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Dublin has been in the Bay Area news for a variety of reasons over the last couple of weeks.
On the positive side, Dublin High announced former Raider All-Pro Napoleon Kaufman as its new football coach. Kaufman retired from the Raiders after being led to Christ by a third-string fullback and then founded The Well church. Its original site was in Dublin where Kaufman got to know former Dublin Mayor, current Athletic Director Tim Sbranti. Sbranti reached out to Kaufman, who was quoted as saying it was the perfect job for him.
Kaufman coached his three sons in junior football before becoming head coach at Bishop O’Dowd High in Oakland. He led O’Dowd to one state title before stepping down after the 2019 season and then guiding his church through the lockdown.
With Dublin High two freeway exits against commute traffic away from his church, he will minimize his road time. He’s lived with his family in Pleasanton since his Raider days. The Well has grown into a sizeable church with a facility in an industrial area off Airway Blvd. in Livermore. In addition to pastoring The Well, Kaufman is a sought-after speaker nationally.
On the strange side, the federal Bureau of Prisons’ seemingly overnight decision to close the women’s prison in Dublin and transfer the more than 600 inmates all over the country. The bureau seems to have cleared the sex-scandal plagued facility in a little more than a week after a federal judge put a federal overseer in place because of the feds’ failure to reform the jail. The warden and six other staff members are jailed on sex convictions and the agency removed the newly appointed warden shortly after making the appointment.
It’s not often that the San Francisco Chronicle ventures into the Tri-Valley, focusing its coverage on the city, Marin County and the inner East Bay, particularly Oakland and Berkeley. Nonetheless, education reporter Jill Tucker wrote a lengthy piece about the Dublin district’s switch to equity grading, a complete change to student assessment.
Some elements—eliminating credit for homework and extra credit are sensible. Others, such as giving multiple opportunities to do an assignment after the deadline has passed and not allowing zero credit are questionable at best. How does it make a student workforce ready if deadlines mean nothing?
You wonder what problem officials were trying to solve. Academic performance is excellent with 79% qualifying for state or UC admission and 69% of low-income students. That’s a pretty small gap compared to the shameful statewide record. All ethnicities except black (4% of population) are in the 80th to 100th percentile in college readiness and blacks are at 70.
Dublin is launching a two-year pilot and high performing students, striving for top schools such as Cal, Stanford or the Ivy league are concerned this system could knock them out.
Sad to be experimenting when there doesn’t appear to be a problem.
The surprise of the week: while universities are coddling anti-Israel protesters, surprisingly Google did not. It fired two groups of employees who participating in protests inside of their facilities. That’s showing backbone and reminding people when on the job—they are employees—free speech is for the street corner off company property on your time.
Sad that the National Football League—here’s looking at you Jed York—didn’t take the same stand.