California Bill Would Promote Statewide Online College Courses

The legislation calls for development of 50 online classes as potential substitutes for the hard-to-get core courses required for graduation at UC, Cal State and community colleges.

Students locked out of overcrowded core courses at California's state colleges and universities should instead be able to take those classes online, according to legislation introduced Wednesday in Sacramento — sending shock waves through academia nationwide.

The bill by state Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg(D-Sacramento) calls for the development of 50 online classes as potential substitutes for the most oversubscribed lower division courses required for graduation at UC, Cal State and community colleges. In a controversial portion, the proposal would allow these classes to come from commercial providers or out-of-state colleges if their academic quality passes review by a panel of California faculty.

"The world is changing. Technology is a growing force in our lives and we want to use it to try to help as many young people as possible be able to achieve their dreams and compete in the modern economy," Steinberg said during an online group video chat.

His bill, SB 520, Steinberg said, would reshape higher education by partnering it with the technology "to break the bottleneck that prevents students from completing courses." He described it as the first such effort in the nation.

While some California academics did not want to publicly criticize such a powerful figure as Steinberg, they said they feared that the quality of education could suffer and teaching jobs could be lost if state schools lose control over part of their curricula and allow more private companies to get involved.

Cal State faculty union President Lillian Taiz issued a statement pledging to work with Steinberg but pointedly added: "We want to maintain academic credibility and the delivery of accessible, quality public education, rather than chase the latest private sector fad."

Some experts said the proposal could ease financial pressures on colleges and universities and improve graduation rates.

Steinberg's bill could be "a watershed moment for higher education" and encourage the rest of the nation to take similar steps, said Dean Florez, a former California state senator who is president of the Twenty Million Minds Foundation, a Pasadena-based organization that seeks to widen access to online learning and helped shape some of the bill's ideas.

With the state Senate leader behind it, some form of the legislation will land on the governor's desk even if details change, predicted Florez.

UC, Cal State and California community colleges are working to boost online learning, with Gov.Jerry Brown advocating forcefully for such a goal and offering extra funding for it in next year's budget.

For example, in January, San Jose State began a partnership with the for-profit Udacity organization to offer more low-cost online classes in entry level subjects. The same week, UC system leaders pledged to have UC students take about 10% of classes online in a few years.

On Wednesday, Daphne Koller, the Stanford University professor who is a co-founder of the for-profit Coursera firm, said she thought that Steinberg's plan would help more California students finish college on time, and show that massive open online courses — so-called MOOCs — offered through groups such as hers are rigorous enough for college credit.

Under SB 520, the UC, Cal State and community college systems would each have three faculty representatives on the panel to certify online courses for credit. Among the factors to be reviewed would be whether the classes provide enough interaction with instructors. 

Though online courses would offer limited face-to-face connections, the students are "still in an institution that provides a lot of support for them," said the bill's co-author, Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens).

The bill does not specify fees for the courses, but Steinberg said the costs should be comparable to or less than current ones. The bill also does not provide separate funding for administration or outline how many online classes can be taken for credit.

Patrick Callan, president of the Higher Education Policy Institute, a think tank in San Jose, said the bill is a major step because until recently, California colleges had been slow to innovate.

"It appears that up until this year that [the schools] preferred to turn away students than try these new ideas," he said.

via LA Times

Bill Would Ban Lead Ammunition in California

"There really is no question that lead ammo is a threat," said Kim Delfino of Defenders of Wildlife. "To pass a bill in California would set the stage for this happening throughout the country, the way low-emissions vehicle standards changed the market nationwide."

Lead is a neurotoxin that has thwarted efforts to restore endangered California condors to their historic habitat. It's the major cause of death for condors and affects other scavengers such as bald eagles, golden eagles and turkey vultures.



Opponents of restrictions on ammunition purchases argue that animals that suffer from lead poisoning could be getting it from another source. They cite the fact that incidences of poisoning have not declined despite a ban since 2008 on the use of lead ammunition in the eight-county area where condor recovery is under way.

The National Rifle Association has opposed all bans on lead ammo in the past. The gun rights group has dismissed studies from the University of California, Davis and the University of California, Santa Cruz that show poisonings of birds of prey are highest during hunting seasons and that the lead isotopes in their bloodstreams match ammunition. The NRA says those studies are flawed.

NRA officials did not immediately return telephone messages seeking comment on the new bill.

