http://www.sdcitybeat.com/sandiego/articles.sec-49-1-backwards-in-high-heels.html What with the tiresome budget fights, cutbacks and narrowly averted layoffs, there aren’t many reasons to be happy with the San Diego Unified School District’s Board of Education these days.]]> I was walking through the mall the other day, forced to go to the Genius Bar after the genius move of inadvertently leaving my iPhone in standing water, when I was accosted by the kiosk people. ]]> I know that the echo chamber is crushing Barack Obama since last Friday’s jobs report, but I spent the three nights before that watching the Democratic National Convention, and I am in love! ]]> As I sit at my desk, I notice the light has faded. I look out my office window and decide, when the garden lights pop on, that it must be nearly 8:30 p.m., but then I look at the clock and my worst fear is confirmed: It’s only 7:22.]]> Top 10 regrettable San Diego fashion trends]]> Some time ago (OK, fine, so it was just before Ruby started kindergarten), after many years of struggling with our now 7-year-old’s well-documented sleep issues that—at their very worst—forced my husband and me to seek middle-of-the-night solace in our Civic Hybrid.]]> We human beings are crazy, aren’t we? I’m convinced that most of us are doing the best we can to be good people, to do the right thing and to evolve and grow and all that.]]> On the last day of June, while still percolating over a Boston Globe article in which white author Jeff Jacoby claimed that “America’s racist past is dead and gone,” my family headed north to attend a camp for families that have adopted children of color.]]> Last month, my daughter celebrated her seventh birthday, and let me tell you: Nothing makes a middle-aged woman feel more at home in the sweat-soaked country of peri-menopause like her baby turning 7.]]> We need to talk about another war, one that threatens the soul of San Diego. If we even have a soul, which I very much doubt. The grave danger is U-T TV. Warning: Expletives ahead.]]> I predicted the winners to be the zombies. The asshole zombies, that is. And I was right. Just look at them. And the losers? Well, that would be you and me.]]> Last month in Oceanside, N.Y., Christine Dougherty wrote to her son’s principal requesting that he not sit for the standardized state exams. In the letter, posted to United Opt Out National’s website, she asked that Joseph instead be “given an alternative real learning opportunity.” She received a ghastly response.]]> Ah, yes, glorious summer: when bedtime is a foreign word I cannot pronounce, when concerts in the park and concealed beverages are regular features of any weekend.]]> It makes no sense that my baby could be tucked safely in bed while Sybrina Fulton’s was being profiled, stalked and murdered by a self-appointed neighborhood policer and negro-phobe who, more than a month-and-a-half later, still has not been arrested.]]> Last week, a parent at my school planned a parent-child walkout during school hours. She asked that we gather with our children for all of 30 minutes to say that we oppose the draconian cuts that could reduce our teaching staff to nearly half of what it is currently, and that the coming explosion in class sizes is unacceptable and not in our children’s best interest.]]> Yes, my opening bid for Beach Body Boot Camp was also the only bid for Beach Body Boot Camp. And this is how I came to find myself at 8 a.m. two Saturdays ago, not snuggled in bed with a cup of coffee and The New Yorker, but, rather, standing in some sci-fi, medieval place not quite Game of Thrones and not quite Beyond Thunderdome.]]> But this column is not about one school’s innovative money-raising methods, because many schools are doing that. No, it’s really about various trends I’ve noted and have come to enjoy in some manner—either in an I-love-it kind of way or, more frequently, in an Ah-jeeze-that-one’s-scary kind of way. ]]> I recently found myself suffering another memory I thought I’d cremated, brought on by an overwhelmingly effective trigger in the form of a multiple-choice question posed by one Gary Rubinstein on his blog. ]]> As much as I may disagree with standardized testing and the abysmal curriculum that comes with it, I believe in and want to be a part of a successful public-school system]]> Kohn lambasted—while citing research—traditional education methods like worksheets and bubble questions, as well as the intellectual, social and psychologically stunting impact of tests, quizzes and grades.]]>