A year and a half effort to keep more of our region’s tax dollars local and create a level playing field for local contractors to win their fair share of construction work has come to a successful conclusion.

This past Saturday, the Board of Trustees awarded the contracts for the NCC expansion project to the local team, who gave us a “guaranteed maximum price” of $13.2 million, which was under budget. I couldn’t be more thrilled — and it was an honor to be a part of bringing a big chunk of our local tax dollars home to our local region.

Nevada County’s building industry stands to reap a significant economic boost this summer, with last Saturday’s official awarding of two major construction contracts at Sierra College’s Nevada County campus…

Trustees made a pledge to include local bidders on this phase of construction, Nevada County-area trustee Aaron Klein said. The process, which began in February 2008, included an audit of potential local bidders and meeting with the Nevada County Contractors Association to determine if local contractors could handle such a bid.

“It created a climate to give local contractors a chance to bid,” Klein said. The addition of Clark and Sullivan, a construction firm with offices in Reno, Las Vegas and Sacramento that has an extensive background in building educational facilties, helped the process.

At first, Klein said, “We didn’t think there would be a local general contractor that had the scale and the school construction expertise to win this contract.”

» Read the Entire Article

I’m still a big fan of the MiFi device I promised to review, but I did end up returning mine and getting my money back. Here’s the story, in a nutshell.

First, as a refresher, the MiFi is a credit card-sized device that operates either on an included lithium-ion battery or plugged into power. When you press the button, it connects over the Sprint or Verizon broadband network (depending who you bought it from) and gives you a wi-fi connection that you can share simultaneously with up to 5 computers.

The MiFi works exactly as advertised. It’s simple, sleek and elegant. I could slip it into my pocket and walk down the street or drive down the freeway with a roving wi-fi hot spot following me. It’s an amazingly good concept, and a bit of a preview of what is likely to happen when the government licenses “open spectrum” and we have wireless Internet everywhere.

As you know, I live in a small town in rural California, so our Internet choices are quite limited. No cable or DSL options. We have a relatively slow wireless broadband provider who installed an antenna on our roof. The cost is $85/month, the speed isn’t nearly as high as we’re supposed to get, and it is a bit flaky from time to time.

The monthly rate for the MiFi connection via either Sprint or Verizon was $60/month, so I was looking at the chance to save $15, plus gain some mobility from being able to take the MiFi with us when we go on trips.

The sticking point turned out to be the bandwidth cap. Both Sprint and Verizon have a 5GB cap on their $60/month plan. I had used 3GB of that monthly allotment in the first 10 days of the billing cycle, and the next step up — a 10GB cap — was a whopping $199 per month!

So, the MiFi went back in its box to Verizon, who I should add, impressed me with great service. They promptly refunded my credit card and only charged me a prorated amount for the 3/5ths of the data allotment we had used. I did have to contact their e-mail customer service before I got the straight story, but in the end, I was impressed with how they handled it (for a phone company).

Bottom line: if you can justify $60 per month and won’t bump up against their 5GB cap, this is a great product that you’ll love. If Sprint or Verizon fix the pricing problem they have, I’d be back.

UPDATE 7/23 6:45PM: Just to be clear, I do know how to add. My local Internet provider doesn’t have to charge all the taxes and fees, compared to about $10 in monthly taxes and fees on the Verizon statement. On a purely apples-to-apples comparison, there is a $25 difference in the monthly base fee ($84.95 to $59.95).

[Aaron's Note: This is a guest post from my mom, Bonnie. As you might guess, international adoption is an issue near and dear to both of us. She wrote it as a student in a college English class, and received an excellent grade for it, I might add. Enjoy. ]

The woman’s rights movement along with the civil rights movement has impacted the progression of adoption guidelines. The policies that govern adoption are constantly evaluated and adjusted as the society and culture change. As is common in society, everyday assumptions are eventually questioned. One such assumption, which has been in debate for over forty years, is the adoption practice of race matching. Race matching was eliminated in the United States in 1994 by the passing of the Multiethnic Placement Act, but still the controversy continues (Jennings 560). The consideration of one’s race should not be a determining factor in the adoption process because all children, regardless of their color, need a family. These children thrive and overcome obstacles when placed in permanent, loving homes.

Read the rest of this entry »

I am profoundly tardy in posting a link to George Rebane’s piece in The Union newspaper on Sierra College and the Nevada County Campus efforts to promote economic development.

George offers some solid suggestions in the piece on where the college should focus its efforts to see the greatest results from economic development efforts. I made the point in a brief interview we did that the NCC campus is currently one of the pillars (workforce development) that you build economic development on, but isn’t a primary driver of economic development itself.

Down the hill in Rocklin, one of the ways we’re working to make it more of a primary driver is the establishment of SCEL, the Sierra College Entrepreneurship Lab. It’s still a work in progress, but the planning is in process to help budding entrepreneurs develop their skills and learn how to put their ideas into action. More on that down the road.

