethnic studies courses and enable students to enroll in AP courses not offeredat their school

The board also voted to create a position for a diversity inclusion officer, who would work to recruit more students to become educators in the district and improve inclusion for current district educators.

The police killing of George Floyd, a Black man in Minneapolis, and the protests that followed have led many school systems, including San Diego Unified, to examine how their practices perpetuate racial inequities.

Racial disparities for Black and Hispanic students are evident in the four areas the board workshop focused on: staff diversity, curriculum, grading and discipline, district officials said. The disparities are not unique to San Diego and are part of patterns that extend statewide and nationwide.

For instance, Black students made up 8 percent of San Diego Unified’s enrollment in 2018-2019 but 21 percent of its suspensions, according to state data.

District data from the 2018-2019 school year show 5 percent of teachers were Black while about 8 percent of students were Black. Only 18 percent of teachers were Latino while 44 percent of students were Latino. About a quarter of students were White, but 66 percent of teachers were White.

More district data revealed Tuesday show that Black students, Latino students, English learners and students with disabilities are all significantly more likely than White students to receive D and F grades.

Black and Latino students receive D and F grades roughly 20 percent of the time. White students receive D and F grades 7 percent of the time, which is below the district average of about 15 percent.

Kate Papen, a senior at Mount Everest Academy, said she sees racial biases in student discipline carry over into the classroom citizenship grades students receive for behavior.

“As children growing up, we’re taught that grades are metrics not just for the knowledge that we’ve learned, but also for success and even our value,” Papen said during the board workshop. “And this is dangerous in and of itself, but it becomes even more detrimental when considering the unfair and unequal grading system.”

The district’s planned reforms switch the focus from punishing students to developing trust and giving students chances to correct mistakes.

For example, district leaders said they want to change F grades, which mean failure, to be “not yet” complete, which means a student will have a chance to master topics and earn a better grade.

District leaders also said schools must support students before pushing them out of school via suspensions or expulsions. For example, schools can give students chances to change their behavior, teach students mindfulness, provide mentors and examine whether a student was referred for discipline due to racial or gender biases.

The district also is expanding the number of ethnic studies courses; it already decided to make ethnic studies a graduation requirement by next school year. It also is training teachers on how to teach in a culturally responsive way, officials said.

Wendy Ranck-Buhr, instructional support officer for the district, said San Diego Unified has rewritten its history courses to include perspectives of historically marginalized groups.

“In order for us to become an anti-racist and socially just system, we must also work to humanize and de-colonize both our curriculum and our instructional practices,” Ranck-Buhr said.

Some students had called for the complete defunding of the district’s school police department, saying that many Black and Latino students don’t feel safe with police on campus and that police show biases against people of color.

The district is focusing on reforming the school police rather than removing it.

“We wanted to step back and take a broader look at what is the proper role of police in our schools,” said San Diego Unified School Board President John Lee Evans.

San Diego Unified’s Chief Business Officer Greg Ottinger said the school police department made 208 arrests in 2018-2019, up from 154 the year before.

“We know that collectively we can take actions that help shape a system that decreases any need to arrest any students,” he said at the board workshop.

The district will form a committee of students and staff, including school police, to recommend changes to the school police department.

The school board also voted Tuesday to create an independent citizens oversight committee to regularly monitor and report out the district’s progress on racial equity. Board Trustee Richard Barrera proposed forming the committee to hold the district accountable.

“We’ve had this conversation so many times before — I think, not to the degree that we’ve had student voice in this conversation tonight — but ... these are not new issues and these are frankly not new strategies and these are certainly not new data points,” Barrera said. *Reposted article from the UT by Kristen Taketa of July 22, 2020

[thinggolf77-blog]

Rear window

Report chapters:

Rear window

C21Media launched 21 years ago. Here leading distribution execs reveal how the business has changed during that time.

Cru’s control

GRB Entertainment hired C Scot Cru as international chief earlier this year with a remit to diversify and take the distributor further up the supply chain.

Passion points

Passion Distribution's flagship show scored big at the Primetime Emmys but its CEO warns the lifecycle of all programmes is changing.

Early advantage

As a distributor, Fremantle is getting involved ever earlier in the financing of big-budget dramas, in terms of both presales and making its own investments.

Studious support

BBC Studios remains a key global distributor and producer, but it is having to adapt swiftly to deal with a rapidly changing market.

All to play for

All3Media International has heavyweight backers but must still respond to intensifying industry consolidation and the changes brought by SVoD.

