ASSEMBLYWOMAN WEBER TALKS WITH ECM ON EDUCATION ISSUES AND MORE

By Cary Hyatt

March 5, 2014 (San Diego East County)--On February 26, ECM Editor Miriam Raftery interviewed Assembly Member Shirley Weber  PhD, who represents the 79th district including the cities of La Mesa, Lemon Grove, San Diego. Chula Vista and National City.

Assemblywoman Weber’s legislation has been mostly focused on early childhood education, but she also spoke about her efforts to improve higher education in our region, prevent harassment of minority students, and restore cuts made to health and human services.

 You can hear the full radio interview on KNSJ 89.1 FM at this link, or scroll down for highlights.

Assemblywomen Weber  and Assemblyman Buchanan began authoring AB-1444 this year, a bill that would make kindergarten mandatory for California children. Attendance to kindergarten is not currently mandatory in California.

“As a result we have probably 10 to 20 percent of our children who do not go to kindergarten,” said Weber. She believes these children are missing key foundational instruction needed for first and second grade and said that children who attend kindergarten generally do better later on in their academic career.

The bill is currently receiving significant support from other legislators, members of the State Senate, and the State Superintenden of Education. However, the bill has yet to be heard by the Education committee.

“We anticipate it getting out of the committees,” Weber said with confidence. She is a member on the committee and Assemblyman Buchanan is the chair.  The chair of the Senate Education committee is also a coauthor of the bill. The bill also claims to help lower the cost of school operations in both the long run and the short run, since with students on task and doing well there will be less need for extra  tutors  or remedition, and fewer drop-outs.

Assemblywomen Weber recently chaired a subcommittee hearing locally on Higher Education  in San Diego County. Weber said that the first meeting was for fact finding, to see what is happening in San Diego and if they are “meeting the needs of the students.”

 Right now a concern for higher education here in San Diego is affordability and space. The universities in San Diego are overcrowded and some areas in San Diego don’t have any four year campuses, including East County and the South Bay. Weber talked about the possibility of building a campus of some kind in Chula Vista and one in Imperial Valley, which also lacks higher educational facilities. She says that San Diego does not have enough universities and the ones we do have are clustered around the coastal areas. Weber says East County has a very high poverty rate and no local universities, which makes receiving a higher education for some very difficult. However, receiving land for a new campus could take years, so getting a new university in our region is not going to happen in the near future.

Weber talks about the newly formed Campus Climate Committee. The committee was formed in response to an African American student being harassed by his three white male roommates. This harassment lasted several months and escalated into violence and assault. The three male students have been removed and charged with misdemeanors regarding the assaults on the African American student and the community has been in an uproar since hearing about this incident. The committee was formed to create policies to deal with and prevent these kinds of incidents in the future.

Weber said that Health and Human Services took the brunt of recent budget cuts. She says she hopes they will be able to restore some of the services that were cut soon. California has the highest rate of poverty in the U.S. because of the high cost of living here. As a result, Californians are in desperate need of the health and human services that had their budgets cut. She said the state Legislature is looking at restoring the 10 percent cut to Medi-Cal’s budget.

Dr. Weber agrees that there is much work to be done as a California State legislator. Her avid interest in  the well-being and future of her constituency as well as the larger populace of the state of California are always in the forefront of her mind. Dr. Weber will continue to strive to move California forward with earlier education for young children, affordable and accessible higher education and opportunities for all people within our state.