Voters this November locally are going to be asked to approve something in the area. Between all the different school districts and the State Center Community College District, about two billion combined dollars worth of bond measure money. This is on top of Proposition two, which is a statewide ten billion dollar bond measure. All of this to fund public K through twelve school districts and community college is all
up down California. And kind of the way that this works is if your local school district does a bond measure and raises money, then they can get some form of some degree of matching bond funding from the state. So as a result, all of these different local school districts, all of a sudden, all at the same time, are all having a bond measure pop up. And again, let's remember what a bond is. A bond is a loan
made to some municipal entity like a school district. The school district gets all the money and then you, the taxpayers, have to pay the loan back with interest, usually within your property taxes. And the terms of these loans are something like thirty years. My wife and I for our house in Clovis we're still paying property taxes for bond measures that were passed for Close Unified in two thousand, two thousand and four, twenty twelve, twenty twenty, and now
we're staring down the barrel of twenty twenty four. So with all of that being said, President Unified has got a massive, like almost five hundred million dollars bond measure, Clovis Unified as a four hundred million dollar bond measure, State Center Community College District has almost set one hundred
million dollars bond measure. All these local school districts and the community colleges are asking voters in the San Joaquin Valley saying or Unified Central Unified to vote for bond measures to give them money, to give them money that frankly, I don't think are tied to need. And I think we should ask ourselves some hard questions about how well is this district really being run such that we should be giving them more money for physical investment when they
don't have their normal educational house in order. And this leads me to a fascinating story about something I did not know about. An opinion piece in GV Wire written by Stephen resh Mister Resh is an a retired President Unified teacher. He taught English and German for thirty years within Fresney, and he highlights this program called Ingenuity, which I see Fresne Unified makes a lot of use of.
But also I'm doing a little digging Close Unified does too, so I don't think this is just a pure Fresney Unified thing. Presny Unified's bad. Close Unified is good. Seemingly this is a widespread program. What is ingenuity? Let's get started, mister Resh writes, when students get their high school diplomas, you assume that they've all met key standards in all requisite areas. You suppose that they've all met the grade. They've all made the grade.
Excuse me.
Unfortunately that hasn't always been the case during the past decade or so. In Fresne Unified. It all ties in with a program called Credit Recovery and a set of courses.
Which he puts in scare quotes, courses produced.
By a company called Imagine Ingenuity. Yes, it's ingenuity, but it's on the edge. As previously reported in Gvwire and elsewhere, credit Recovery is a way for high school students in the district to dodge a failing grade in many of their classes, they don't wind up with a passing mark through traditional means, retaking tests, turning an extra credit, doing
well on a final exam. Instead, they attend ingenuity sessions where they sit in front of computer screens and complete watered down versions of the courses they're failing, and so even though they might otherwise fail several important classes, they subsequently get enough credits to attend commencement and receive diplomas. Sometimes students are able to complete such putative courses in
record time, occasionally in a matter of days. Clearly, the curriculum of an entire semester in biology, say where in American history can hardly be covered, much less mastered under such conditions. Now this is the astonishing thing. Okay, so this is some remedial thing. Kids like failing the class.
So instead of the harder work of making him retake all the tests and or just making him retake the whole course, they do these ingenuity sessions where he kind of blitzes through the material, takes sort of an easier version of it, and then can get some credits enough to graduate enough to advance a grade level, so we're further watering down our standards of achievement. Now you might think, okay, well, this is for the you know, five percent of kids who are kind of flunking out or you know ten
percent of kids who are flunking out. Fifty three percent of district seniors in Fresdent Unified earn ingenuity credits. A few months ago, the Office of the Interim Superintendent issued a memo that shed some light on Fresendent Unified's use of credit recovery through this ingenuity program. According to the June twenty first memo, President Unified paid five hundred and fifty one, one hundred and fifty dollars for edgenuity materials and support in the twenty twenty two to twenty twenty
three term. In the twenty three to twenty four term, that price tag shot up to five hundred and ninety one thousand, eight hundred and fifty dollars. The memo also indicated how many students have recently participated in ingenuity sessions. It turns out that fifty three percent of the district's seniors earned at least one credit through the online ingenuity curriculum doing the during the twenty twenty two to twenty
twenty three term. In the twenty twenty two to twenty twenty three academic year, students received on average eighteen credits this way. That average went down a bit last year to an average of sixteen credits. At present, there's no upper limit to the number of credits that students can
rack up using this method. So most of the seniors at Front Unified, just over a majority fifty three percent, are getting some of their credits through this ingenuity system, not by clearly they're getting a failing grade, a non passing grade, so they're not being made to retake tests,
not being made to retake a course. No, Instead they're doing this water down sort of ingenuity thing where they can kind of blitz through a whole course in a couple of days and still get these credits enough to graduate. The negative impact on learning culture. So mister Resh again, this is uh. This is Stephen Resh, thirty years teacher within Frostening Unified, writing about credit recovery.