That's Entertainment

After an acquisitions spree that has seriously bolstered ITV Studios Global Entertainment, the firm could be poised to become substantially bigger.

An orderly Kew

Kew Media Distribution boss Greg Phillips explains why the company is focusing on drama and offers his take on how the industry is changing.

The quick and the dead

Streamers and M&A have transformed the distribution business. VIMN and Cineflix Rights are among those moving swiftly to respond.

Going over the top

Disney is going direct-to-consumer with its own VoD offering, but OTT offers plenty of others the potential to do the same.

The rights approach

Banijay Rights CEO Tim Mutimer says traditional distribution is alive and well, with OTT only presenting new opportunities.

Cyber's space

French kids' outfit Cyber Group Studios is adapting its business to global SVoD and eyeing international growth to counter disruption at home.

Clause for thought

Growing competition for exclusivity between broadcasters and streamers has left kids’ TV distributors in the middle of a tussle.

Morphing MGM

MGM's Chris Ottinger says the success of The Handmaid’s Tale on global FTA networks highlights changing tastes among buyers.

New era

Jeffrey Katzenberg has raised more than US$1bn to fund mobile-first distribution start-up NewTV. What does it mean for the industry?

Designated agent

eOne's Stuart Baxter says his firm aims to remain in the big league by building a slate broad enough to score with streamers, free TV and pay TV.

Payne and gain

Endemol Shine International chief Cathy Payne argues that only big or boutique players will prosper in the distribution game in the years ahead.

Distribution is alive!

Red Arrow Studios International's Bo Stehmeier refutes the claim distribution is dead but explains how the TV sales agent is evolving.

Death of distribution?

Industry consolidation and the advent of global SVoD have upended the traditional television distribution landscape.

Source: https://www.c21media.net/products-page/reports/c21pro-2018-global-distribution-trends-report/?redirect=https://www.c21media.net/rear-window/

[mrbopst]

Alter Natives

Outside SST Offices, Summer 1986 Lawndale, Ca, USA

Naomi Petersen Contact Sheet

#Alter Natives #Naomi Petersen #SST #SST Records #Chris Bopst #Eric Ungar #Jim Thomson #Greg Ottinger #1986 #80s

[mrbopst]

Photos from GWAR B-Q 2010 Richmond, Virginia, USA 2010. Singing Sick of You Finale and Alter Natives Reunion as Gwar.

Photos by Steve Herndon

#Bopst #Chris Bopst #GWAR B-Q #Gwar #Dave Brockie #Jim Thomson #Greg Ottinger #Richmond #Virginia #RVA #2010 #Alter Natives #sst records #Steve Herndon

[mrbopst]

Gwar-B-Que. Hadad's Lake. Richmond, Virginia. 2012

#Hadad's Lake #Gwar #Gwar-B-Que #Alter Natives #Chris Bopst #Greg Ottinger #Jim Thomson #Richmond #Virginia #RVA #2012

[mrbopst]

One of the earliest incarnations of Gwar. Chuck Varga (Sexecutioner), Jim Thomson (Hans Sphincter/Orifice), Joe Annaruma (Joey Slutman), Chris Bopst (BalSac), Greg Ottinger (Cornelius Carnage). Dave Brockie Memorial, the National, Richmond, Virginia, USA, 4/1/14.

#Chuck Varga #Jim THomson #Joe Annaruma #Chris Bopst #Greg Ottinger #Gwar #Dave Brockie #Richmond #Virginia #RVA

[mrbopst]

Alter Natives. Richmond, Virginia, USA. 1988. Photo by Naomi Petersen.

#Alter Natives #Chris Bopst #Jim Thomson #Eric Ungar #Greg Ottinger #SST Records #Richmond #Virginia #1988 #80s #Naomi Petersen

[mrbopst]

Alter Natives

Miami, Florida, USA 1988

#Alter Natives #SST Records #Chris Bopst #Greg Ottinger #Jim Thomson #80s #80s underground music #Richmond #Virginia #1988

[mrbopst]

Alter Natives

Richmond, Virginia, USA

Spring 1985

#Alter Natives #chris Bopst #Greg Ottinger #Jim Thomson #Sst Records #Richmond #Virginia #RVA #1985 #80s

[mrbopst]

Alter Natives Fall 1985 On Top of the VCU Sculpture Building (RIP) Broad & Shafer Richmond, Virginia, USA.

