Longtime Harlem Globetrotter, JC Gipson recently passed away. He was 77. Gipson who played more than 20 years for the Harlem Globetrotters and got his start at Jefferson High School in Los Angeles, where he was named basketball player of the year in 1951, died Dec. 30 of a heart attack in San Bernardino.

Born in Henderson, Texas to Eddie Gipson and Alberta Nickerson on April 30, 1932, he grew up in Concord, Texas and attended the schools there, including Concord High School. In 1946, He moved with his mother to Los Angeles, CA where he attended Mt. Zion Baptist Church. JC graduated from Thomas Jefferson High School in Los Angeles.

JC began his outstanding career with the Harlem Globetrotters in 1952 and wore the famous red, white, and blue for 20-plus glorious seasons. His personality, superb playing ability, and outstanding flair for showmanship made him one of the most popular Globetrotters of all-time.

Amazingly, JC had no college experience and played only a single season of basketball at Thomas Jefferson High. Selected as the city’s “prep player of the year,” JC was flooded with college offers but elected to sign a contract with the Globetrotters. The 6’8, 250-pound forward could run the floor, shoot from long range and rebound with the best.

He established a World Series of Basketball record by tallying 33 points against the 1953 College All-Americans in Chicago.

Gipson was one of six Globetrotters animated in the popular Saturday morning Hanna-Barbera cartoon series in the 1970s. Off the floor, he served as team spokesman and had an unbelievable relationship with children of all ages from around the world. JC received his “Legends” Ring on August 3, 1995.

JC met the love of his life Betty Davis in Montana in 1959.

They were married in 1971 in Colorado. He retired from the Globetrotters in 1979 and moved to Rialto CA. He later relocated to Highland CA. JC worked for several companies in the area, before he retired fully. However, he stayed busy by the help he gave so freely to his family and friends in taking them on errands and short trips. Just prior to his death, he had taken on another job as a Shop Manager in an auto repair business in San Bernardino.

JC Gipson passed away suddenly on December 30, 2009. All who knew him will miss him dearly.

He is survived by his loving daughter, Jaylene Gipson, Napa, CA; one brother Emmett Gipson, Houston, Texas; one sister Gale White, Houston, Texas and a host of nieces, nephews, cousins and friends.

Special to CBM --

After calling a special session and introducing a bi-partisan legislative package, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last week signed historic education reform legislation making California highly competitive in President Obama’s national $4.35 billion Race to the Top education reform and funding competition. On July 24th, 2009 President Obama and U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced federal eligibility and competitiveness requirements for states to compete for the single largest pool of discretionary funding for education reform in U.S. History.

Bi-partisan measures SBX5 1 by Senator Gloria Romero (D-Los Angeles) SBX5 4 by Senate pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) ensure California can submit a highly competitive application for up to $700 million in funding for California schools and education reform measures designed to improve the state’s lowest performing schools.

The new law represents a victory for civil rights and parent groups including the California State NAACP; Urban Leagues throughout the state; and the Los Angeles-based parent union, Parent Revolution, who pushed Legislative leaders to adopt parental choice measures for students in the state’s lowest performing schools.

“This is a paradigm shift, an entirely new way of thinking about education reform. We're going to fix our schools by giving parents the power. We're going to trust that parents know more than anyone about their child's well-being,” said Shirley Ford a parent and leader in Parent Revolution.

Under the new law parents of students in schools that perform in the bottom 10 percent of statewide student achievement are free to enroll their child in any school in California. Called “open enrollment,” the new law conceived by Gov. Schwarzenegger and championed by Sen. Gloria Romero, will impact 1,000 California schools at the bottom of student achievement. Advocates anticipate that with the new measure, parents of children in low-performing schools will move their children to schools with a proven track record.

As a resource to parents and schools, California Business for Education Excellence (CBEE), a group formed by the state’s top business leaders, recently released a list of 395 “Honor Roll” schools with large populations of low-income and minority students that have boosted students’ grade-level proficiency for four years running.

“Schools on the Honor Roll dispel the myth that certain students can’t reach grade-level proficiency and that schools with a challenging student population won’t be able to succeed,” said Greg Jones, CBEE Chair. “Honor Roll schools are overcoming challenges every day to raise student achievement.”

Also a key part of California’s Race to the Top legislation is a provision called the “Parent Trigger,” which authorizes parents to petition and require school boards to fix failing schools. The law requires a school district to implement one of four federally-approved interventions for turning around a persistently low achieving school if half the parents request action through a petition submitted to the school board. Among the options is closing the school and transforming it into a charter school.

Teachers unions oppose the new Race to the Top law supported by Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, Senate pro tem Darrell Steinberg and a majority of Democrats and Republicans in the Legislature. California Federation of Teachers president, Marty Hettelman drew criticism from civil rights leaders last week when he referred to the “Parent Trigger,” a provision lawmakers designed to empower parents in the state’s lowest performing schools, as “the lynch mob provision” in the January 5th edition of Inside CFT.

Critics charged the use of the term was racially charged and inappropriate. State education department data indicate that in schools that have been failing for seven or more years, 86 percent of the students are African American or Latino. Hittelman dismissed request for a public apology for using the term saying “we thought we used it advisedly.”