The credit recovery.
Scheme of basically, you take a little online course for like three days to make up for the fact that you fail to pass a semester lung. Using credit recovery has certainly streamlined many students acquisition of course credits and thus generated a significant rise in local high school graduate rates. In addition, however, it's impacted school culture in significant and disturbing ways. Doing edge doing the Ingenuity program has become
a learned behavior. As one district instructor put it to me, a significant number of students, known in some teacher circles as quote frequent flyers, often use credit recovery to obtain passing grades with minimum effort. As a result, they tend to regard traditional classroom instruction as being somewhat irrelevant. One district teacher, Jeremy Wright, addressed the school board last year and shared his concerns about this system. In his view,
the Ingenuity program has seriously impaired classroom instruction. Now that credit recovery is available, a number of students no longer see much point in paying attention in classes. So basically, these kids all realize, well, these kids don't care about
the quality of the grades they get. They know that they can do this much easier version of the course at the end of the semester, so they're all just tuning out during the year, so, and it'll only take a couple of days as opposed to studying over the course of a whole semester. They'll just come in at the end and just do their enginuity. Oh yeah, as right put it. Jeremy Wright and teacher in president unified to testified about this to the school board. As Right
put it, quote, it's insulting to us as teachers. It's also insulting to the kids that did hard work and pulled their grade up and got the B or C. He argued that this also weakens the quality of schools, no kidding. Despite the appearance of student success, the product we're putting out there is more important than a graduation rate. Also questionable a or some additional costs linked to the
way that ingenuity has been implemented. Consider that some teachers are paid to oversee credit recovery sessions during summer school. Students in such sessions, however, only have to report to class once they've finished their ingenuity assignments. After reaching that milestone, they don't have to attend anymore. Why some have wondered should the district pay teachers for so many weeks of instruction and not require the students to attend the sessions.
The district has a different attitude toward credit recovery. One district spokesperson told me, quote, the use of ingenuity software has provided our students with valuable opportunities to attain credits toward graduation. Her comments mirror the district's narrative that programs like Credit Recovery serve students' interests and provide them with a wide range of opportunities that they otherwise wouldn't have.
This is unbelievable. I had no idea about any of this.
I'm curious how many of you knew about this. So the district is defending this, and here's this teacher in the trenches knows other teachers in the trenches, who is telling us the kids understand that they don't really have to work hard all year. They take this remedial summer school online class where they can complete the whole thing in two or three days in some cases, get the credits and then not have to show up for the rest of the allotted summer school time when they're supposed
to be doing this. Meanwhile, I'm sure a union negotiated contract some teachers are getting paid over summer school to sit there when not all the students are even required to be there. So what the heck are we even talking about.
And all of this.
Is clearly in the service of making Fresno Unified look better than it is by artificially inflating graduation rates. But these kids are graduating not on the strength of what you would imagine to be.
You know, why would someone.
Graduate high school because they've done the required coursework, because they've attained the necessary credits, they've got enough passing grades, they did what they were.
Supposed to do.
No, they're not doing the normal coursework. They're blowing off. Some of these kids are blowing off the normal coursework for the whole semester and then just showing up in summer to do a rigorous week of school and then bon voyage. Ah well, yes, feel free to advance along to eleventh grade. Feel free to walk at your graduation.