As we begin to take action to protect students and employees by proactively making significant budget reductions at Sierra College, it’s worth taking a look at one of the major reasons we must act now and without delay.

Unemployment reduces income and sales tax revenue immediately. It also accelerates foreclosures, and the high volume of foreclosures has swamped the real estate market such that property tax revenues may decrease year-over-year for the first time ever.

I’m going to write some more this week about our budget, but here’s the bottom line: the hole is deep, and it’s getting deeper. Failure to act decisively now will cause more Sierra College employees to be a part of that horrible red line in the chart above. We can’t let that happen.

» See the chart and read commentary from Calculated Risk

I’ve talked often that we need new ways of thinking about education. I was reading this morning’s Esquire piece profiling former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

I’ve been a fan of Jeb Bush for a long time, and have spoken about many of these ideas before, but I’ve never heard the fundamentals of education reform articulated quite this succinctly.

Are we educating our kids properly? Are enough of our children gaining the power of knowledge in the current system? The answer is unequivocally no. So we should have more school choice, we should have more pay for performance, we should be raising standards, not lowering standards, we should embrace technology in a radical way, we should have “seat time” eliminated.

Q: Seat time?

You show up for 180 days, you graduate. It should be based on what you learned… People learn differently. It’s a simple fact that our education system ignores.

We’re living in a world now where in order to create high-wage jobs, you have to have knowledge-based workers. There is no way to do that unless they have the basic building blocks of being able to think abstractly, understand math and science, be able to read, maybe once in a while express a thought in a three-syllable word, preferably do so in more than one language, and have a sense of history, because it has this crazy way of repeating itself. I don’t think our education system in America is acceptable right now.

Right on. Read the piece here.

Pre-meeting documents:

• Meeting Agenda
• Contracts (General / Capital Projects)
• Warrants

You may notice that this meeting is on a Saturday — this is the second of two board retreats this year. There will be a lot of discussions about facilities, and a lot of discussions about the budget situation that awaits us in this fiscal year.

That being said, since this is a retreat, don’t expect any tweets during the meeting. Our regular meetings are designed around getting public input into decision making. Our retreats are all about assessing all of the input we’ve received, assessing data and information from staff, and thinking big picture about the big decisions we need to make as a board.

The state budget outlook is beginning to get clearer. I’m hoping to blog a bit more next week about where things stand, and my initial thoughts on what we need to do to protect students and employees while riding out the storm.

The Roseville Press-Tribune did a news piece asking if local school execs “earn too much.” Among the salaries they mentioned was that of Sierra College President Leo Chavez.

As one of the trustees who sat on the search committee and interviewed Leo before he came to Sierra, I can most equivocally answer that question: no, he doesn’t earn too much.

In fact, he’s worth every penny and more.

Here’s how I approach sitting on a board: it doesn’t matter what else you do as a board member…if you don’t get your leadership right, nothing else will work.

There are a hundred examples I could give you demonstrating how Leo’s leadership of Sierra College has saved countless sums of money for the taxpayers. Here’s just one.

When Leo arrived at Sierra College, we were paying teachers to teach classrooms with only 81% of the seats filled with paying students. Now, you can’t get to 100%. There is never a perfect level of student demand matched with a perfect number of student seats in every class and every discipline.

But 81% meant that the college wasn’t scheduling well, and as a result, was hiring temporary teachers to teach other classrooms that were 1/5th empty. A lot of taxpayer money was being wasted.

Three short years later, 95% of our seats at Sierra College are filled with paying students.

As an aside, the article goes on to say his pay is scheduled to go up 5% this year. Somewhat true, but the impression it gives is wrong: a year ago, he deferred a 5% increase that was tied to a 5% COLA the college received from the state. He also cut the President’s office staff by a third. When it comes to putting the college first, he’s clearly put his money where his mouth is.

It’s hard to pin a value on results, but I know this for certain: Leo Chavez has saved millions of dollars for our taxpayers, and he’s worth every single penny that Sierra College pays him — and more. He could retire right now and avoid the hard work of leading the college through the tough couple of years ahead. We need him in this job, and I’m thankful he’s staying.

Wherever you are today, make sure to stop and remember those who have made this the land of the free, and the home of the brave. We owe them a lot.

The news is still trickling out, but we’ve been matched with our little girl in Ethiopia, after starting the process back in October 2008!

Emma Nichole Asnakech Klein (her Ethiopian name is pronounced AS-NA-KESH) was born on April 18 of this year, and her birth mother gave her the Ethiopian name, which means “no one is like her”.

She is currently at the Holt International Care Center in Durame, and we expect to travel to Addis Ababa in two to four months to bring her home, depending on the legal process and visas, etc.

We do have a photo of her, but the rules don’t allow us to post it publicly for security reasons, until the adoption is finalized in the United States. Can’t wait to share those with you all!

UPDATE 1:52PM: I should add that Spencer spent the first half hour kissing Mommy’s computer screen, and telling me about Baby Sister Emma coming home.