Crosscurrents

Difficulties for kids getting to school in San Francisco; one San Franciscan coming to grips with accepting food stamps; extracting bees; stomping around at the music club Death Guild; and local musicians The Berkeley High School Jazz Band.

The Labor department announced today that weekly unemployment claims nationwide have dropped by 5,000, and the national unemployment rate is now 8.3 percent – the lowest in 4 years. In California, the jobless rate stands at 10.9 percent, down from 12.1 percent a year ago.

Popular California community college, Santa Monica College, recently decided to start offering more sections of its most popular classes during the summer for five times the amount they normally cost, according to the Atlantic. The reason the tuition is so high is because these sections are not subsidized by the state.

If you’ve lived in San Francisco long enough, you might have noticed that there are fewer yellow school buses crisscrossing the city. State budget cuts have forced the school district to cut its bus services to 98 percent of high school students. Only five middle schools still get busing. Even elementary schools have been losing service. And deeper cuts are promised for next year.

Vicki Hennessy is the first woman to head the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, after Mayor Ed Lee named her interim sheriff and suspended Ross Mirkarimi from the position yesterday…

The president of Sierra College in the Sacramento Valley withdrew from speaking at a campus women’s health forum called “Reproductive Justice” after anti-abortion groups criticized the event…