Now. Rash the author of this piece.
In GV wire, and I'll retweet for my twins account Twitter dot com slash president Johnny at Fresne Johnny He's He then proceeds to give the standardized test scores within Fresney Unified to demonstrate just how unbelievably poorly Fresenent Unified students are doing. In twenty twenty three to thirty three percent of the PRESNE Unified eleventh graders tested met or
exceeded standards. In English, only a third of them met the standards, meaning sixty six percent of them did not meet grade level standards in English, only twenty three percent of them met or exceeded math standards, meaning seventy six percent of them seventy six seventy seven percent of them failed to meet math standards. Good enough at math, I can I can now that up those twenty three point three one percent metare exceeded, or go seventy six point
six percent of them did not meet. So you've got three quarters of these kids are not at grade level for math, two thirds of these kids are not at grade level for reading. Such results resh writes just don't square with fresnew Unified's high graduation rates, and they suggest a gaping disconnect between credits earned and educational benchmarks that were actually achieved. It's hard to square the ongoing use of credit recovery with the district's purported goal of boosting
student achievement. The interim superintendent's memo reflects a solid commitment to continuing credit recovery in this new school year. Fresne Unified plans to continue partnering with Ingenuity in twenty twenty four to twenty twenty five to maximize opportunities for students to earn a high school diploma and access post secondary options. It's hard to see how diminishing the worth of high
school diplomas in this fashion serves student's interests. Such individuals might indeed get into college programs, but will they be prepared for the challenges that how to wait them there. A cross functional team has also been meeting each month, according to a district spokesperson quote, to determine next steps, trends, system recommendations, and best practices. Given the bogus nature of
credit recovery. When wonders what the phrase best practices could possibly mean in this context, this is the district that wants you to give them a almost a billion dollars of your taxpayer money so that they can get five hundred million dollars. That's what this bond measure coming up is going to be for fres New Unified. And by the way, it looks like close Unified uses this program too.
I don't have the numbers for how many kids within Clothes Unified use this program, but they're using it also. When we return, we'll talk a little bit more about the funding side of all this with the bond measures. This was a dynamite article, Jesuis. We'll be back with more on the John Girardi Show. An incredible piece in
GV wire. You got to check it out. I've retweeted it from my Twitter account Twitter dot com slash president Johnny at Fresno Johnny, this is about the credit recovery program that Presney Unified has through a company called Edgeenuity, where basically, a kid fails a course over the course of a whole semester can goof off, not pay attention, not participate for a whole semester, and then after the semester's over, can participate in.
A several days long.
Credit recovery class. Where As this teacher, Stephen Resh who is a longtime German and English professor at teacher within Presney Unified, Basically they can sit around in front of a computer for a couple of days, take an extremely watered down version of the course. You know, a whole semester's worth in just a couple of days and still get the necessary credits from that class. And again I think this needs to factor in. Stuff like this needs
to factor into the local discussions about school bond measures. Okay, because clearly, if school districts are using this thing, this program, it's making a mockery of the whole system.
This is just a.
As Resh pointed out, this is insulting to the teachers, like why on earth should a teacher try hard all year if the kid is just gonna blow it off and do an ingenuity class in the summer. But as Resh also points out, maybe teachers' unions that maybe the teacher's union within President Unified doesn't mind it.
Why because.
You can pay some teacher for summer school just to sit there while kids sit on their computers doing their credit recovery ingenuity class for a couple of days, and then the student leaves, but the teacher still sits there for whatever is the allotted time frame. The kid doesn't have to stay the whole time, but the teacher sits there the full time, earning their union negotiated I'm sure money.
