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San Francisco Looks to State for Help in Reforming Police Policies

04.13.2016
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By Laura Waxmann, Mission Local
Following a letter to California Attorney General Kamala Harris last week, Public Defender Jeff Adachi vowed to continue demanding a state investigation into the practices of the San Francisco Police Department, which he said are plagued by racial bias, use-of-force violations and a lack of transparency. “People are dying on our streets, so how many more have to be killed before we are going to get an agency with the power to reform?” asked Adachi at a press conference held in the wake of last week’s fatal officer-involved shooting of Luis Gongora, a Mission District homeless man. “We have policies on the table — what we need is someone to step up and enforce them.”
Read the complete story at Mission Local.  

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Board of Supervisors Establishes SoMa as a Filipino Cultural Heritage District

04.12.2016
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By Ericka Cruz Guevarra, KQED News Fix
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a plan Tuesday to designate a Filipino cultural heritage district in the South of Market neighborhood that community leaders hope will not only recognize the Filipino presence there but also preserve it. SoMa Pilipinas will encompass the historic I-Hotel, Gran Oriente, Rizal Apartments, the Iloilo Circle Building, the Bayanihan Community Cultural Center and other “cultural assets” identified by the Filipino-American Development Foundation, which spearheaded the effort. SoMa is home to 5,106 Filipinos, according to the 2010 Census data. 
Read the complete story at KQED News Fix.

From the Newsroom

Investigation on Segregation in Schools Nominated for State and National Awards

04.12.2016
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The San Francisco Public Press has been named a finalist in the Education Writers Association’s 2015 National Awards for Education Reporting and in the California Teachers Associaion’s 2015 John Swett Awards for Media Excellence. The Public Press is a finalist for the teachers association’s award for Continuous Coverage of Schools/Education Issues for the “Choice is Resegregating Public Schools” investigative report. Entries are judged by a volunteer panel of media professionals from around California. The association will announce award winners later this spring. The same report was nominated for the education writers’ national awards.

From the Newsroom

$3,000 Grant from Strong Foundation for Environmental Values

04.12.2016
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The San Francisco Public Press has received a $3,000 grant from the Strong Foundation for Environmental Values for an investigative reporting project exposing the various ways that climate change will negatively affect residents of new and planned real estate projects throughout the Bay Area — and how local governments and urban planners can best respond to those challenges. This project extends the reporting initiated in our sea level rise investigation, which showed how Bay Area builders plan to invest more than $21 billion in offices and homes in flood-prone areas, where waters could climb 8 feet above today’s high tide by the end of this century.

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Traffic Amnesty Program Helps Some, Leaves Others Behind

04.11.2016
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By Sukey Lewis, KQED News Fix
A study released on April 11 finds that black and Latino drivers in California have their licenses suspended at about five times the rate of their white counterparts. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights compiled DMV and census data, which show how license suspensions keep minorities and low-income people stuck in poverty. The report comes at a time when California leaders are grappling with how to reduce racial and socioeconomic inequities in the traffic court system. “We have a system of fines and fees that have morphed from a system of accountability to a system that raises revenue for essential government services,” California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye said last month in her annual State of the Judiciary Address. “But we have made progress with the three branches of government.

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Jerry Brown on Subsidiarity, Meritocracy and Fads in Education

04.07.2016
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By Judy Lin, CALmatters
Having witnessed teaching “fads” since the 1950s and running charter schools as Oakland mayor, Gov. Jerry Brown doesn’t expect his own key education policy — called the Local Control Funding Formula — to close the academic performance gap between African Americans and Latinos and other student groups. Brown hopes the formula will help some students improve by sending more money to those with low incomes or who don’t speak English. But he said, “the gap has been pretty persistent. So I don’t want to set up what hasn’t been done ever as the test of whether LCFF is a success or failure.”
Read the complete story at CALmatters. 

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Wastewater Becomes a Resource in Silicon Valley

04.06.2016
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By Tara Lohan, Water Deeply/KQED News Fix/KQED Science
Despite a much wetter winter than the last several, California is still mired in drought, according to scientists and policymakers. But if you ask architect Bill Worthen of Urban Fabrick, there is plenty of water in the state of California. “It’s just not where we want it, when we want it, in the form we want it,” he said. “To me, as an architect, that’s a classic design problem, and that’s also a huge opportunity to think about how we can reuse and rethink water in the state.”
Worthen recently spoke at a gathering of building and design professionals interested in water reuse in Silicon Valley. “Our opportunity here is to think about how we can stop the insanity of using water once as it comes out of our tap.”
Read the complete story at Water Deeply/KQED News Fix/KQED Science.

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San Francisco, Oakland Working to Put Soda Tax Before Voters

04.05.2016
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By Lisa Aliferis, KQED News Fix/State of Health
Berkeley was the trend setter in 2014 when voters there approved the first a soda tax in the U.S. with a resounding 75 percent of the vote. That same year San Francisco voters rejected a soda tax. But supporters were not deterred. Now, new efforts have resumed in San Francisco and in Oakland to move through a tax with a goal of fighting the obesity and diabetes epidemic. Both cities seem to be applying lessons from the Berkeley playbook to see the taxes through.

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What Will California Do With Too Much Solar?

04.04.2016
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By Lauren Sommer, KQED News Fix/Science
Solar energy records are falling left and right in California these days, as the state steams ahead toward its ambitious renewable energy goals. But the success of solar has brought about a hidden downside: On some perfectly sunny days, solar farms are being told to turn off. Read the complete story at KQED News Fix/Science