Studies have shown that nonlead ammunition fires as accurately, but in some calibers it is more expensive than bullets made of lead. Proponents of the ban argue that as nonlead ammo becomes more popular with hunters, the prices will continue to decrease.

The bill comes as a subcommittee of the California Fish and Game Commission is studying whether to institute a ban statewide.

"The commission has looked at the lead issue for years," said Michael Sutton, the department's president. "Should we ban it on state lands, ecological areas and preserves? For all hunting statewide? I'm not going to hazard a guess as to what the commission will do."

Bill supporters, including pediatrician Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, say lead shot in animals consumed by humans is a public health issue because it puts children at risk of brain damage.

"We don't have to choose between hunting and protecting wildlife," said Jennifer Fearing of the Humane Society of the United States. "Removing lead from the environment isn't just good science. It's also the right thing to do."

via ABC News

California Farms Face Labor Shortage as Farmworkers Age

 California's $44 billion agricultural industry faces a worsening labor shortage as farmworkers age, more return home to Mexico and fewer new migrants arrive to replace them.

The state's farming workforce is aging and shrinking for several reasons, including stricter immigration enforcement, an improving economy in Mexico and the lack of interest in field work among the children of farmworkers, according to the Sacramento Bee (http://bit.ly/ZC3Q0j ).

"Basically, we're running out of low-skilled workers," said J. Edward Taylor, a University of California, Davis, economist who has studied the migration of farmworkers from Mexico. "The second generation doesn't do farm work. That's why we've relied on a steady influx of newcomers. And the newcomers are in dwindling supply."

More than 70 percent of state agricultural producers expect a worker shortage starting this spring and worsening through the growing season, according to the California Farm Bureau Federation.

Lawmakers and farm lobbyists are discussing remedies, including granting legal status to more than 1 million undocumented farmworkers and expanding the number of visas for agriculture.

"We have to try to find a system that is not going to cause a major disruption to our industry," said Bryan Little, the farm bureau's director of labor affairs.

Manuel Cunha Jr., president of the Nisei Farmers League, representing 1,100 farms and other agriculture outlets, said his group's workforce fell by 20 to 30 percent during last year's harvest season. By September, some farm crews were as much as 60 percent short of the workers they needed.

Cunha blamed increased farm audits by federal immigration officials and the increasing dangers of crossing the border from Mexico.

"Workers were leaving agriculture because they were fearful of the audits and getting busted," Cunha said. "And then, when they went home, they realized it wasn't worth it to return because of the drug traffickers and human traffickers."

The declining number of farmworkers is prompting some growers to switch to crops that require less labor.

Chandler Farms, about 40 miles southeast of Fresno, decided to cut back on peaches and plums and use more land to grow almonds, which can be harvested by machine.

"I don't know if it is going to get better for a while," said Bill Chandler, who runs the family ranch in Selma with his son. "If you want peaches or plums, or strawberries or lettuce or tomatoes, we need a program in which we can have labor. I don't have the answers."

Arcadio Castro, a foreman at the Chandler ranch, said workers in his Mexican hometown of Zacatecas can't afford to pay a "coyote" to smuggle them across the border and prefer construction jobs in urban areas.

So Castro, 59, has depends on veteran laborers willing to do work many of their children won't consider.

"You're not going to believe me, but the older workers are better," Castro said. "They go slower, but they work all day long. The younger ones start complaining. They say, 'Oh, it's so hot.' Then they climb up a ladder and start texting."

California Senate Approves $24 Million for Gun Confiscation Program

The California Senate approved a $24-million expenditure on Thursday to speed the confiscation of guns from people who have been disqualified from owning firearms because of criminal convictions or serious mental illness.

Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) said budget cuts to the Department of Justice have hampered a program that targets people who purchased firearms legally but were later disqualified because of a subsequent conviction or determination of mental illness.

As a result of the cuts, there is a backlog of 19,000 people who have improper possession of more than 40,000 guns, including 1,600 assault weapons, and the number is increasing faster than their firearms can be confiscated.

"The mountain continues to grow," Leno said. "This is a serious and immediate threat to our public safety."

The Senate voted 31-0 to approve an urgency bill that would take the $24 million over three years from a Department of Justice account funded by gun owners who pay a fee when they register their guns with the state.

