The San Diego Unified School District, under a collaboration with the San Diego Press Club, started a new series of casual forums with local journalists called Ed Talks with the goal to foster open and civilized conversations about public education.

Each forum will feature an educator, administrator, elected official or special guest, who will make opening remarks and have on-the-record discussions with local journalists in a casual setting.

The first Ed Talks forum was held at the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) headquarters located at 4100 Normal Street on Wednesday, January 17, with the participation of SDUSD board trustees Michael McQuary and Sharon Whitehurst-Payne.

“We are meeting with the members of the press so that we can provide clarity and communicate better with our community about what are we doing and how are we doing it,” said McQuary to La Prensa San Diego. “We would like to share about the successes and challenges the school district faces.”

The San Diego Unified School District serves more than 130,000 students in pre-school through grade 12 and is the second largest district in California. The student population is extremely diverse, representing more than 15 ethnic groups including 46.5 percent Hispanic students.

“The idea of Ed Talks is to have this regular casual forums where reporters can bring questions, everything is on-the-record, and hopefully it will serve to provide interesting, smart and robust conversation about public education in the media,” said Maureen Magee, director of the Communications Department in the SDUSD to La Prensa San Diego. “The forums will give the school district a chance to talk about interesting issues happening at the schools and give reporters a chance to ask questions and participate in the conversation.”

The first forum included different topics such as an increase in the number of students reaching the San Diego Unified’s criteria for Reclassified Fluent English Proficient.

“There are positive things happening academically as well as athletic side, and Lincoln High School is one of the schools the community should really look at. Our students are not only graduating, but they are also getting scholarships for college,” Whitehurst-Payne added. “We want to ask parents to get involved and to find out what is happening at their children’s school. We are always looking for people to be part of committees, and we have translation and even babysitters at the meetings or workshops.”