#Alter Natives #Chris Bopst #Greg Ottinger #Jim Thomson #Eric Ungar #VCU #Richmond #Virginia #RVA #1985 #80s #VCU Sculpture #SST #SST Records

[mrbopst]

Talking about my band, The Alter Natives, and our 2nd, SST full-length release, “Group Therapy”

#Bopst #Chris Bopst #Music #Podcast #SST #Alter Natives #Group Therapy #Richmond Virginia #rva #rvamusic #Math #instrumental music #instrumental band #history #American Underground Music #underground music #80s #Greg Ottinger #Jim Thomson #Eric Ungar #Nerds

[epacer]

EDUCATION

San Diego Unified's Budget Woes Widen to Include Potential Layoffs

San Diego Unified will again consider laying off an unknown number of employees to help close a $70 million budget hole expected next year following across-the-board raises, according to new projections presented to school board trustees Tuesday night. The gap increased from a $58 million shortfall estimated in September.

The district’s chief business officer, Greg Ottinger, gave no explanation for the change before asking trustees to greenlight unspecified reductions and positively certify the district’s $1.44 billion budget, a move indicating the district will be able to pay its bills in the next couple years.

More budget cut details will come before March 15, but in Tuesday’s presentation, the district called out “strategic layoffs of certificated/classified as needed in March” as a “potential shift” and listed a hiring freeze, spending freeze and program shifts among solutions.

In more bad news, district leaders anticipate outspending general fund revenues by $64 million by the end of the current year, up from the $38 million deficit anticipated in September, district budget records show.

Ottinger did not discuss that deficit increase either, and VOSD’s questions about both changes have gone unanswered.

The higher deficit may point to deep cuts ahead, if past low points in 2010 and 2017 are any indication. Here’s a look at how the district’s general fund spending has fared over the years, as revenues and expenses have ebbed and flowed.

“It’s a revenue issue,” said Barrera, who criticized the state for amassing an estimated $18 billion rainy day fund by 2021 that he said could be used to increase education funding. Barrera also pointed to California’s poor performance in education funding analyses that take into account cost of living. He then argued escalating state pension contributions required of schools aren’t necessary to keep the pension fund solvent.

Ottinger also lamented the pension contributions needed by the district, and said the millions extra going toward pensions could be spent elsewhere.

Barrera said despite the district’s current budget predicament, it would have been wrong to withhold the recent across-the-board 3.7 percent raises for San Diego Unified’s 10,500 employees, a move that added $45 million in annual operating costs and blew up the district’s balanced budget.

“Some people want to say that the solution to our budget challenge every year is to simply pay our employees less. Yes, if our employees were paid less, the district would have more money. That is true and obvious. And it is also true and obvious that if we were to do that, if we were to fail to allow our employees to keep up with the basic cost of living every year, that we would have a very difficult time recruiting and retaining employees. And we know that this district has benefited significantly from stability of our employees,” Barrera said in a14-minute speech. “The answer is not to not allow our employees to keep up with the cost of living … where we would be seeing continued and significant turnover of our employees every single year, because they cannot simply afford to live in San Diego. That is not the answer.”

State data shows San Diego Unified’s average teacher salary was $80,624 in 2018, roughly the same as the state average for all districts. The latest raises pushed the top teacher base salary above $100,000 for the first time, according to a district press release.

San Diego Unified continues to provide full health care coverage to employees and their dependents. The cost of health benefits paid out of the general fund dipped in 2018 following layoffs but are expected to rise at the end of this year by $9.7 million. The district is budgeting annual 6 percent increases for health care premiums in the coming years, records show. *Reposted article from the VOSD by Ashly McGlone of December 11, 2019

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Education

Many San Diego Unified Schools Are Nowhere Near Full

School is back in session, and San Diego Unified School District anticipates educating about 1,200 fewer K-12 students than last year.

Student enrollment has declined steadily at the region’s largest public school district in recent years. The district taught less than 103,000 students last year – 7,700 fewer than just five years ago and 14,700 fewer than 10 years ago, according to district records.

And there is no sign the slide will slow anytime soon.

Budget documents show San Diego Unified officials anticipate a loss of about 1,500 more students next year, and again the year after, when enrollment may dip below 99,000 students.

That’s bad news for district leaders who are routinely left searching for millions of dollars in spending cuts. Since the state funds public schools on a per pupil basis, lost students means lost money – about $13,000 per student annually for San Diego Unified, according to state data.

That means this year’s anticipated enrollment drop alone could end up costing the district $15.6 million.