And this is the frustrating thing about this is that the interests that so many of these people have, the interests of the various parties don't really seem to be aligned that much towards students succeeding. The teacher's interest so much is in schools as a jobs program for them. That's the Here's the teachers' union, one of the massive negotiating partners in all this, within Fresney Unified. Who again,
what is the point of a union. The point of a union is to get more money, more jobs, better hours, better working additions, better benefits, et cetera for its members. It's looking at this that the union exists for the members. That is how you judge the effectiveness ineffectiveness of a teacher's union, of any union. It's not so much focused on the work product. Okay, if kids get educated, I mean that's maybe that's a happy buy product. But fundamentally
educating kids is not the job of the union. Meanwhile, administrators within Fresney Unified are not so much interested in kids learning as much as they are interested in giving off the public perception and that kids are learning. Because if the public thinks kids are learning, then the superintendent, the school board members overseeing at the administrators get to keep their jobs, so of course they're going to be they're going to look at, oh my gosh, we're going
to have such a huge dropout rate. What are we going to how are we gonna get these kids to actually graduate? And then along comes a program like Ingenuity, this credit recovery scheme where basically, well, well the kid can just kind of take a water down version of the class for a couple of days after the semester's over, after they've blown off the whole semester and uh, and then they get the credits.
And then that'll allow them to graduate.
And fifty three percent a President Unified seniors apparently are doing this credit recovery scheme for at least some credits. So this is massively overinflating, Like why do the state standardized test scores show that two thirds of kids in Presdey Unified can't read at grade level, three quarters of them can't do math at grade level, and yet their graduation rates are still quite high. Well, it's because of stuff like this. They are advancing these kids who have
not actually achieved. And then they ask you for five hundred million dollars in a bond measure, which really means you have to pay almost a billion dollars in taxes. Clovis Unified is asking you for four hundred million dollars for a bond measure, meaning that you have to pay almost eight hundred million dollars in your taxes.
It's ridiculous.
Why do we want to keep financially and physically investing in schools that are committed to just fundamentally flawed visions. I've said it once, I have said it a million times. These schools take it as their goal. Universal college. Everyone who if you graduate, it means you're ready for college. Everyone should go to college, every universal college. Refusing to acknowledge that most people in America will not get a four year college degree, and that those people need jobs
to those people need gainful employment. Those people need some opportunity to find the work for themselves, to give them purpose and a meaningful life. And with President Unified, with so many public high school, public schools in California, we're preparing kids for nothing. We are preparing they're not adequately prepared for college. We keep graduating them as if they are, but they're not, and they're not prepared to get a normal job in the real world.
You know what, they're prepared for. It.
They're prepared for a liminal flim flam three or four years of maybe taking some classes at city, not sure, getting into debt, maybe going to State, getting a couple of credits. Maybe maybe they get some Mickey master degree.
Maybe they don't.
Maybe they waste through four or five years flim flamming around between president, city, president, State and don't even wind up with a degree. And they want you to give them five hundred million dollars for reasons that seem to have nothing to do necessarily with imminent need of the physical spaces in their buildings, but just because well there's a state bond measure, so and we want to get the money, we want to get the matching money.
So all we got to do with bond measure.
Just this reflexive, unthinking instinct that you need to pay them more money when we return. How housing issues get distorted by California law. That's next on the John Gerrardy Show. One of the many things I hate about how California kind of regulates housing.
Is how it turns.
It makes everything like so ramped up and critical and important. It leaves you with so few options that any objection whatsoever to some kind of lower income housing development or a homeless housing development, any kind of objection to it, you get labeled as a nimby a not in my backyard person. Which this is a problem up and down the state in a lot of different contexts. Basically, there is a dearth of housing in California. We have way
more people seeking homes than we have homes available. This artificially inflates the prices of homes, and one of the many factors that contributes to it is the attitude within
a lot of local governments called nimbiism not in my backyardism. Basically, if you're you know, some bougie city in Marin County and someone says, hey, I'd love to build a one hundred unit apartment complex for middle income people to live in, well, the bougie residents of this bougie Marine County town will probably go to their city councils we don't want that.
Why it'll lower our property values, and then that shuts it down, and that's why Marine County gets sort of it's this vicious cycle of if you never allow more housing for middle class people, then no middle class people can afford to live in Marin County, and anyone who wants to work in San Francisco has to live further and further and further away, unless they already own the home or have been there, or.
