My grandfather served in the United States Air Force during World War II and Korea, and on Memorial Day, he is often in my thoughts. I hope you take a few moments on this important day to remember the men and women who have given all for our freedom.

I’ve been all but absent from blogging for the last ten days. Part of it was work responsibilities, with a big event coming up in Silicon Valley in a few weeks. Another part was that I’ve been working on a series of posts about a cause very near and dear to my heart, and that has taken up a lot of time. Getting closer to sharing those with you.

In any case, I think that I’m back in the saddle tomorrow. Hopefully those of you who are regular readers didn’t mind the absence too much.

Have a great Memorial Day and remember that freedom is never free!

Continuing to build our partnerships with middle and high schools centered on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, Sierra College just secured a $150,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

The funds will expand our Tech-Explorer program, to develop and test the impact of integrating match curriculum into the building of a catapult.

Getting mathematics credit for building a catapult? I can’t imagine a middle school kid can think of something more awesomely cool than that.

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I just love watching normal, common sense leaders interact with reporters. Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey is proposing a package of reforms to cut spending and bring jobs back to their state. Their legislature, as might be expected, is balking at changing “business as usual.”

Watch him take apart a reporter who asked him if his “confrontational tone” was going to hurt the chances of getting his reforms through the legislature. Hilarious.

(Feed, e-mail and mobile readers: embedded video above.)

Take a close look at those seven in the photo above: left to right, Laura Sartori, Kyrie Davenport, Jasmine West, Michael Stock, Austin Fields, Bryce Morgan and Maddie Gilliland. Do they look like your typical college graduates?

They’re not.

Last Thursday, I had the privilege to participate in the commencement exercises at Sierra College’s Nevada County Campus, where they earned their AA degrees, along with 45 other students. The Union did a great job covering it this morning.

But those seven will earn another academic honor in just a couple of weeks: their high school diplomas.

Four years ago, Sierra College partnered with Nevada Union High School District to form the Ghidotti Early College High School. These kids all came to our college campus each day, attended high school classes in the morning and college classes in the afternoon. Many of them will graduate with a lot of college credit, but these seven actually completed full degrees during their four years of high school.

It’s an amazing accomplishment. It just proves that when you challenge kids, they step up and meet the challenge.

We need more of this kind of innovation in education.

Photo Credit: The Union / John Hart

Kyle Magin of The Union had a piece yesterday looking at the budget prognosis for Sierra College.

Sierra Community College District trustees laid off seven employees this week as they grapple with a more than $2 million deficit heading into next year.

And, for a second straight year, the college will depend heavily on reserves to balance sagging revenues in its general fund budget.

The school’s board of directors voted in a Tuesday meeting at Truckee to lay off the seven employees in the next school year. In addition, 13 additional positions will remain unfilled as employees retire.

The college is expected to dip into its $9.2 million reserve fund to help bridge the deficit gap, a trustee said. Next year’s proposed budget is about $90 million, down from $92.6 million this year.

“We built those reserves for a reason,” said Aaron Klein, who represents Nevada City on the college’s board. “We built them to weather a fiscal storm and, instead, ended up with a hurricane.”

Last year the board approved about $2.4 million in reserves to shore up the budget and could use close to $2 million more next year. The board didn’t eliminate any faculty positions this year, instead cutting mainly support staff at the school’s main campus in Rocklin.

Further cuts could come if the governor’s revised budget, released today, includes additional reductions to community college funding.

“Nobody is saying anything until Friday,” said Sue Michaels, a college spokeswoman. “We hope there won’t be more cuts, but (the legislature) is in a tight spot.”

The laid-off employees could find other jobs within the college, Michaels said.

‘More stability’ needed

But the college needs to wean itself from relying on its reserves, Klein said.

“I’d like to see our budget have more stability, and get back to a balanced budget by 2011-12,” Klein said.

Staffing levels won’t change at Sierra College’s Nevada County campus, but they won’t grow, either, said Dean Stephanie Ortiz.

“We will have a very, very trim staff,” Ortiz said. If unexpected staff absences occur, no money is available to fill positions temporarily, Ortiz said. “Sierra College needs to be careful and prudent with all of its resources. We’re committed to providing the appropriate levels of service, given the district’s fiscal situation.”

