Free Republic

The University of California is cutting back on many things, but not useless diversity programs. California’s budget crisis has reduced the University of California to near-penury, claim its spokesmen. “Our campuses and the UC Office of the President already have cut to the bone,” the university system’s vice president for budget and capital resources warned earlier this month, in advance of this week’s meeting of the university’s regents. Well, not exactly to the bone. Even as UC campuses jettison entire degree programs and lose faculty to competing universities, one fiefdom has remained virtually sacrosanct: the diversity machine. Not only have...

California governors have appointed secretaries of education for decades, but political observers say it is no surprise Gov. Jerry Brown plans to eliminate the office. The new governor's plans reflect his no-frills style and his desire to flatten bureaucracies, beginning with the executive office. Some education officials have regarded the secretary as an unnecessary position: California already elects a superintendent of public instruction and has an 11-member board, appointed by the governor, to oversee the Department of Education. (snip) Education insiders are not expected to oppose the move, and many are cheering it. David Sanchez, president of the powerful California...

Sarah Mahnke-Baum, Arthur Register and Julian Brastow became friends at their neighborhood preschool in San Francisco's Cole Valley. But as they march off to elementary school this week, they'll find themselves heading in very different directions. Sarah, the daughter of a public school teacher, will attend kindergarten at a prestigious all-girls private school tucked between Sea Cliff and the Presidio with an annual tuition of $19,000. Arthur, whose family isn't Catholic, will attend second grade at a Catholic school in the Richmond District for $4,500 a year. And Julian will be a first-grader at the free public school just around...