AUSD Superintendent Don Gill speaking at a forum entitled "The New Economy: Changing the Way Education Works."

The following are Antioch Unified School District Superintendent Don Gill’s opening remarks at the East County Business/Education Roundtable Luncheon on Friday at Lone Tree Event Center. He discussed the effectiveness of the district’s learning academies, which include Dozier-Libbey Medical High School, Deer Valley Law Academy, Delta Academy for the Performing Arts and the Academy of Engineering and Designing a Green Environment. The deadline to apply for enrollment in an academy is Dec. 10 at the school district office.

If you look at the film “Did You Know,” it’s sort of shocking to realize the extent of energy and resources that are put into education around the world on a global scale. I had a chance to have been not long ago with a group of international educational leaders through a Youth Intervention Network dinner. It was startling to hear from them first-hand the amount of resources, economic and human resources that are invested in education.

They look at education reform on a long-term basis. They are not looking at it as we do with 2-, 3-, 5-year bites of time where our funding is so cyclical and so tumultuous. You look at the sheer number of students in India. 25% of their students are honor students, and they outnumber the entire student population of our country. It’s a little bit startling.

Look at kids today. Go to a restaurant or a movie, watch them interact with technology. You will see kids involved in technology, able to multitask five different ways. Kids learn differently and are learning around the clock. So looking at school as a separate activity that happens at school hours and all of a sudden it stops at the end of the school day, is not a realistic look at education today.

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On December 2 at 11:33 a.m. Antioch Police responded to the report of a child who had suffered a gunshot wound at a residence at 2405 Lemontree Court. Upon arrival they found a two-year-old boy with a gunshot wound to the head. Life-saving measures were taken and the child was transported to the hospital where he was eventually pronounced deceased. A handgun was recovered from the bedroom.

The preliminary investigation into this incident has determined the child was in his parents’ bedroom with his 4-year-old brother, according to police. Their paternal grandmother was caring for them at that time and was in the living room area of the apartment. She heard a gunshot and the 4-year-old brother exited the room. The grandmother found the two year old boy in the bedroom with the gunshot wound. A neighbor who was outside the apartment heard the grandmother saying a child was shot and called the police.

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 Council members discuss cutting the city budget by $700,000 – likely with more to follow.

By Dave Roberts 

What a difference an election makes.

After Antioch voters rejected Measure P, a half-cent sales tax that promised to put an additional $4 million/year in city coffers, on Tuesday night the City Council with two new members firmly wielded the budget-cutting axe, unanimously authorizing $700,000 in immediate cuts to the General Fund. Council members said they did not want to kick the can down the road in dealing with the city’s ongoing budget crisis.

The city needs to cut spending by nearly $700,000 in the current fiscal year in order to not be spending more than it’s taking in, according to City Finance Director Dawn Merchant. An additional $2.2 million in budget cuts will need to be made in the fiscal year beginning next July to keep the city afloat financially and avoid bankruptcy.

As bad as that looks, those numbers might be optimistic because they are based upon city employee unions agreeing to continue deferring or reducing salary and benefit increases that had been previously agreed to. Many of those deferred-compensation agreements have expired or are due to expire at the end of the year.

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