The deadline for California to submit its Race to the Top application to the U.S. Department of Education is January 19, 2010. State education officials report Forty-four percent of the school districts, county offices of education and charter schools in California have signed-up to participate in California’s Race to the Top bid. State Education Undersecretary Kathy Gaither applauded the level of school participation, which represents 57 percent of students attending California K-12 public schools.

“This is going to give us broad statewide impact and make us very competitive,” said Gaither.

Assemblyman Brian Nestande (R-Palm Desert) recently hosted Education Roundtables with California Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O’Connell in Riverside and Palm Desert with school Superintendents, Board of Education members, Principals, and PTO Presidents of school districts in the 64th District.

“I am pleased to have Superintendent Jack O’Connell come visit with educational leaders in my district,” Nestande said.

“It is important to have dialogue between Sacramento and our community.” Nestande is the Vice-Chair of the Education Committee, which focuses on K-12 education, certificated employees of schools, school finance, and school facilities.

Superintendent Jack O’Connell’s role is to lead the California Department of Education, which oversees the state’s diverse and dynamic public school system that is responsible for the education of more than seven million children and young adults in more than 9,000 schools.

Census Bureau launches road tour 'Portrait of America' to raise awareness and participation in Census

By Chris Levister –

It’s hard mobilizing communities for the 2010 Census when the bulls-eye keeps moving.

Look no further for signs of that moving target than this stately looking brick home in east Riverside County where the locks on the door are rusting and the torn sign in the front yard says – ‘foreclosure – must sell’.

“Count them out,” said Monica Frank who lives next door. She recalled the middle class family with four kids. “They were very stable. Until the husband (a civil engineer) lost his job. In 2007 they moved out in the middle of the night,” Frank said. “The place was rented then sold to another family in 2008. That family abandoned the home in November 2009.”

The woman points out one abandoned house after another on her block - hit hard by the foreclosure crisis.

“That large brick one’s vacant. That white one with the circular driveway is vacant. The one next to it is also vacant,” she said.

It’s a familiar tale of woe the U.S. Census Bureau is grappling with less than three months before it mails out census forms to every household in March. California is home to 10 of the 50 counties nationwide with the largest numbers of people deemed hard to count because of foreclosure, high unemployment, a large illegal immigrant population and lack of home telephone service. Census officials estimate the average household size in communities hit hard by foreclosure is about 4.8 people. Before the last national census in 2000, California lawmakers approved a $25 million media blitz to increase the chances that every Californian would be counted and the state would get its fair share of federal funding and political clout in Washington, Sacramento and beyond.

At a Southern California census and redistricting conference last fall Ditas M. Katague, the state’s census 2010 director, hummed a very different tune: “You’ve got me and a couple of loaned staff.” Massive budget problems have sharply limited the state’s census spending, to just $2 million for 2009-10. The California Endowment, the Kaiser Family Foundation, other community groups and some local governments are attempting to fill the gap, but they face fiscal problems of their own.

“I’m concerned about the census. I don’t want to lose a (congressional) seat,” says Hemet Councilwoman Robin Lowe, president of the League of California Cities. Lowe sees bad news on the census front particularly when it comes to outreach.

“I think Mr. Katague is doing the best he can, considering the lack of resources, but it’s going to take an army of local grass-roots volunteers to make it successful.” There’s a lot at stake for the fast growing Inland Empire in the decennial count. Federal funds are allocated based on census results.

The census also determines the number of Congressional seats each state has. State officials say overlooking as few as 2,500 people could mean at least one seat in Congress could go elsewhere for the next decade.

State Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod, (D-Chino) represents a San Bernardino based district dotted with foreclosure signs. “I think there is a concerted effort underway to raise awareness and address the lack of outreach spending because everybody understands what’s at stake.” Foreclosure is not new to the census said U.S. Census Bureau director Dr. Robert Groves.

“Operationally, we’re counting houses and whoever lives there just like we’ve always done. We know that foreclosure is happening all across the country and that we’re going to have to work harder to track people down,” Groves said. “Those people are somewhere and we need to make sure we count them somewhere.” That “somewhere” could be with family or friends, in another house or apartment, or it could be in a homeless shelter. In any case, that displacement makes it harder to get an accurate census count. So cities, ethnic, faith groups and the U.S. Census Bureau are trying to make sure that those hard to track people, whether homeless or not, understand the importance of participating in the census.

Portrait of America Road Tour Reaches Out

The 2010 Census ‘Portrait of America’ Road Tour set out January 4, 2010 from New York City’s Times Square, launching a cross-country interactive experience designed to increase awareness and encourage participation in the nation’s once-a-decade population count.

During the next four months, the tour will be part of the largest civic outreach and awareness campaign in U.S. history – highly visible vehicles stopping and exhibiting at more than 800 events nationwide. From local parades and festivals to major sporting events like the Super Bowl and NCAA Final Four, the Census Bureau will attempt to motivate America’s growing and increasingly diverse population to complete and mail back 10-question census forms when they arrive in mailboxes March 15-17. The Road Tour seeks to educate and empower, Groves said. “Attendees at Road Tour events will learn about the census, how it affects their local communities and even share their personal stories about why the census is important to them at interactive kiosks and exhibits.” The regional vehicles offer a similar user experience, including GPS technology that allows visitors to track the tour online as it happens and through daily social media postings on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and YouTube.

This constantly changing “Portrait of America” will be captured during all Road Tour events and will live online at 2010census.gov.