Et gazillionaires, or they're just homeless, so.
Not in my Backyardism is a kind of attitude that results in local governments blocking the establishment of various kinds of housing. But you also have that in confluence with California environmental laws and California labor laws that make the
cost of construction so much higher. SEQUA, the California Environmental Quality Act requires all kinds of environmental impact plans and studies to be drawn up in advance before the development of some new house or housing complex or multi unit dwelling. The City of Fresno had done one, an extensive one for the city, which the courts are now saying is inadequate, which could be putting a halt to like a dozen
projects in the Fresno area. You have the threat with SEQUA of some outside group coming in to sue to stop construction of some housing projects, and sometimes so they're importing sort of NIMBI concerns about not wanting lower income housing, not wanting property values to produced, et cetera, importing NIMBI values, using environmental law as a pretext for doing so, saying oh, this will.
Have such a bad impact on the environment, you can't approve that.
We need to stop this, And people can file these sequa California Environmental Quality Act lawsuits even if they are not really directly impacted by the construction of this multi unit dwelling or this this construction project, this housing project. California changes the normal American rules of legal standing. So usually again, to file a lawsuit, you've got to show that you were actually somehow directly harmed by some action. Okay, someone hits me with a car, I can sue them.
If someone hits my buddy with a car, I can't sue them. My buddy has to sue. Right, With an environmental law, it's really hard to show that someone actually is experiencing direct, cognizable harm. So California just kind of opens it up to anybody. So what you're seeing is not just you know, whacked out left wing environmental nonprofits who can sue to stop some kind of construction project and hold up the whole thing. You can also have people who just you know, don't want their property values
lowered by a multi unit dwelling complex. They can jump in and file a phony, baloney environmental lawsuit. You can get competing builders jumping in and filing a lawsuit to stop construction. And if you think about the cost and the risk of like, okay, well, if you want to commit to building a major construction project as a builder, as a real estate developer, as an investor, I mean
that's a huge additional amount of risk. That adds additional cost which eventually trickles down to the consumer, making it such that it's almost impossible to build housing that is
actually affordable to lower income people. Meaning the state, in its infinite wisdom, instead of addressing all of those root problems, instead subsidizes the demand, instead of doing anything to allow more supply, getting rid of its environmental it's insane environmental laws chipping away at the the ability of local governments to sort of stop things like this. No, instead we subsidize the demand. The only way that builders can afford to build lower income housing units is with huge handouts
of cash from the state. Then there's labor union stuff that forces the construction prices to go up, up, up, up up up up, which that increases price. You know in red states where they don't really have much homelessness at all, how does this work. Well, they don't have insane environmental laws. Construction workers make a normal amount of money. Cities don't have as much ability to zone and restrict things.
And so people just build more stuff.
They build more stuff, and they don't have as many homeless people.
Now.
Fresno is unfortunate in the sense that I think our city council on this issue is full of fairly reasonable people with a fairly reasonable spectrum of opinions. But the problem is any one side or the other can get really bitter at each other if they disagree, because there just aren't a lot of options left. Okay, we want to build, we want to convert some hotel to housing
for more homeless people. Some city council members are concerned about it because there's a cannabis dispensary and a liquor store right nearby, and says, hey, maybe this isn't a great idea, And then they get blowbacks, ay, oh what is this nimbi as, Oh, you just hate the whole you don't want any housing. You want all the homeless people out on the street. No, I don't want homeless
people out on the street. But you're talking about setting this up right next to a cannabis dispensary, right next to a liquor store?
Is that really a good idea?
And the urgency of it gets ramped up to eleven because there just aren't a lot of options.
There aren't a lot of options.
Builders have only so many places where they can build, only so many ways they can start projects without facing environmental lawsuits, only so many opportunities to obtain state funding, and usually you need the local government to.
Support you to obtain state funding.