San Diego Unified’s latest $1.4 billion operating budget counts on $58.3 million in ongoing cuts in 2020-21 and another $24.5 million the following year. It is still unclear where that money will come from.

“Any talk about budget revisions is premature at this point,” Greg Ottinger, the district’s chief financial officer, said in an email. Ottinger said this year is funded and possible solutions for next year will come in December. State funding may also change before next year, he said.

“Cutting classroom spending today to reduce a projected shortfall in the future would mean depriving our students of every available dollar,” Ottinger said.

San Diego Unified’s school board president, Sharon Whitehurst-Payne, referred inquiries to district staff.

“We staff to specific class sizes, and if there are fewer students we hire fewer new teachers as others retire,” the school board’s vice president, John Lee Evans, said in an email. “The budget partially re-balances by losing revenue for students and not hiring teachers for the students who are not there.”

If there are 1,200 fewer students to educate this year, a proportional reduction would mean losing roughly 60 teachers, since the district’s average pupil to teacher ratio is 20-to-1.

Rookie teachers get paid $46,000 at San Diego Unified, so 60 less would amount to $2.76 million in salary savings. That would still leave a nearly $13 million deficit that would need to be cut from somewhere else.

But staffing hasn’t always dropped proportionally with enrollment, district data has shown.

Just a couple years ago, while facing a $124 million shortfall, San Diego Unified officials issued wide-sweeping layoff notices, and later retirement incentives, to “right-size” the district’s workforce, which had actually increased amid enrollment declines.

The district is also moving ahead with plans for a new school in Mission Valley, despite a lack of students there.

“The district believes strongly in creating livable, walkable communities with quality neighborhood schools in the center of local life,” wrote Maureen Magee, a district spokeswoman, in an email. “The new school Civita school will be exactly this type of community foundation.”

Magee said there are 230 students who currently live in the area and have to travel away from Mission Valley to attend school. And that number may double in time as more residential development occurs.

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The district’s steady enrollment decline is a far cry from the student boom seen in the 1990s, although even growth during that decade came up short of projections.

Demographers hired by San Diego Unified in the 1980s expected student enrollment to reach 156,000 students by 2000, according to a Los Angeles Times article from 1986.

Instead, district enrollment peaked at less than 135,000 in traditional district schools in 2000, and totaled less than 142,000 counting charter schools, which manage their own operations and finances, district records show.

Certain parts of town are being hit by enrollment losses harder than others.

Voice of San Diego requested school capacity data from the district and compared it to school enrollment numbers reported to the state for 2017-18.

The result: 94 schools reported enrollment below 80 percent capacity, and a dozen schools were at 50 percent capacity or less. Three of the most severely under-enrolled schools were in Clairemont Mesa, and three were in the Skyline-Paradise Hills area.

●    The most severely under-enrolled school was the K-12 Whittier School, which serves 53 students with special needs in Clairemont and was at 27 percent capacity. In 1999, the school had 969 students, state data shows.

●    The most under-enrolled traditional school was Alcott Elementary, occupying just 34 percent of its Clairemont Mesa campus with a mere 195 students. Back in 1997, the school had 575 students, state data shows.

●    The third-most under-enrolled San Diego Unified school overall was Memorial Preparatory for Scholars and Athletes, a Logan Heights middle school serving just 416 students on a campus with capacity for 1,146. Memorial had almost 1,900 students in 2003, according to state numbers. The school has long struggled to attract and retain students, and has been rebranded and re-envisioned more than once over the years, even converting to a charter school and back again. The campus is now in the midst of a rebuild to convert it to a K-12 campus, pushing out a separate charter school that had been sharing the space. (State law requires school districts to share unused space with charter schools.)

●    Four other district schools operated at less than 44 percent capacity: Kimbrough Elementary in Grant Hill, Lafayette Elementary in Clairemont, Montgomery Middle School in Linda Vista and Wilson Middle School in City Heights.

Wilson’s principal, Dave Downey, said gentrification is having an impact.

“Many of our families are simply being priced out of the newer neighborhoods within the Mid-City corridor,” Downey wrote in an email to VOSD. Still, the middle school has made gains in recent years – rising from less than 600 students in 2011 to 709 students today. “Over the last nine years we have made a concerted effort to market and bring additional students to the Wilson/Hoover STEAM Pathway,” Downey wrote.

