When is comes to dining out, you might think of Los Gatos and Saratoga or places further up the peninsula before San Jose comes to mind. Restaurants are not often clustered in San Jose as they are in San Pedro Square in the downtown core. That makes it difficult to scout places to eat in...
Tenes: East San Jose is the gem of the city
I’ve got a bone to pick that SJ Today didn’t even consider East San Jose as one of the best neighborhoods in San Jose. First of all, we have all of the best parks in San Jose — Emma Prusch Farm, Overfelt Chinese Cultural Gardens, Lake Cunningham, just a little further up is Grant Ranch...
Viramontes: We can’t build a better education system alone
This time last year I was weeks away from my daughter’s due date, and a few months into my new role as executive director of Teach For America (TFA) Bay Area. I was preparing for a new phase of my life that I could only conceptually understand would be uniquely challenging, and fulfilling. It wasn’t...
Shaw: Timing out—where do we go from here?
When the COVID-19 pandemic began, it exposed the flaws in the methods used to address the homelessness crisis. It left communities—local, state and national—scrambling to find food, shelter and safety for the most overlooked and most critiqued members of society. Organizations who specialize in the business of homelessness tout the metrics of how many unhoused...
Zimmerman: San Jose takes an electrifying step forward
Last month, the San Jose City Council voted to adopt the Framework for Existing Building Electrification as a step toward reducing the climate-destabilizing use of “natural” gas. All councilmembers joined Mayor Sam Liccardo in approving the framework, except Councilmember Dev Davis, who voted against it, and Councilmember Maya Esparza who was absent. The framework lays...
Op-ed: What little power we have left is under threat
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has failed, and continues to fail, the residents of California in spectacular fashion by not adhering to its own mission statement: “We are dedicated to ensuring that you have safe, reliable utility service at reasonable rates, protecting against fraud, and promoting the health of California’s economy.” Under CPUC’s watch...
Dewan: Considering a teaching career?
National news stories continue to raise awareness about teacher shortages. According to a 2019 report by the Economic Policy Institute, “The teacher shortage is real, large and growing” not only in California, but at the national level. A study, published in 2016 by the Learning Policy Institute, predicted that “by 2020, an estimated 300,000 new teachers will...
Silver Taube: Palo Alto janitorial workers shed light on wage theft
Allegations of wage theft loom over Palo Alto as several janitors who clean the city’s facilities have filed at least $23,000 in wage claims, not including penalties. The janitors filed claims with the Labor Commission against the city’s janitorial services vendor, SWA Services Group, a non-union company. These troubling allegations highlight the failure of one...
Bramson: Pop culture doesn’t know anything about life on the streets
How are we portraying the situation of homelessness in the United States? Over the course of a year, a recent study by the Center for Media and Social Impact looked at 150 episodes of 50 television shows, and 5,703 news articles published by 12 news outlets to investigate this very question. The results of this...
Mallon: Why is it so hard to increase transit service in Santa Clara County?
A common complaint about transit in Santa Clara County is there’s not enough service. The service isn’t frequent enough, the hours aren’t long enough and there aren’t enough routes. Residents want more service, but how can we make that a reality and why is it so challenging to even maintain service? The answer is complicated,...