Sen. Jim Nielsen (R-Gerber) abstained from the vote, saying the $24 million is a surplus indicating gun owners are being overtaxed and that the Department of Justice is not properly managing its funds. "I argue we cannot reward this incompetence," Nielsen said before the vote to send SB 140 to the Assembly for consideration.

California is the only state that has such a computerized tracking program. Atty. Gen. Kamala Harrissaid the money would allow her to temporarily double the program staffing for three years to whittle down the backlog.

"Taking guns away from dangerous, violent individuals who are prohibited by law from owning them is smart and efficient law enforcement," Harris said in a statement.

via LA Times

Two California Senate Elections Set For Tuesday

Another round of political musical chairs is on tap Tuesday when voters in two Southern California Senate Districts go to the polls to fill vacancies created when Democratic Sens. Gloria Negrete McLeod of Chino and Juan Vargas of San Diego resigned to take seats in Congress.

Negrete McLeod’s heavily Democratic 32nd District has the biggest crowd of candidates. Democrats in the field are Assemblywoman Norma Torres of Pomona, San Bernardino County Auditor-Controller Larry Walker of Chino, Ontario City Councilman Paul Vincent Avila and Joanne T. Gilbert, a retired teacher from Rialto.

Republicans on the ballot are Ontario Mayor Paul S. Leon and Pomona Planning Commissioner Kenny Noble.

Negrete McLeod has endorsed Walker, but Torres has the support of the California Democratic Party and a big lead in fundraising, having brought in $346,600 during the first two months of the year. Leon raised  $163,700 and Walker took in $81,600 during that period.

In Vargas’ former 40thSenate District,  Democratic candidates include Assemblyman Ben Hueso of San Diego and nurse/author Anna Nevenic of Cathedral City. The two Republicans on the ballot are professor/businesswoman Xanthi Gionis of Chula Vista and businessman Hector Raul Gastelum of Chula Vista. Hueso has Vargas' endorsement and has raised, by far, the most money during the first two months of the year-- $259,900.

In both contests, if one candidate does not win a majority of the vote, a runoff will be held May 14 between the top two vote-getters.

via LA Times

Gov. Jerry Brown Works to Spread California's Green Doctrine

 When Gov. Jerry Brown called on his fellow governors at a conference in Washington last week to embrace a California-style pursuit of cleaner air, he was doing more than reinforcing the state's image as an environmental trailblazer. He was trying to protect its economy.

Brown needs other states and the federal government to adopt key elements of California's environmental agenda, such as reaping more energy from renewable sources and capping greenhouse gas emissions, if those programs are to be successful here.

The state's aggressive pursuit of environmental goals has provided a new impetus for green jobs and federal subsidies. But the programs are costly to businesses, raising the price of their energy and forcing them to upgrade to cleaner manufacturing technologies.

If others don't go green, California could become an outlier, saddling businesses with costly new power while neighboring states continue to use traditional, cheaper energy, experts say. If the efforts under way in California spread to become the new normal, however, all will benefit from economies of scale.

If more states order power companies to limit their use of fossil fuels, for example, the incentive will grow nationwide for firms to develop cheaper alternatives, leaving California consumers less exposed to spikes in electricity rates.

Likewise, if greenhouse gas caps are widely implemented, the state's landmark climate change law is more likely to be successful. Cleansing the air is "clearly not something California can do on its own," said Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy Institute.

The authors of California's emissions law said as much in its text: The ultimate goal is "encouraging other states, the federal government and other countries to act."

Brown has vowed to keep pushing to "decarbonize the economy." He wants to advance the state's mandate for renewable energy — already the most ambitious in the nation — further so California will receive as much as half its power from renewable sources within 20 years. In the courts, his administration is defending a state law, challenged by some oil and ethanol companies, that requires gasoline to contain 10% less carbon by the end of the decade.

In Washington, Brown pushed for others to join in. "We can't do it alone," he told state leaders gathered for the National Governors Assn. meeting. "We need other states.... We need China. We need India."

Many elements of California's environmental blueprint have already become a national model as other states and the federal government have adopted some version of them over the past several decades.

Using its leverage as the largest automobile market in the nation, California in 1975 required the use of catalytic converters to help reduce pollution from cars. Six years later, the federal government required them in all cars sold in the U.S.

A California law that passed more than 10 years ago limiting tailpipe emissions was the basis for a federal standard imposed by the Obama administration in 2010.

The state's global warming law, called AB 32 and passed in 2006, has been partly imitated elsewhere.

