Hundreds of students at Santa Barbara and San Marcos high schools poured out of classrooms and into the streets this week, the latest public demonstration on behalf of beleagured teachers in the SB Unified School District seeking better pay and working conditions.
As teachers and district officials negotiate over a union demand for a two-year, 23 percent salary increase, a jury in a separate controversy hammered the embattled district with a $25 million verdict, holding SBUSD responsible in a decade-old scandal in which a part-time football coach at Dos Pueblos High School earlier was convicted of sexually abusing a teenage player.
On this week's edition of Newsmakers TV, Gwyn Lurie, Josh Molina and Ryan P. Cruz join the panel to break down the back stories behind the latest acrimony to strike the unsettled administration of Superintendent Hilda Maldonado and the elected school board that recently handed her an extension on her three-year contract.
The gang also takes an early look at the 2024 re-election races of Supervisors Das Williams, who has stirred up new antagonism among First District residents with his failure to secure county funding for a popular Montecito debris flow control project, and of his incumbent colleague Joan Hartmann, who has drawn a second challenger in the Third District in the person of Lompoc Mayor Jenelle Osborne.
Plus the latest on efforts by the Santa Barbara City Council to protect tenants facing eviction - and Henry makes a loud and exciting canine cameo appearance with his new cousin, a rescue pug named Momo.
All this and more, right here, right now on Newsmakers TV.
JR
Check out the latest episode via YouTube below or by clicking through this link, or listen to the podcast version here. TVSB, Channel 17, broadcasts the show at 8 p.m. every weeknight, and at 9 a.m. on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM, airs the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday,
CARTOON OF THE WEEK
Cartoon by Ellis Rosen for The New Yorker.