So this dynamic is at play right now within the City of Fresno over a couple of housing projects. So Dot Mayor Jerry Dyer spoke Friday at Fresno Housing That's nonprofit Fresno Housing's first inaugural State of Affordable Housing luncheon, alongside Fresno Housing CEO Tyrone Roderick, Williams County Supervisor Nathan Maxick, State Housing and Development Director Gustavo Velaskaz, and others, dire emphasized the central role the city plays and securing funding
for housing, especially affordable housing. So yeah, so again, because there's no way it's financially sustainable to build multi unit dwellings for lower income people because again the state makes it way too expensive. Ever to do that, you need a state subsidy to make the thing financially feasible. The city is the one that goes to the state to ask for those subsidies. Local government must drive housing. If not, our unhoused population will increase dramatically, DIYers said, But the
city council may not be on the same page. In the stories in Gvware, Council members have twice in the past eight months denied multi family housing projects. One vote in July rejected a four story market rate apartment complex
at Herndon and Prospect Avenues. In December twenty twenty three, the council turned down in an affordable housing project at Bullard and Fresno Air Avenues it had previously approved, and on August seventh, the state's Housing Department sent a letter acquired by Gvwire to Diyer's administration saying the decision thretens the city's required housing goals. Now there's this discussion about the Quality Inn located at Bullard, just a little bit east of the forty one, in between the forty one
and Theesta Street. The Quality In conversion proposed by rh Community Builders and Upholdings would have provided fifty eight units of affordable housing, with thirty dedicated to the chronically homeless. Okay, so there's this old quality in there. They want to turn it into affordable housing, have thirty of the units dedicated to the homeless. In April of twenty twenty three, the council unanimously agreed to submit an application to request
home key funding to convert the motel into housing. In November, the state granted the project sixteen point five million dollars. After vocal opposition by some neighbors to the project, Council members Miguel Arius, Gary Brettfeld, Microbossi Tyler Maxwell and Luis Chavez denied the project on a technicality. Council members on Alisa Pirea and Nelsa Sparza support of the project. Now, gv wire has this map showing the proposed site, which again it's on It's at Bullard and Theesta Avenue, just
a little bit east of forty one. There's a housing project right next door, a cannabis dispensary right next door to that a liquor store. Opponents of the project talked about the blight brought by homelessness. Project developers during the council meeting said property management ensures safety among residents. So, and that's the thing, Like, I kind of think people on both sides of this are fairly reasonable people, and
their concerns are fairly reasonable. On the one hand, Asparsa and Perea are saying, hey, we got to build something, We gotta build something somewhere here, an opportunity to let's do it. On the other side, you've got you know, it's not just right. It's not just a right winger Gary Breadfeld. No, it's not just Gary. And by the way, Gary Bredefeld gets painted as this right wing, wild eyed
right winger. He's a really pretty reasonable person. So him and Carbasi and all these other Tyler Maxwell, all these other members are saying, hey, it's right next door to a cannabis dispensary.
That's a bad idea.
So these legitimate concerns, legitimate disagreements that would otherwise be the result of normal give and take, they get ramped up to eleven that the city.
Is, Oh, you're not doing enough for housing.
No one can do enough for housing under the conditions that California sets when we return. My continued frustration with the Trump and Dvance campaign and messaging on abortion. That's next on the John Girardi Show. I gotta confess I'm getting more and more down in the dumps about this election, not only my conviction that Kamala Harris can win, but also the messaging from the Trump Vance camp about abortion.
On one of the weekend shows, Vance said that Trump would not sign any kind of national abortion prohibition that came across his desk. Trump tweets out or truth socials out, whatever, that his administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights, reproductive rights, and now we're using the euphemism of the pro abortion side.
All I want to.
Hear from them is one statement, one statement that we'll appoint the same kinds of judges we had did did in the first Trump administration, and we will cut off federal abortion funding in the ways we did in the first Trump administration. That's all I want to hear, and they're not giving it to me. I'm really afraid of the direction the Republican Party is going. I'm really afraid, and I think so. Some people are gonna just have faith in Trump that he's gonna do the right thing
when he comes into office. Some pro life is doing that, and I really think the pro life movement deserves a little more than this. It's really frustrating. That'll do it, John Girardi Show, See you next time on Power Talk.