He also reported on this news:

Sierra Community College District Trustee Bill Martin has announced his retirement after his term expires this year. He has represented the Auburn area on the board since 2006.

Martin’s is one of four seats on the board of trustees up for election this November, including two in Nevada County.

Grass Valley representative Nancy Palmer told The Union in April she would seek a fifth term this fall. Other seats up for election include Dave Ferrari’s Truckee-Tahoe position and Board President Barbara Vineyard’s Lincoln seat.

And on top of all of that, NCC commencement was last night and Rocklin campus commencement is tonight. Busy week at Sierra College!

I’ve written here and here before about Sierra College’s efforts to partner with area high schools to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics. That initiative is called the STEM Community Collaborative and it’s an exciting effort.

Funded by a grant from the community college chancellor’s office, Sierra College now counts Colfax, Granite Bay, Lincoln, Nevada Union, Oakmont, Placer, North Tahoe and Truckee high schools as “partner schools” and is helping them rebuild their career and technical education programs.

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Because I’m involved in public service, and know a lot of the public officials in our area, I’m often asked my opinion about contests on the ballot. (For those of you who don’t live in the Sierra Foothills in Northern California, feel free to skip this post if it bores you!)

Here in Placer County where I live, we’ve had a series of poor decisions made by our county staff when it comes to safeguarding taxpayer dollars. It annoys me when I hear about $1,600 dinners and private jet flights and the like. There is no good excuse for using taxpayer money in that way. If there really is that much to go around, then we should be rebating this surplus money back to the taxpayers.

I don’t know Katherine Martinis, our incumbent Auditor-Controller, on a personal basis. From everything I’ve heard, she’s a very nice person. However, she has been quoted several times as saying it’s not her job to “tattle” on the spending habits of county staff.

I respectfully disagree.

The reason that the Auditor-Controller is an elected job is so that we have someone accountable to us who will be a watchdog on county spending. I want an Auditor-Controller who will use every tool in the toolbox to watch out for taxpayers and sound the alarm when bad decisions are being made.

There’s a young, energetic guy named Casey Tanner who is running for Auditor-Controller. I’ve met him and I’m impressed by his desire to shine the spotlight on our county government’s spending. I think he deserves our support.

This is probably an issue of different skill sets for the job. Matching the right person with the right job is tough to do, and from everything I’ve heard, Katherine Martinis is good at the pieces of the job she is doing. She just doesn’t want to take on the public role that I think this elected office demands.

So my advice to Casey Tanner, if he gets elected: interview Katherine Martinis for the job of Deputy Auditor-Controller. You can set policy for the office and do the public role that she doesn’t want to do. She can help you navigate the bureaucracy inside the county. No guarantee I’m right, and you’d have to be able to develop some trust before you make that hire, but I have a feeling it might work out well.

Bottom line: while our existing sheriff is great when it comes to law enforcement, we need a new sheriff in town when it comes to auditing and controlling spending. I think Casey Tanner is the right choice.

There are some folks who still view this past year’s dramatic state budget deficits and the resulting spending cuts as a one-year road bump. I view it quite differently: as a dramatic reset in the size of our economy, and thus, in the size of our tax revenues and the amount of government we can afford.

Yet we’re not even to the point of being able to know what level we are resetting to – California’s revenues are still shrinking. April’s tax receipts were $3.6 billion behind projections, bringing our deficit to $20.2 billion by April 30.

This will push Sierra College and many other local governments back into budget cutting mode later this year. My view is, let’s get it over with and get the budget aligned with revenues sooner rather than later. If we take too long to make the tough decisions, we could easily draw reserves down so low that 2012-13 cuts will have to be far deeper, since we won’t have any margin for error.

The good news is, the broader economy two years ago and the state budget now is a great crystal ball for what will happen to local government in 6 months. The bad news is, it’s not a very pretty story.

I just read a great column in Inc Magazine by Joel Spolsky on the subject of communication in the business world.

Joel argues that, in our zeal to create collaborative teams, we’ve actually created communication nightmares that block people from getting real work done.

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I’m grateful today for my incredible mom, for my awesome mother-in-law and for my sweetheart who is such a great mom to our two kids.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Photo Credit: Blue Castle Photography