It was a model for federal legislation to curb greenhouse gas limits in 2010. President Obama failed to get the measure through Congress, but the Environmental Protection Agency created new rules to roll back emissions from coal-fired power plants.

The California law was grounded in the creation of a market that puts a price on greenhouse gas emissions. Owners of power plants and factories buy and sell permits to release the gases into the atmosphere.

The system, called "cap and trade," limits the volume of air pollutants that may be released in California each year but permits high polluters to buy the right to emit more.

Many business interests say cap-and-trade is too costly, though they may have fewer objections if that market grows large enough.

"The current system amounts to a tax to continue doing business in the state," said Shelly Sullivan, executive director of the AB 32 Implementation Group, a coalition of California businesses that has opposed many of the state's environmental regulations. "A broader system would create a larger market and, depending on how it's constructed, could address some of our concerns."

A limited number of cap-and-trade markets are in place in other parts of the country, although their scope is more modest than California's. Nine northeastern states, for example, have a carbon market aimed at reducing only power plant emissions.

Another landmark California environmental law requires power companies to generate more electricity from wind, solar and other "renewable" sources. Under a bill signed by Brown in 2011, California utilities must generate one-third of their power that way by 2020 — the most ambitious such standard in the nation.

The California Public Utilities Commission estimates that reaching that goal could propel energy costs to nearly 11% above what they would be from gas-fired energy plants.

While 30 other states have also set requirements for power companies to utilize more renewable energy, their mandates are far more modest. Obama has been unsuccessful in his efforts to persuade Congress to pass a national mandate, and the prospects for Washington embracing more California-style energy policies is unclear.

via LA Times

Sahara Desert Dust Affects California Water Supply, Study Finds

High-altitude dust blown thousands of miles across the Pacific from Asian and African deserts can make it rain and snow in the Sierra Nevada, according to new research that suggests tiny particles from afar play a role in California's water supply.

The study, published Thursday in the online edition of the journal Science, grew out of researchers' questions about two similar Sierra storms in winter 2009. Even though the storm systems carried the same amount of water vapor, one produced 40% more precipitation than the other. When scientists analyzed ground samples of the rain and snow dropped by the wetter storm, they found an abundance of Asian dust.

Two years later, a science team spent days flying through Sierra storm clouds on a government research plane, collecting an array of atmospheric samples at the same time that instruments below in the Tahoe National Forest took ground measurements. The results: When dust and tiny biological particles from halfway around the globe were detected in the clouds swirling above the Sierra peaks, there was more rain and snow.

"There was this sort of magical switch," said Kim Prather, a UC San Diego atmospheric chemist and coauthor of the paper. "The days with dust you see one thing, and the days without dust you see a different thing."

Previous research by one of the paper's 12 authors had shown that windblown mineral dust transported long distances acts as a seed for atmospheric ice that is key to forming a significant amount of precipitation.

But the scientists said the Sierra study is the first direct documentation that dust and biological particles from as far away as the Sahara Desert and the deserts of China and Mongolia can help wring water out of the sky in the Western United States.

"The fact that something happening on another continent in terms of dust generation could influence precipitation patterns in the U.S — that's a challenging problem," said Marty Ralph, a coauthor and research meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Researchers identified the source of the airborne dust by its chemical fingerprint and by looking at satellite data and numerical weather models that track the global trajectory of air masses. The Sierra range is the first thing the particles hit in California. Whether they have the same effect on precipitation in other West Coast mountains, such as the Cascades, or more interior ranges, such as the Rockies, is unknown.

Ralph was initially dubious that aerosols — as dust and other atmospheric particles are known — have much of an impact on whether a cloud gives up water or holds on to it.

But the difference in the output of the 2009 storms "was a bit of a scientific epiphany," he said. "I came into this very skeptical and have come to where I am now, coauthoring a paper that's saying aerosols can have a significant impact."

The next step, he added, is to quantify that precipitation effect.

The Sierra research was part of a three-year field study, called CalWater, that investigated influences on California rain and snow. "I think it has huge implications," said Guido Franco of the California Energy Commission, which funded the program. "It may counteract some of the effects of a warming climate."global 

Scientists predict that, in general, Earth's wet regions will become wetter with warming and dry regions will become drier. That could mean more windblown desert dust in the atmosphere and, if the Sierra results bear out, more precipitation in the Northern California mountains that provide the state with roughly a third of its water supply.

via LA Times