That has included annual visits to nearby fifth grade classrooms, and a partnership with Price Philanthropy, which helps fund student programs at the Birch Aquarium, Ocean Discovery Institute, SALK Institute, the College Avenue Compact, School in the Park, as well as a social worker and liaisons who reach out to students in need at home, he said.

Spare campus buildings at Wilson are being used to partially house districtwide programs, like the TRACE alternative school for young adults with special needs, as well as a small population of medically and physically challenged students who receive sensory education spread across four classrooms, Downey said.

The extra campus space also allows each of Wilson’s three counselors and two home liaisons to have their own classrooms, Downey said. Two other classrooms are currently being used by the district’s construction team working on a rebuild that will reduce Wilson’s capacity to less than 900 students.

The new school buildings should open sometime this school year, Downey said.

The extra space on the Alcott campus is being used for early education. Principal Michelle Riley said in an email about 263 preschool and pre-K children are attending programs at Alcott this year.

Find Crawford High’s capacity numbers here:

* Students enrolled in special school programs at San Diego High and Kearny High are included in both campus-wide enrollment numbers and individual program enrollment numbers.

Source: San Diego Unified School District, California Department of Education

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San Diego Unified isn’t the only district grappling with declining student populations. Statewide K-12 enrollment is also expected to decline in the coming years.

State Department of Finance officials project California will lose roughly 250,000 students between 2019 and 2028, according to state data released in January.

For San Diego County, state officials expect K-12 enrollment to increase over the next couple years, peaking at 511,631 in 2021, before declining for several years, the state data shows.

It isn’t just one factor that’s causing local students to disappear, according to regional school officials.

“San Diego’s declining enrollment has been due to a combination of factors such as a decrease in the number of births, decreasing immigration rates, migration out of San Diego and high housing prices,” a 2011 report by the San Diego County Office of Education said. “The areas hardest hit by declining enrollment have been in the central, east and north inland regions.”

The state’s fiscal crisis management team recently recommended both Oceanside Unified and Vista Unified in North County consider consolidating schools due to declining enrollment, saying they are “incurring costs to maintain more facilities and school sites than needed to adequately serve its students.”

In Vista, three schools reported enrollment below 50 percent capacity, and 21 out of 26 schools reported enrollments less than 80 percent capacity.

“Consider closing or consolidating one or more schools or sharing administrative staff between school sites,” advised the FCMAT team in a July 22 report to Vista.

As for Oceanside, the state fiscal team found 15 out of 24 campuses had enrollment below 80 percent capacity, and three had less than 50 percent capacity, according to a May 17 report.

“Due to the declining enrollment, the district has a surplus of facilities,” the crisis team wrote.

Representatives for both districts said they are reviewing the recommendations, and each recently closed a school: Olive Elementary in Vista, and Ocean Shores continuation high school in Oceanside. Oceanside is now exploring a sale, lease or joint use for the former Ocean Shores property, Oceanside spokesman Matthew Jennings said.

In San Diego Unified, there is little talk of closing any K-12 schools, which has never been a popular choice.

No K-12 schools have been closed under the current superintendent, and no closures are planned, said Magee, the district spokeswoman.

“Schools are important community centers for many neighborhoods,” Magee wrote, adding that keeping under-enrolled schools open furthers the district’s “commitment to protect the planet.”

“The district estimates trips to school account for 451 Metric tons of carbon in the environment … Walkable, livable communities are important to protect both the quality of life for San Diego residents and as a crucial strategy to reduce pollution.”

The district has also achieved enrollment turnarounds before.

In 2008, Crown Point Elementary had just 150 students, who occupied just 38 percent of the Pacific Beach campus, and was targeted for closure.

But that same year, the school began focusing on music and enrollment surged to 400 by 2016. Last school year, enrollment totaled 313 students, reaching 82 percent capacity.

Evans, the school board vice president, said small school closures were previously considered when the district budget was in crisis, but the potential savings was too little to make it worth it.

“The small schools had very limited support staff. The teachers would typically move where the students move, so no savings there. There could be savings for the elimination of the principal, but even that limited savings might be slightly offset by an increase in the salary of a receiving principal with a larger student body,” Evans wrote in an email.

But Evans said school consolidation is on the table “if it resulted in a better academic program for all of the students,” after looking at all factors, including safety for students that may have to cross busy streets to attend a school further away.

Evans said the district is also working to determine the optimal size of different types of schools to meet academic needs.

“Overall, it is a very complex issue and is not as simple as opening and closing Starbucks based on the customer flow,” he said. *Reposted article from VOSD by Ashly McGlone of September 9, 2019